Sing Fox to Me:

An Investigation into the “Use” of Down syndrome in Both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel

Why are characters with Down syndrome built into the scaffolding of the Down Syndrome novel rather than being represented as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view?

And, how might the Australian Gothic novel open up new possibilities for practitioners of modern disability fiction?

Sarah Jean Kanake

Bachelor of Creative Industries (Creative Writing)

First Class Honours, Creative Industries (Creative Writing)

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Media, Entertainments and Creative Arts

Creative Industries Faculty

Queensland University of Technology

2014

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

ABSTRACT

This project investigates the current borders around and within, what I have in this exegesis termed, “the Down Syndrome novel”, using a close reading analysis of literary texts containing characters with Down syndrome and contextualised by theoretical works drawn from both disability and literary theory. This practice-led thesis introduces and discusses select fictional characters with Down syndrome from numerous genres, revealing them as highly contained, or “boundaried”, spoken for, and generally used for narrative conflict rather than included as individuals with agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and narrative point of view. The Down

Syndrome novel is defined and positioned as sharing a similar space with colonial texts, as both impose “Otherness” and use this otherness to maintain possession, establish order and build boundaries. The Gothic novel often dissolves or rejects these boundaries and is generally unconcerned with maintaining order. Marcus Clarke’s

“weird melancholy” (Clarke [1896] cited in Birns 2005, 131) is discussed in order to understand how the Australian landscape may have been described as disabled, but does not passively accept this limitation. In reframing the Australian landscape as

“disabled” this exegesis illustrates that, unlike the character with Down syndrome in more conventional fiction, the Australian Gothic novel can shift, and sometimes even remove, the boundary around characters with intellectual disabilities, allowing a space where the stories of characters with Down syndrome can emerge. In the writing of my novel Sing Fox to Me, I argue that the Gothic narrative is a space where these imposed boundaries can be pushed and even dissolved.

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. i

Keywords – Australia, Boundary, Down syndrome, Faulkner, Gothic, Intellectual

Disability, Literary, Novel, Narrative Scaffolding, Narrative Structure, Point of View,

Voice.

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract …………….……………………………………………………………………..…... i

Keywords ……..……………………………………………………………………………. ii

Table of Contents ....………………………………………………………………….….… iii

Statement of Authorship ……………...……………………………………………….…... iv

Acknowledgments ..……………………………………………………………….….……… v

Definitions ……………………………………………………………..……………………. vi

Outline of Project …………….…………………………………………...………………… ix

Description of Project ….………………………………………………………. ix Research Question ……………………..……..………………….…………… xvi Development of Project ……………………………...………….………….… xvi

Literature Review ……………………………………………………………………………. 1

Research Methodology …………………………………………………………………..…. 17

Novel: Sing Fox to Me ……………………………………………………….………….….. 21

Introduction …………………………………………………………………….…….……. 340

Chapter One: Taking Down the Fence: Down syndrome as Boundary ……………...…….. 345

1.1 What is the Down Syndrome novel? ………………………………….….…... 347 1.2 Revealing Down syndrome ……………………………………………...... …. 368 1.3 Down syndrome and the Mother Narrative ………………………….…...……374 1.4 Gothic and Down syndrome ……………………………………….….....…… 390

Chapter Two: Beyond the Fence: The Strange Scribblings of Nature ..………………..…. 399

2.1 Australian Gothic……………………………………………………………... 405 2.2 Hell and Utopia……………………………………………………………….. 416

Chapter Three: Self Reflection: Burning Down the Fence………………………………… 423

3.1 The “Little Mother” as Boundary in Sing Fox to Me………………….….….. 425 3.2 Down syndrome, Australian Gothic and Bees ...………………………...... …. 426 3.3 Becoming Not So Strange in a Strange Place …………………………...…… 435

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………… 437

Publication Statement …………………………………………………………………….. 440

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………..... 441

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. iii

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Signature: QUT Verified Signature

Date: 28/08/2014

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to thank the Fellowship of the Reading, Level 5 of K Block, the Golden

Age of Booksellers, and my close friends and family. You all saw me through. In particular,

Emily Philip, Kate Sunners, Dr. Ari Van Lyn, Dr. Liz Ellison, Dr. Tess Van Hemert, Samuel

Finnegan, Kate Cantrell, Penny Holliday, Hannah Fry, Hayley-Jane Fry, Bronwen Gray,

Bessie Holland, Jann Eyles, Sam Eyles, Sarah Seminutin, Max Kanake and Cara Shrimpton.

A very special thanks to all the staff in the Creative Writing and Literature Studies faculty and Postgraduate department at QUT. Particularly Dr. Susan Carson, Dr. Kari

Gislason and Dr. Philip Neilsen for supplying me with teaching throughout my candidature.

Thank you to (bibliography-whisperer) Tyler Bartlett and Dr. Donna Hancox for her tough love and humour. Dr. Sharyn Pearce, for her support, encouragement and belief in me even when I had a green Mohawk. And, an enormous thank you to fellow writer Dr. Lee

McGowan for his reassurance, occasional red pen and friendship.

This project owes special thanks to six very important influences in my life. My editor, Aviva Tuffeild. Thank you for seeing the potential in my strange scribblings. My extraordinary teacher, support, reader, editor and friend, Dr. Lesley Hawkes. Without your influence and guidance no one would understand the bees. My hunting partner Jared Spurr, who took me to Tasmania and stayed very quiet (but also cooked dinner and blew up the air mattress) while I searched for tigers, and Charlie Cooper, who (without knowing it) gave me the second star to the right to shoot for.

But mostly, this novel and research is for Bel Bel, and The Boy. Thank you.

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DEFINITIONS

Down syndrome – Down syndrome, named after its “discoverer” Dr John Langdon

Downs in 1866, is a chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of an extra

chromosome 21. The National Dissemination Centre for Children with Disabilities in

the United States defines Down syndrome as:

Down syndrome is the most common and readily identifiable chromosomal condition associated with intellectual disabilities. It is caused by a chromosomal abnormality: for some unknown reason, an accident in cell development results in 47 instead of the usual 46 chromosomes. This extra chromosome changes the orderly development of the body and brain. (NDCCD 2013)

The NDCCD also states that: “Nearly 5,000 babies are born with Down syndrome in

the United States each year. This means that 1 in every 733 babies is born with this

condition”. According to recent studies Down syndrome is the “most common

presenting chromosomal disorder” (Gothard 2010, 33) and, according to the CDC in

the US, in 2002:

Down syndrome was found to be present in about 1 of every 1,000 children… in 10 chosen regions of the United States, which means that approximately 83,000 children and adolescents with Down syndrome were living in the United States during that year (CDC 2013).

There are three types of Down syndrome, Trisomy 21, Mosaic and

Translocation Down syndrome [Down syndrome Victoria] each of which manifests as a developmental disorder along with a “characteristic set of facial and physical features” (Korenberg 1994, 4998). Gothard defines these features in Greater

Expectations.

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These classical features (or ‘stigmata, the technical term’) of Down syndrome are visible in the face, neck, feet and hands. The eyes may appear to tilt upwards and be almond-shaped, a fact which led to earlier naming of the syndrome as ‘Mongolism’, as this feature was viewed as typically ‘Asiatic’. The irises… sometime exhibit rather attractive light flecks called ‘Brushfield strokes’. In some the tongue can protrude, and the mouth and its cavity may be smaller than normal [sic]. Ears too are sometimes smaller and the tips are slightly folded over. A child’s face is sometimes flatter, especially in the bridge of the nose, and the head smaller. Some with Down syndrome have a characteristic transverse palmar or ‘simian’ crease, a single line crossing the palm of the hand instead of two; others have an inward curved finger. Sometimes a wide gap exists between the first and second toe (Gothard 2010, 33).

Down Syndrome novel – The Down Syndrome novel refers to a novel that builds the scaffolding of plot and story around the inclusion of a character with Down syndrome, making this character necessary for the plot. If you remove the character with Down syndrome (or their disability) from the narrative, the plot caves in. Not all novels that include characters with Down syndrome can be called Down Syndrome novels because they do not build the character into the scaffolding of the narrative.

Down Syndrome novel was termed by me in this exegesis to discuss the style of narrative (outlined above) where Down syndrome is included. I refer to these narratives as Down Syndrome novels and not novels with Down syndrome in order to immediately reflect the hierarchy of Down syndrome as “Other” within these texts. In terming the Down Syndrome novel I eschew the contemporary lower case ‘s’ for the more traditional (and now almost obsolete) upper case ’S’ in order to immediately identify the otherness central to these novels. This is not to criticise the Down syndrome novel, but rather to present a line of difference between depictions of Down syndrome and those novels where Down syndrome is indispensible to the plot.

Examples of typical Down Syndrome novels are The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by

Kim Edwards and Jewel by Brett Lott and will be discussed throughout this thesis.

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Colonial Writing and Language – For the purposes of this thesis I use the term

“colonial” not just as a definition of a time period or type of writing, but engage with

it as a way of discussing power and questions of ownership through language.

Narrative scaffolding – The narrative scaffolding of the novel pertains to the

structuring of the story and the framing of the intentions of the author and narrative

voice.

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OUTLINE OF PROJECT

Disability’s prominence in narrative discourses and the relative absence of critical commentary upon this fact prior to the advent of disability studies in the humanities suggest that disability is… both promising and discomforting (Mitchell and Snyder 2000 15).

There is a strange and really unaccountable silence when the issue of disability is raised (or, more to the point, never raised)… the concept of disability has been relegated to a sideshow, a freak show at that, far away from the academic midway of progressive ideas and concerns (Davis 2002, 4).

Description of Project

Discussions of Down syndrome as an intellectual disability are often found in medical

journals, published biography, and disability research. However, outside the realm of

medicine, personal reminiscence and disability theory, Down syndrome often

struggles for social, historical and cultural representation. In her research paper

Culture and Disability, historian Karen Hirsch writes: “Few historians have included

disability issues as an integral part of their thinking and writing” (Hirsch 1995, 27). In

2012, The Global Association for Down syndrome stated that 67% of the population

knew someone with Down syndrome (Global Down Syndrome Association, 2013).

Despite this, in fiction, the character with Down syndrome is uncommon, narrators

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. ix

with diagnosed Down syndrome are few, and sole narrators with Down syndrome are virtually non-existent. This begs the question: if approximately 67% of the population know someone with Down syndrome, why are people with Down syndrome still so few, or more importantly, underrepresented as narrators in narrative fiction?

There are characters with Down syndrome in mainstream television, novels and occasionally even film. As mentioned above, Gothard suggests that this crisis of representation is continuingly improving, citing several narrative television shows featuring positive depictions. Gothard recognises that being incidental to the plot is preferable to carrying it: “People with disabilities such as Down syndrome are starting to become more visible as pleasant, even popular incidental characters in mainstream productions” (Gothard 2010, 30). However, being “incidental” to the plot carries its own difficulties and silences. The incidental character with Down syndrome may be freer within the narrative, but this character will never be free to tell their own story.

An interesting example of this can be found in American teen musical serial Glee, which includes three characters with Down syndrome: Becky Jackson played by

Lauren Potter, Jean Sylvester played by Robin Trocki and Robin, the infant child of

Jean’s sister Sue. Throughout the course of the show each character narrates an episode (generally based around them), but when it comes time for Becky to narrate her first episode in Season 3 (Episode 19 Prom-asauras written by Ryan Murphy) it is not Lauren Potter but actress Helen Mirren who narrates the episode as Becky, because it is assumed that the audience is not ready to hear a girl with Down syndrome talk about the complexities of her romantic life. This brings us to the question, if Gothard is right and incidental characters (like Becky) are making Down syndrome more visible, where are the fictional characters telling their own stories?

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In Greater Expectations Gothard writes that, “The state of full inclusion could

be reached a lot more quickly, and would appear a lot more attractive to those who are

still wary of it, if the rest of the community would meet people with disabilities

halfway” (Gothard 2010 26). Just because Down syndrome is visible within popular

culture does not mean that characters with Down syndrome have been integrated into

these narratives or given the chance to be heard. Mitchell and Snyder discuss this gap

at length in their book Narrative Prothesis: “The marginality of disabled people has

occurred in the midst of the perpetual circulation of images of disability” (Mitchell and Snyder 2000, 3). The marginalisation of the character with Down syndrome in narrative fiction is not about appearing in a novel, but having a voice and agency within the narrative. When writing about the intellectually disabled, few authors have situated themselves comfortably between the content of a character’s experience and the style necessary to accommodate difference. In Greater Expectations Gothard discusses some current representations of Down syndrome in narrative fiction:

Images of the person with Down syndrome, mostly unattractive, have always been present in our literature. Benjamin Compson, Faulkner’s shuffling idiot narrator in The Sound and the Fury, is based on a character with Down syndrome, and it’s not hard to find similar examples – the sad- eyed Mongol in Take Me to Paris Johnny and the retarded Mongol brother with the mismatched ears in The Jane Austen Bookclub are just two (Gothard 2010, 29).

Representations of characters with Down syndrome have historically fallen into two polarised categories – angel and monster – with few transcending the boundaries to become fully realised characters with their own autonomous voice. This lack of freedom in voice is generally connected to the fear of the character with Down syndrome and their inclusion into the world, even an imagined world. Fear, of what a character with Down syndrome might say if their voice were not translated by another

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. xi

more reliable narrator, as seen in Glee. Fear, of the body growing into adulthood

while the mind stays behind in childhood. Fear, of how the first person voice of a

character with Down syndrome might change the landscape of the modern narrative,

and perhaps even fear that the character with Down syndrome will transgress all

normative boundaries. These fears, felt and expressed by the writer, narrator and

reader, are all ingrained in this lack of voice.

In one of the key texts for this research Demons of the Body and Mind: Essays

on Disability in Gothic Literature, those with identifiable disabilities are referred to as

the “other Other” and it is suggested that there is a universality in fearing the disabled

body: “I discovered that the strangely formed body has represented absolute

Otherness in all times and places since human history began” (Bienstock Anolik

2010, 3). The “strangely formed body” of those with a physically evident intellectual disability has an almost universal otherness. People with Down syndrome can be any race, age, class, sexuality and gender. They are the “other Other” and, as such, they inspire a universal and all pervading fear of being different: “Disability simultaneously unsettles the categories of race, gender, class and sexuality yet cannot be thought of without them” (Davis 2002). Characters with Down syndrome can exist in any time period, any country and in any home and can therefore “destabilise all categories of identity” (Davis 2002) and perhaps even threaten all normative boundaries. It is important to question if intellectual disability is relegated to narrative support because it is so difficult to manage and represent accurately. Consider: most characters with Down syndrome, particularly within the Down Syndrome novel, are heterosexuals from white, middle-class (although often the families fall on hard times) multiple children families. They are heavily normalised by the author and a narrative voice outside their intellectual disability but, as an intellectually disabled

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. xii

“Other”, characters with Down syndrome are sometimes capable of stretching their

own limits using the vehicle of their disability.

In The Sound and the Fury Benjamin’s behaviour is heavily normalised by his

family, particularly his sister Caddy. Benjamin is admonished and condemned but any

strangeness or disturbance in his behaviour is expected. He can use his disability for

attention, and affection, and this is why, when he forces his hand through the fence,

he is unable to understand the terror and disgust he finds there. While Benjamin is not

capable of moving beyond the property borders unpunished, it is possible for a

character with Down syndrome to find freedom in traversing the boundaries of

normative behaviour. In Sing Fox to Me, Samson briefly articulates this use of normative boundary when he identifies using his disability to get a seat on the bus:

“Sometimes it’s hard for her to get a seat on the bus and sometimes me too, and so I talk loud and close to people sitting. They always move and sometimes the seat is for

Lucy and sometimes for me” (Kanake 2013, 23). School and city buses frequently appear in the Down Syndrome novel and disability memoirs such as Riding The Bus

With My Sister by Rachel Simon (2003) and Bus Girl by Gretchen Josephson (1999).

The bus becomes a symbol of institutional order and a state of confinement. The bus is a difficult space within relation to Down syndrome, because it both facilitates freedom but is bound by rules and structure such as having a clear destination. Later in this thesis I will discuss how the character with Down syndrome is themselves bound by their destination. When viewed through a Foucauldian lens the character with Down syndrome is metaphorically boundaried more than once by social structures that appear to promise freedom but, in fact, remove it through controlling the destination or result. This is not unusual in writing about the “Other” and usually the character must leave the narrative through storylines of death or care, or remain

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permanently infantilised: The “Other might be horrifyingly invisible, free to

transgress the boundaries that separate madness from sanity, deviance from the norm,

the Other from the Self” (Bienstock Anolik 2010, 225). In the Down Syndrome novel

the world must learn to accept, love and include the character with Down syndrome.

This is generally successful and by the end of the Down Syndrome novel the

character is accepted and therefore no longer feared as an “Other.” However,

including a character with Down syndrome in a novel does not mean the character is

an active participant in the story.

In Greater Expectations Gothard writes: “Inclusion means more than simply

having people with disabilities in mainstream classrooms and workplaces. It’s about

the state of mind which sees people with disabilities accepted as valued, significant

and worthwhile members of society: people who have every right to belong” (Gothard

2010, 26). Just as a person with an intellectual disability has the right to be a

“significant member of society”, so does a character with Down syndrome have a

right to a belonging within the story that does not build them into the scaffolding of

the narrative. Gothard further suggests that the social interpretations of intellectual

disability are rapidly changing and this change is bringing with it diverse results:

Until recently, intellectual disability was a relatively unexplored theme in social and historical research in Australia, but over the past decade or so more had been written as disability has become an increasingly acknowledged dimension of social difference (Gothard 2010, 19).

Here it becomes important to make a distinction between my investigations and

intentions, and the current body of research within disability theory. I am not suggesting that all intellectual disabilities share some universal core or that they can be captured by the same voice. Nor am I attempting to advocate for persons with an

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. xiv

intellectual disability. I am not seeking to represent all disability in the same way, but rather, to design a single narrative where the reader can empathise with “some experiences” of intellectual disability and to create, through my research, a method of investigation useful to my practice. My novel and research represent the convergence of disability and literary theory with my creative practice. My novel is written across three characters and one of these characters has Down syndrome. I am not seeking to appropriate a voice but rather to add to the stories of Down syndrome within narrative fiction. However, true integration can only be achieved through plurality of the intellectually disabled voice, which only time and multiple novels can rectify: “I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me” (Foucault

[1971] 1994, 157). My research seeks to enter the gap between experience and representation.

Analysis of the Down Syndrome novel allows me to identify the methods a practitioner might use to question the current boundaries around disability fiction in order to traverse, not just the spaces within these confines, but also Hall’s elusive

“unchartered territories” (Hall 2012, 8). The result of my research is a new contribution to knowledge through a practice-led qualitative approach. This includes a finished novel with a first person point of view from a character with Down syndrome, and research examining the current imbalance of power within narrative fiction. Together, my novel and exegesis will provide some answers for why the inclusion of a character with Down syndrome is frequently presented as a problem that must be overcome, forming a kind of narrative arch that builds Down syndrome, and therefore the character with Down syndrome, into the narrative scaffolding.

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Research Question

The research question driving the investigation is: Why are characters with Down syndrome built into the scaffolding of the Down Syndrome novel rather than being represented as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view?

The sub-question emerging from this focus is: How might the Australian Gothic novel open up new possibilities for practitioners of modern disability fiction?

Development of Project

“You, ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear/ The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor/ May now perchance both quake and tremble here/ When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar” (Shakespeare [1605] 1998, 193).

It is common in novels depicting a character with an intellectual disability to contain epigraphs and forewords commenting on why the author has written the story and what their own lived experiences with disability are. One of these authors is Pearl S.

Buck in her book The Child Who Never Grew. Buck writes: “For families whose lives were haunted by the sad mystery of mental retardation, all the scientific explanations

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. xvi

in the world would not have as much impact as a famous, respected person disclosing

publicly. I speak as one who knows” (Buck [1950] 1992, 1).

Much like Pearl S. Buck’s foreword where she positions herself as “someone

who knows”, the foreword of the Down Syndrome novel is often an exposition of the

author’s experiences, their ownership over the content of the story and almost an

apology for writing it. In the author’s note included in The Man Who Loved Clowns,

Wood writes that Uncle Punky in her story is “patterned after [her] brother Richard”

who died in 1948 of heart failure. She refers to Richard as being “much like a child” and having “simple ways” capable of teaching three generations of their family about love. In her dedication Wood writes: “[Richard] was a blessing from God, loaned to us for a while, a ray of sunshine in our lives” (Wood 1992, 2). In this note Wood confines her brother Richard to a gift and has, quite literally, boxed him up and presented him to her reader. Similarly, in Red Sky in the Morning, author Elizabeth

Laird prefaces her novel with a biography of her brother Alastair. Like Wood she remarks that the intellectually disabled character in her book is not just based on her brother, but that he is her brother. These almost apologetic prefaces suggest that both authors need to assert their right to tell their stories. That, like Buck, they are

“someone who knows”, and perhaps it is because of this ownership that the space around the Down Syndrome novel has become such a difficult one to unpack.

In the foreward to Grace Williams Says It Out Loud (2010) author Emma

Henderson identifies her institutionalised sister as the inspiration for her novel. She

writes that there was a time when she thought of her sister as, “the spazzo. Defective,

deficient, physically handicapped, mentally subnormal” (Henderson 2010, 1). In the

next paragraph Henderson refers to her sister as a “woman whose shocking

disabilities couldn’t mask her undeniable, if indescribable intelligence: her sense of Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel. xvii

humour, her romantic tastes and adventures, her ability to relish the beauty and absurdity of the world, and, above everything, an astonishing determination to communicate with the world, at all costs” (Henderson 2010, 1). Despite this determination on the part of her sister it is Henderson who translates and fictionalises her sister’s story by creating a life where she first assumes there was none: “My intention was to invent a life-story for someone [her intellectually disabled and institutionalised sister] who scarcely had one” (Henderson 2010, 1). In Grace

Williams Says It Out Loud Henderson joins the above authors in appropriating and reimagining the lives of intellectually disabled family members. These authors approach their reader already apologising for the content of their fictional work and the possible affront their novel may have on the reader’s aesthetic sensibility.

Like Emma Henderson and many authors writing about Down syndrome, I have my own lived experiences with disability, but I do not write this work to divulge information about myself or discuss my own experiences. This is not to criticise those novels that do, but rather to create limits around myself as a practitioner, researcher and individual. The representation of fictional stories can only move away from power dynamics discussed throughout this thesis once the author stops attempting to replicate experience: “And representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it [the subject], can offer itself as representation in its pure form” (Foucault

[1966] 2002, 9). The person in my family with Down syndrome is an active agent in his own life. He can speak and write for himself. He can tell his own stories. I do not have Down syndrome and I seek only to comment on a gap that exists within narrative fiction and to enter into this gap with my fictional novel Sing Fox to Me.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

Just because disability studies is on the map doesn’t mean that it is easy to find (Davis 2006, 13).

Representations of Down syndrome and intellectual disability, as mentioned above

and discussed throughout this thesis, are not absent from fiction writing. There are

dozens of characters throughout the history of fiction with both intellectual difference

and occasionally even Down syndrome. However, these representations are often

negative or contain negative connotations beneath the “positive” images. Disability

researcher Jan Gothard outlines several of these representations in her book Greater

Expectations, commenting on the often negative portrayal:

It’s not hard to find similar examples [to Benjamin Compson] – the sad- eyed Mongol in Take Me to Paris Johnny and the ‘retarded Mongol brother’ with the mismatched ears in The Jane Austen Book Club are just two… and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, an enormously popular recent novel which focuses on a baby with Down syndrome relinquished at birth, is light years away from Darcy’s Utopia (Gothard 2010, 29).

Gothard’s work highlights that literature from across all genres contains characters with intellectual difficulties and includes many undiagnosed disabilities and intellectual differences. It is important to start to reconsider these novels as disability texts in order to understand the foundations that lay beneath creative writing

1

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

regarding intellectual disability and Down syndrome specifically. Prior to diagnosis,

depictions of intellectual disability were largely constructed from fearful

commonalties. For Down syndrome this fear begins to solidify in 1866 when John

Langdon Downs diagnosed and categorised the stigmata of Down syndrome. Once

this label was applied, the fear of intellectual and physical disability could be

explained and categorised through science and diagnosis. Arguably two of the

strongest representations and coming together of diagnosis, science and intellectual

disability are found in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ([1818] 2000) and Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde by R.L Stevenson ([1886] 1993). It is interesting that the diagnosis of

Down syndrome and the use and application of this label sits squarely between the

publication of these two texts.

As the diagnosis of Down syndrome becomes more commonplace and the stigmata recognisable to ordinary people, the depictions of Down syndrome begin to

also change. In many contemporary texts, the character with Down syndrome moves

from the monstrous to the angelic, from aggressor to angel. While most of the angels

discussed in this literature review have diagnosed Down syndrome, none of the

monsters discussed have a named disability. The “Monstrous” inclusion in this

chapter is not to reveal how far back depictions of Down syndrome go, or to argue for

a place for intellectual difference in ancient and classic literature, but rather to show

how the fear of the monstrous is built beneath the foundations of depictions of

intellectual difference, including Down syndrome. Many contemporary

representations of characters with Down syndrome may be angelic but beneath this

angelic image is still the fear of the monster. Also, usually the angelic representations

are babies or young children while the adult is still represented as “monster” or 2

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

potential “monster.” Of course it would be impossible to go through all of the texts

that draw on ideas surrounding disability to drive their narrative. This literature

review will draw on a number of well known works of fiction to demonstrate how ingrained the representations of disability are in works of creative writing but to also highlight how some characters within these texts struggle against these conventions.

Beowulf, the powerful story from the eighth century, is one of the first well

known stories that represents the “Monstrous.” Grendel is the first of Beowulf's enemies and is described (in lines 1351–1355 of Seamus Heaney’s translation) as

being shaped like an unnaturally large, deformed human: “… the other, warped in the

shape of a man, moves beyond the pale, bigger than any man, an unnatural birth,

called Grendel by the country people.” Even in this very early text there is a

connection with the monstrous and an “unnatural” birth—a child “not quite right”

who grows to become a monster. In the 2007 motion capture computer animated film

adaption of Beowulf, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery, Grendel is shown as having a grossly deformed body, hyper sensitive ears and an intellectual impairment.

These deformities are what make Grendel so terrifying to the villagers, but his disabilities also affect how Grendel interacts with the world. In Gaiman and Avery’s adaption of Beowulf, Grendel is not so much scheming beast as he is a deformed and easily injured child. However, this injured child grows to act out violence against society. This portrayal and Grendel’s redesign in the modern day share many similarities to the misshapen Ephialtes of Trachis from the 1998 graphic novel The

300.

3

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Ephialtes of Trachis (whose name even means “nightmare”) is blamed for

having caused the Spartan defeat at Thermopylae (in 480 BC) in Frank Miller’s

contemporary graphic novel The 300. Despite the graphic novel’s historical inaccuracies, Ephialtes is an interesting monster predominantly because of how he has been translated into a contemporary text. In Miller’s work Ephialtes is rejected from the Spartan army (before being corrupted by the Persian “freaks” and encouraged to seek vengeance for his rejection from Spartan society) because of his deformities.

King Leonidas instructs Ephialtes that the strength of the Spartan Army is in its uniformity and perfection, implying that the brutal Spartan tradition of killing babies who were not perfect is key to the success of the Spartan way of life. Ephialtes may still be Spartan, but because of his disabilities and deformities he will never be welcomed into Spartan society. Both these texts highlight what happens when a child with disability is “allowed” to enter into mainstream society as an adult.

Even William Shakespeare, an author known for his understanding of difference, presents characters with disability as “fools” or outside of society and they usually finish up alone at the end of the play. Snug the Joiner from William

Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream ([1590] 1998) may be affectionately written and audiences may feel empathy for him but he is still the “Fool.”

Shakespeare’s fools were generally peasants who, in some way, brought down or affected the ruling class. In tragedies such as Macbeth, King Lear and Hamlet

Shakespeare used madness as a device to reach narrative extremity and in his

comedies intellectual difference was often a device for humour as seen with Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing ([1599] 1969) or Feste in Twelfth Night ([1602] 1969).

For the purposes of this thesis I do not look at Shakespeare’s fool in detail. His fool is

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

a complex narrative construction and has been the subject of numerous academic

reflections, dramatic reincarnations and scholarly publications. However, it is clear

that the “fool” has an important connection to disability, and this connection has

formed a problematic foundation beneath future depictions of intellectual difference.

There are many fictional characters in classic novels with undiagnosed

cogitative disabilities such as Don Quixote from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

([1605] 2003) and much later Barnaby Rudge from Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby

Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty ([1841] 2003) and A Christmas Carol ([1843]

2004). In Barnaby Rudge Dickens gives fiction one of its most famous intellectually

disabled characters and in A Christmas Carol he provides a notable physically

disabled character in crippled boy Tiny Tim. Even though Tiny Tim is central to

Scrooge’s transformation, he is a peripheral character within the story. He doesn’t

have an interior monologue, or an extended character focus and therefore cannot

really participate in the story. He is defined by his disability, and is used by Dickens

to comment on the lost pastoral innocence of a preindustrial England. Likewise, in

Barnaby Rudge, Dickens devotes an entire novel to articulating the space between the angelic, and often very naïve, interior world of Barnaby and the monstrous England with its slowly modernising society. In Barnaby Rudge Dickens departs from

Shakespeare’s strategic fool and makes some of the first significant connections between mental acuity and victimisation. Persecution of a character with an intellectual difference is a theme that will continue to appear throughout literature.

One only has to think of Dickens’ Great Expectations ([1860] 2010) and Jane Eyre

([1847] 2007) by Charlotte Bronte to bring these types of “victimised” characters into

mind.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

In most of the texts discussed the intellectually disabled characters were

generally men unless, as is the case with Bertha in Jane Eyre or Miss Havisham from

Great Expectations, the “disability” was madness and then it often became the domain of women. This connection between women and madness has been widely written about by theorists such as Elaine Showalter in The Female Malady: Women,

Madness, and English Culture (1987) and Joan Busfield in Men, Women, and

Madness: Understanding Gender and Mental Disorder (1996). Showalter and

Busfield both highlight the way “madness” is used as a way to constrict and constrain

women’s mobility and acceptance into society. The connection between intellectual

disability and madness is certainly not new and continues throughout literature and

society. Up until very recently the intellectually disabled were not just housed

alongside the insane, but viewed alongside the insane. People with any disability were

categorised as belonging together with no thought given to individual needs or

desires. There are many novels where both madness and disability have been viewed

together such as contemporary novel Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

([1962] 2003) and much earlier in whaling novel, Moby Dick ([1851] 1979) by

Herman Melville.

Moby Dick is an interesting text within the evolution of the disabled character

as it includes several characters with disabilities. Most famous amongst them is, of

course, Captain Ahab with his missing leg and burgeoning madness, but there is also

the steward, Dough-Boy. Dough-Boy presents an evolution in the character with

intellectual difference because his disability is never named. Dough-Boy may have

some form of intellectual disability or simplicity but the reader is never really sure

because of how little agency Dough-Boy is given and how infrequently his voice is 6

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

heard. Despite being terrorised by three cannibal harpooners in Chapter Thirty-Four,

Ishmael disregards Dough-Boy’s terror. Ishmael dismisses Dough-Boy’s reactions and links his feelings of terror to his intellectual simplicity rather than his lived experiences.

American Southern Gothic texts such as Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

([1937] 2009), The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor ([1955] 2007) and

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner ([1929] 1995) are also texts that contain characters with disability. However, within these novels, particularly in the work of

William Faulkner, there is a questioning of boundaries being applied to and around certain characters. They seek to understand how a character with intellectual difference or impairments might actually gain mobility and move in the world.

Faulkner’s most profound depiction, and arguably the first character with both Down syndrome and Autism, is Benjamin Compson. In these texts the use of the southern

“idiot” becomes a vehicle for Gothic character traditions. These Gothic traditions will be discussed at a later stage but at this time it is the genre’s connection with simplicity, concealment, mystery and darkness that needs to be stressed. These tropes get used by these authors as ways to stress the limitations placed around certain characters and how these limitations impact upon the rest of the narrative. In Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926-1962 (1980) Faulkner discusses in detail the connection between innocence and “the idiot”, and the idiot and mental acuity and how society “expects” characters to behave in certain ways.

It is not only the Gothic genre or works of fiction that draws upon themes of capacity and ability to cope in the world in connection to disability. Confessional memoir also “uses” disability as a way to explore, explain, and rationalise 7

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

experienced difficulties. An example of this kind of confessional memoir is The Child

Who Never Grew ([1950] 1992) by Pulitzer Prize winning author Pearl Buck who

discusses the “sad mystery of mental retardation”. Buck describes her daughter Carol

as childlike and slow, without ever really discussing what role the child’s early

institutionalisation may have played in her mental and social development. Later,

Buck’s book was joined by hugely popular confessional memoir Angel Unaware: The

Touching Story of Life and Loss ([1953] 2004) by Roy Roger and Dale Evans regarding the birth and subsequent early death of Robin Evans:

Angel Unaware is written in the voice of baby Robin, cast as an angel sent to earth to spread joy and awareness. The book, motivated by the couple’s Christian beliefs, was published only with difficulty — it was not a popular topic at that time. However, as one of the earliest of such ‘true confessional’ works, the book gave hope to many who read it and has sold over a million copies. In 2004 a fiftieth anniversary edition was published (Stanley in Gothard 2010, 16).

Memoirs such as Angel Unaware were more confessional self help than traditional

memoir and offered “how to cope advice.” In many ways the Angel Unaware memoir

marks a significant shift from monstrous unknown to angelic gift. The readers felt

sympathy for the characters with disability and for the carers of these children. These confessional memoirs also marked a point in Down syndrome memoir and narrative fiction where the disabled voice begins to slowly evolve. However, as Stanley suggests these works are often driven by a need to tell a “hidden” story:

Nowadays too, there is a gratifying trend away from the beatification approach exemplified in Angel Unaware, which left many parents of less than saintly children a little uncomfortable; although the autobiographical Expecting Adam — with its blunt allusion to the supernatural guiding powers of the child with Down syndrome, even in utero — is clearly part of that older tradition. Despite their differences, however, what all these books reveal is that, as individuals, people have felt compelled to talk 8

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

about the profound impact of the birth of a child with disability. Their powerful need to articulate their shock and reaction speaks volumes of the still-hidden nature of disability in society today (Stanley in Gothard 2011, 18-19).

The “hidden” story of Down syndrome slowly begins to slowly transform

(both with medical diagnosis and social recognition) and is replaced by a kind of

hyper visibility. Fay Weldon’s Darcy’s Utopia (1990) was one of the first

contemporary novels to identify a character with Down syndrome, yet, still there is a

continuation of a ‘hidden’ story. Weldon’s descriptions of the “mindless child” run

parallel with the narrator’s support for abortion. Anything, Weldon’s narrator asserts,

is preferable to becoming a disabled child’s nurse. Weldon’s novel is powerful in that

the narrator puts usually hidden thoughts into words. Novels of the same time, such as

A Solitary Grief by Bernice Rubans ([1992]1991) discusses these negative representations further with a story about what happens when a physiatrist and his wife have a baby with Down syndrome. Dr Alistair Crow is appalled by his baby

Doris and cannot even bring himself to look at her, even going so far as to lock himself inside his office so as to avoid contact. By making the representation of Doris disproportionate to Crow’s disgust, the reader is made aware of the often silent fear that lies under the label of Down syndrome.

Often this fear is explicitly expressed as in Anne Sexton’s December 12th

([1969] 1999), a narrative poem from a series entitled Eighteen Days Without You

from a collection entitled Love Poems. In this poem the narrator tells the story of a

day spent at an institutionalised “State School where the retarded are locked up with

hospital techniques” (Sexton 1999). She categorises the “invalids” she meets. There is

the “five-year-old who sits all day and never speaks”, “the two-headed baby”, and 9

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Bobby (her “favourite Mongoloid”), saying they are a product of “nature, but nature works such crimes.” Both A Solitary Grief and December 12th represent the shift from monster to angel (although an angel as an unplanned gift) and provide an interesting dichotomy in representation because Doris and Bobby are both monstrous and angelic. These texts create sympathy for the characters with disability but they also, whether knowingly or not, hint at the monstrous that could emerge.

Typical angelic depictions are often problematised in Young Adult literature as seen in pre-teen novel Boss of the Pool by Robin Klein (1986), The Man Who

Loved Clowns by June Rae Wood (1995) and Red Sky in the Morning (1988) by

Elizabeth Laird. These novels have diagnosed characters with Down syndrome and the children (generally the narrative voice) who are related to these diagnosed characters are capable of a different style of self-reflexivity about Down syndrome.

Interestingly there are Gothic Young Adult novels where (while the self-reflexivity remains) diagnosis dissolves and characters with extreme physical and intellectual otherness become central to the story. These characters, often wild children, are watched by the narrator with confusion and curiosity as representative of the interaction between wilderness and colonisation. These texts include Thursday’s

Child by Sonja Hartnett (2000) and Into That Forest by Louis Nowra (2012)

Young Adult novels often connect intellectual disability with a heroic overcoming of adversity and many are didactic: teaching a lesson to the readers. In

The Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan (2005 – 2009), for example, Percy’s half brother Tyson (a Cyclops who is arguably representative of someone with Down syndrome), goes beyond conventions of narrative expectations by regularly saving

Percy from possible death. This is dissimilar to the traditional Down Syndrome novel, 10

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

where actual protection is generally reserved for the caregiver. Two such novels are

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (2005) and Jewel by Brett Lott

(1991) with an interesting exception, Australian Down Syndrome novel Water Under

Water by Peter Rix (2011) where the teenage character with Down syndrome Tom, dies a hero saving his friend from a snakebite. Both The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Jewel will be discussed at length throughout this thesis in order to understand how the Down Syndrome novel functions as a text.

As discussed and defined throughout this thesis, the Down Syndrome novel is a novel where Down syndrome is central to the plot. Without Down syndrome the plot ceases to exist. These novels present the character with Down syndrome as a problem that the narrator, and reader, must learn to overcome. The novel itself is this movement towards acceptance. Despite this theme of acceptance the Down Syndrome novel will generally have a didactic conclusion where the character is said to have been accepted while generally being forced into one (or more) of three endings: death, care, or a permanent childhood. There are, of course, Down syndrome texts that combine the self-reflexivity and narrative freedoms of the Young Adult text with the focus and maturity of the adult Down syndrome story. One of these texts is Mark

Haddon’s radio play (2004) and subsequent television movie (2007) Coming Down the Mountain.

Coming Down the Mountain looks at the relationship between two brothers

David and Ben (who has Down syndrome). The play focuses on a plot David formulates to murder his intellectually disabled brother by pushing him down a mountain. Haddon is an important voice in contemporary disability fiction and his

Young Adult novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time experiments 11

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

with both narrative style and the first person voice of a character with Autism. The

techniques used by Haddon in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are

entirely dependent on Christopher’s “disability” (such as the prime numbered chapters and divergent story lines). These stylistic choices arguably provide a more socially and artistically palatable difference to that of an intellectual disability such as

Down syndrome.

Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (2011) and Harp in the South by Ruth Park

([1948] 2009) are both Australian novels that could be classed as Gothic. Once again, the Gothic lends itself to the exploration of difference. The Harp in the South follows

the Darcys, an Irish Catholic family living in the slums of Sydney in the late forties.

The Darcys rent an attic room, in their slum home, to an abusive woman named Mrs.

Sheily and her twenty-year-old son Johnny who has Down syndrome. Johnny is used

by Park to reach narrative extremity and shed light on the violence of his mother. This

thread is picked up again many years later by Gillian Mears in her Australian Gothic

novel Foal’s Bread. Foal’s Bread follows the life of Noah Nancarrow, horse jumper,

alcoholic, and mother of two, one of whom has Down syndrome. Mears uses the birth

of Noah’s second child George (who has Down syndrome) as another in a string of

tragic occurrences. Noah believes George is penance for drowning her first child

many years before. While the representations of George and Johnny are anything but

attractive, the Gothic genre provides spaces, both physical and metaphorical, where

characters with Down syndrome are not contained entirely by their disability.

However, even though they are given more freedom in this Gothic space, the

characters still have some monstrousness. Being impaired, dangerous or grisly is the

currency of how Gothic characters belong. This dichotomy creates space for the

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character with an intellectual disability in the Gothic novel that is difficult to unpack,

because while the character with Down syndrome may have to take on monstrous

qualities in order to exist within the Gothic narrative, the Gothic provides narrative

freedoms, uncommon in other genres of fiction, that work against predetermined

social power structures. Ruth Bienstock Anolik examines these themes of differentiation and subversion in a multi-authored collection of essays, Demons of the

Body and Mind: Essays on Disability in Gothic Literature (2010).

While Demons of the Body and Mind contains a broad and diverse portrait of madness, disability and intellectual otherness that infrequently includes Down syndrome, the collection seeks to position a thematic union between Gothic literature and disability as crucial to the understanding, development and re-evaluation of the boundaries around disability. In beginning to understand how representations of intellectual disability and Gothic literature come together in Australia, it becomes crucial to understand the landscape of Gothic literary theory. Gerry Turcotte has written numerous academic papers on the Australian Gothic mode and many are referenced throughout this thesis, particularly his collection Peripheral Fear:

Transformations of the Gothic in Canadian and Australian Fiction (2009).

Peripheral Fear focuses on the Gothic mode as it exists outside of Europe and

America and although much of the debate included in Peripheral Fear regarding

Australia as an acceptable Gothic landscape is now no longer contested, it remains an important collection as it forms a strong foundation beneath understandings of colonial and postcolonial Gothic literature. This foundation supports theoretical texts used throughout this thesis such as Postcolonial Fiction and Disability by Clare

Barker (2011), which discusses the evolution of depictions of disability (both 13

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

intellectual and physical) in the postcolonial era, as well as research looking at

representations of disability outside of literature such as Isolation and

Companionship: Disability in Australian (Post) Colonial Cinema by Katie Ellis

(2007). Further theoretical disability texts referenced throughout this thesis include

Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependency of Discourse where David

Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (2000) discuss disability as a vehicle for narrative

discord, and Disability and Modern Fiction by Alice Hall (2012) where Hall suggests

that disability is one of the great underused themes in literature. Other important texts

in the area of disability narrative studies include Enforcing Normalcy by Lennard

Davis (1995), and, particularly in relation to this research, Shelley Tremain’s

Foucault and the Government of Disability which discusses the power imbalances in

how disability is viewed, discussed and managed. The voices of people with Down

syndrome themselves are largely not heard and this is reflected in how narratives

including Down syndrome function. In her book Greater Expectations: Living with

Down syndrome in the 21st Century (2010) historian Jan Gothard seeks to contribute

to this disparity.

Greater Expectations: Living with Down syndrome in the 21st Century

combines lived experiences of interviews with parents and people with Down

syndrome collected over ten years, contextualised by social research and current

medical data. The book focuses on more than 60 interviews from between 1996 and

2010 conducted, by Gothard, in Western Australia. A third of these interviews were

with people with Down syndrome and included many of them (certainly many of their

stories) in her book, which, as the title suggests, seeks to expand the expectations of

those living with Down syndrome to create a more balanced outlook:

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

With this book Jan Gothard makes an important contribution to the literature on Down syndrome and on disability in general in the twenty- first century. The personal and autobiographical stories are set against a comprehensive account of the broader social and historical context of Down syndrome and of disability generally (Stanley in Gothard 2011, 13).

Like Greater Expectations there are numerous texts within disability studies that

utilise interviews and memoir in order to capture the truth of lived experiences with

Down syndrome such as Lives Touched by Down syndrome by Melanie Miner (2006),

Windows Into Heaven – Stories Celebrating Down syndrome by Stacy and Michelle

Tetschner (2008) Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome

Enrich Their Lives (2007) and Gifts 2: How People With Down Syndrome Enrich the

World (2009) edited by Katherine Lynard Soper. Each of these books contains

collections of positive themed memoirs from parents, grandparents, siblings, friends,

doctors and educators relating lived experiences with Down syndrome. Both Gifts and

Gifts 2 argue for a change in understanding Down syndrome, and the need to include people with Down syndrome into mainstream society. However, the argument presented in texts like Gifts is largely one sided. Unlike Gothard who articulates her own bias, and even questions her ability to translate the spoken stories of people with

Down syndrome, the stories in Gifts are recounted by mothers, and seek to promote

“awareness, understanding and appreciation of people with Down syndrome”

(Foreward in Soper 2007). This begs the question: should people with Down syndrome simply be “appreciated” and why does most writing about Down syndrome

(certainly memoir, autobiography and most Down Syndrome novels) seek to promote inclusion through angelic representations of Down syndrome? Shouldn’t a less than perfect person/character with Down syndrome also be afforded the same inclusion of individuality? 15

Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

As discussed in this review of literature, representations of Down syndrome

and intellectual disability are not absent from fiction writing. There are dozens of characters throughout the history of fiction with both intellectual difference and Down

syndrome specifically including Brenda Kay in Jewel by Brett Lott (1991), Phoebe in

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (2005), George from Foal’s Bread

by Gillian Mears (2011), Tom Campion from Water Under Water by Peter Rix (2011)

and Benjamin Compson from William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury ([1929]

1995). However, these representations are often either unmistakably negative or, as is more common, contain negative connotations beneath the “positive” images. The pervasive “angel unaware” as she is presented in Dale Evan’s fictionalised memoir is

powerful because of the first person voice of Robin spoken from heaven, and

dangerous because this voice has been appropriated. The child is not generating her

own knowledge or telling her own story – her mother is – so despite being a touching

narrative, it is a dangerous representation because the appropriation disappears

beneath the author’s obviously affectionate intentions. Angel Unaware is not about

Robin at all; it is an exercise in parental grief. In fact, many Down Syndrome novels are not really about Down syndrome. Down syndrome is used to reach some narrative extremity and therefore the character with Down syndrome often disappears beneath narrative intentions that use them, but do not really include them. Furthermore, these

same characters are trapped within the expectations of their disability and defined by

these limits, but in order to push new frontiers for the character with Down syndrome, a practitioner must first unpack the recycled and borrowed images, which largely make up the literary foundations beneath Down syndrome. As outlined throughout this Literature Review, the angel, hero, monster and victim are limiting polarisations

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

that I attempt to navigate my novel Sing Fox to Me around using the strict narrative conventions of the Australian Gothic mode, first person narration, and a belief that the character with Down syndrome should not be included in the narrative because they are angelic, but because they are part of the story.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This opening calls for communication across disciplines but also emphasises the complexity of literary texts and their potential to deepen our understanding (Hall 2012, 7).

Within literary theory few researchers have addressed the gap between the autonomy

of a character’s voice and the choices made in the construction of the narrative. My research seeks to illuminate the gap between experience and representation and has, as its interpretative paradigm, an interdisciplinary approach to investigation

combining close reading textual analysis with literary and disability theory. This

interdisciplinary approach allows me to interrogate my own processes in the writing

of my novel Sing Fox to Me and in combining these approaches I create a space

where I might situate my practice.

My research relies on a close reading analysis of texts within the field of

creative writing. Primary texts, as mentioned in my Literature Review, include works

of fiction including characters with Down syndrome such as The Memory Keeper’s

Daughter by Kim Edwards (2005), Jewel by Bret Lott (1991), and The Sound and the

Fury by William Faulkner ([1929] 1995). Some examples of support texts include

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Australian novels Water Under Water by Peter Rix (2010), Cloudstreet by Tim

Winton (1991) and Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (2011).

This research is not a medical text nor a deconstruction of intellectual disability. Instead it situates disability theory beneath my practice while I begin to remove (and analyse) depictions of characters with Down syndrome from the narrative scaffolding around the Down Syndrome novel. Those researching and writing within this field such as Lennard Davis, author of Enforcing Normalcy (1995), are discussed to better understand the gap between the Down Syndrome novel and the inclusion of Down syndrome within a larger narrative. However, in positioning the

Down Syndrome novel in the broader world of literature and literary theory I discuss three pre-existing types of narrative outside disability: Gothic fiction, the female trauma narrative and colonial Australian fiction. These are huge fields in themselves but I am only interested in the way these narratives engage with disability and the tropes they share, or don’t share, with the traditional Down Syndrome novel. Texts such as Post Colonial Issues in Australian Literature edited by Nathanael O’Reilly

(2010) and Trauma Narratives and Herstory (2013) edited by Sonya Andermahr and

Silvia Pellicer-Ortin are briefly addressed. My specific reasons for moving away from

the Down Syndrome novel and into the Australian Gothic is supported using several

secondary texts, including Demons of the Body and Mind: Essays on Disability in

Gothic Literature edited by Ruth Bienstock Anolik, and Gerry Turcotte’s numerous

academic papers on the Australian Gothic mode. These texts are examined to better understand the limitations and freedoms of the Gothic space and position the Down

Syndrome novel as sharing distinct and important similarities of oppression with

Gothic colonial texts.

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A key question discussed throughout this thesis will be: why does the Down

Syndrome novel favour the narrative voice of the mother and caregiver, as opposed to

first person narration from the character with Down syndrome? Secondary theoretical texts include Postcolonial Fiction and Disability by Clare Barker (2011), which discusses the evolution of depictions of disability (both intellectual and physical) in the postcolonial era. Other texts such as Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the

Dependency of Discourse where David Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (2000) discuss

disability as a vehicle for narrative discord, and Disability and Modern Fiction by

Alice Hall (2012) where Hall suggests that disability is one of the great underused themes in literature.

When dissecting overarching arguments, such as the depiction and inclusion of characters within mainstream fiction writing, it is reasonable to include and discuss themes outside strict literary analysis in order to further understand the power relationships and struggles within the landscape of the narrative. Michel Foucault’s work on power is included in this exegesis as a vehicle to question the power relationships common to the Down Syndrome novel, built around the author’s choice in narrative point-of-view. However, the focus on Foucault is through the lens of disability theory.

Ought we not to remind ourselves- we who believe ourselves bound to a finitude which belongs only to us, and which opens up the truth of the world to us by means of our cognition- ought we not to remind ourselves that we are bound to the back of a tiger? (Foucault 1979, 322).

While the focus of this project remains always on depictions of Down syndrome in narrative fiction I also briefly reference medical research concerning Down syndrome specifically. As a practitioner, these texts provide an understanding of the experience

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

and voice constraints of my narrator. Other sources include medial/social journal articles such as Parental Vocalizations and Perceived Immaturity in Down Syndrome where author Deborah Fidler (2003) discusses the parent as both viewer and constructer of their child’s experience (using language and the delivery of language as evidence), and Greater Expectations: Living with Down syndrome in the 20th Century where researcher Jan Gothard combines the lived experiences of over a decade of interviews of parents and people with Down syndrome, contextualised by medical and social analysis.

In merging these frameworks, textual analysis, literary and disability theory, I create a structure capable of supporting a new space for discourse relating to the role of intellectual disability in narrative fiction and a flexible model for enquiry that can be used by other practitioners: “This opening calls for communication across disciplines but also emphasizes the complexity of literary texts and their potential to deepen our understanding” (Hall 2012, 7). This cross-disciplinary approach to research produces a genuine contribution to knowledge and is the methodological framework from which I approach this research.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Sing Fox to Me A novel

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

“Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night.”

William Blake

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Prologue.

Running. I am running. Tail high, and straight. A long striped back, and nose down. Running, and smelling, and finding through mist, and smoke. On my knees the skin is frayed like I am unraveling and soon I will be everywhere. My hands are bleeding because inside the tiger’s mouth is sharp and hot. It smells of old death. ‘Where’re you taking me?’ I ask, but the question catches in my throat and the tiger doesn’t answer. Then there is the smell of damp and canopy and matted fur and skinless bones, and each scent is tangled up and around the other. The musty, dead smell of the tiger’s skin disappears and I have left clothes and books and beds with sheets. A grunt and shrug, and the mouth closes in around my flesh. My body flexes, shudders in. Behind me the forest burns. They will all blame me. I, who am endangered. I, who am myth. A lost story. Fur tendrils creep along my skin. One by one bone teeth close around my jaw. The tiger’s mouth is my mouth now. Together we whisper to the bush to hide us from the men. Legs shrink to fill the skin. Four feet are running. Running. I am running and I am no longer skin. No longer fox, or boy. Samson, I think for the last time because I am no longer brother.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

“I sing The Fox Came Out On a Chilly Night And Bobby, my favourite Mongoloid sings Fox to me.”

December 12th by Anne Sexton

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

1.

Jonah had been holding the front door open for his mother for almost ten minutes, glaring at the cement footpath as if daring it to take him somewhere. ‘Are you ready?’ he shouted. The hallway caught his voice and split it into tiny slivers. His mum probably wouldn’t notice. ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘Let’s go.’ ‘Where’s your basket?’ She stopped, said something quietly under her breath that might have been a swearword and walked back down the hallway to her bedroom. ‘Hurry up.’ They were supposed to be at Woolies first thing but she always took so long to do anything. The good boxes always went quick. Especially on the weekend. ‘Found it,’ she said. Then her voice drifted. ‘Now, where are-’ ‘Here,’ said Jonah and he handed her the car keys. ‘What am I going to do without you,’ she said. Her voice sounded all hyper like she was trying too hard or something. It wasn’t really a question so Jonah didn’t answer. ‘Aren’t you excited?’ ‘About what?’ ‘Moving.’ Jonah shrugged and wondered if he’d get a room of his own or if it would be another Samson share. ‘This will be the last one for a while,’ said his mother. ‘I’ll have to find a new friend to come along and help me. It’ll be like a nice holiday, won’t it?’ ‘Sure,’ said Jonah. ‘Can we go now?’

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Outside my house the sky is a mix of dark and blue and this means it will rain. The rest of our cardboard boxes are still on the lawn. I tell mum and she says it won’t rain. The dark clouds are through the sky and from inside my room where you can only see a slip of sky I can see it turning black. ‘Storms,’ I say to my mum and she says, ‘It won’t rain.’ I used to be afraid of clouds but my mum says clouds are just water, just water she says, but I don't think that’s right because each cloud is made of lots of different drops. Sometimes when the rain falls from the clouds I run underneath and catch some in my hands and on my tongue. I close my eyes, and open my mouth, and inside the water collects and turns into rivers. Sometimes I look at the rain on the ground and it is very different to when it is flying through the sky. I keep a rock to remember every storm and sometimes the rock is wet and that means the storm is inside. Jonah says we named the clouds when we were naming the stars, and by ‘we’ he means more than just brothers. Jonah says, ‘clouds are different to stars and so are their names.’ He says, ‘clouds were named for types because they dissipate so quickly.’ Dissipate, and I ask him if that is like dying? ‘Clouds don’t die,’ Jonah says, ‘they just vanish. They don’t stay still long enough to give real names.’ ‘Clouds are just water, love,’ says my mum. ‘Water held in the sky by atmosphere.’ But each cloud is different, I sign, and each drop is different too. My mum does not understand me. Because what I really mean is that the things Jonah knows about clouds and books and stories and science, I cannot keep trapped inside my brain but what I know is like a storm caught inside rocks. Dissipate sounds like dying and I miss my dad.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Jonah watched his mother drop the wire stock horse into a box on top of his brother’s rock collection. ‘You’re going to snap the heads off,’ he said. ‘They’re iron,’ said his mother. She tucked a flannelette shirt in around the top of everything, and closed the box. They weren’t all iron, which showed what she knew. Some were iron, like the Mustang, but some were carved from wood. The mare and colt were glass. Technically they counted as one because even though they were made from different glass they were mounted on the same stand and looking into each other’s eyes. The stock horse was woven from wire and it was like there was no skin and Jonah could see inside to the bones and muscles. Wire wasn’t iron. ‘Move over.’ Jonah lifted the box away from his mother and dragged it behind the couch. He lifted the shirt out from inside the box and pressed it into his face. It smelt like their father. Jonah didn’t smell like that yet. Sometimes he wondered if he was too small to smell like his dad. ‘God,’ shrieked his mother, ‘Look at the dust bunnies under here.’ Jonah ignored her and threw the shirt over the back of an armchair. His snakeskin was underneath. It was crushed. ‘Mum,’ he said. She was such an idiot sometimes. ‘I said not to pack my skin.’ ‘Pardon, darling?’ Jonah slipped the snakeskin out from beneath the stock horse. ‘Oh honestly,’ she said, ‘it’s disgusting.’ He found it in the “out-of-bounds” oval beneath a mound of pine needles and knew exactly what it was. A thin, empty snakeskin that shivered in the breeze like a silver flag. Jonah rolled it up carefully and hid it in the pocket of his school shorts.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

Later, when the boys were making fun of him, Jonah put his finger inside his pocket and felt the scales. He didn’t care what they called him that day.

When I am little, my dad explains the chapters in a book and sentences in a book. ‘It’s like this Samson,’ he says because he always starts his explaining like he is a teacher and this means I am meant to listen. Sentences are shorter and chapters are longer and I know them like I know the difference between a snack and dinner, or a disagreement and fighting. ‘Why are you fighting?’ I ask with my voice because dad doesn’t understand my hands. ‘Everyone fights sometimes.’ ‘I don’t fight anyone.’ My dad smiles and it is a sad smile and I am not sure why. ‘That’s right, mate, not you.’

Jonah had eight horses and even though he was proud of his collection he never took them to school. Not even for show and tell. The other kids were jerks. Jonah didn’t include the colt because it was connected to the mare. He counted them as one. She and the foal were expensive and after he paid for them Jonah felt nervous until a week later when he got his pocket money again. He didn’t want to miss out on an Arab or a Brumby. He’d never seen a statue of a Brumby but he looked every time his mother took him to an antique shop.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

That was where Jonah found the Mustang. He saw one leg poking out from beneath a pile of material and lifted it out by its flank. The leg was muscular and taut. The detail was amazing. Even the hoof was shod. ‘I’m getting this,’ he said to his mother. ‘Fine, darling,’ she said without turning around. Jonah took the horse to the man behind the counter and held out three ten- dollar notes. ‘Hang on mate, got to scan the price tag,’ said the man. Jonah passed the Mustang to him and waited. ‘Would you look at this,’ said the man as he turned the horse over in his hand. ‘It’s a fine one too. You like horses?’ ‘I like that one,’ Jonah answered and he felt his ears flush. He wondered if they would turn red. ‘It’s a beauty, for sure. Nice metal work. Good eyes. Twenty-seven thanks, mate.’ Jonah dropped his money into the man’s open hand and waited. ‘You know much about the Mustang?’ ‘A bit.’ ‘Its original name,’ said the man, ‘means an animal that strays.’ Jonah nodded. ‘Reckon whoever named it never came to Queensland, but. Was on Fraser over Easter. Never see them, but they’re there all right. Talk about straying,’ said the man and he turned the horse over in his hand again. ‘This puts me in mind though. Had one like this when I was younger, not a Mustang. Nah, mine was just some old nag. Went from one old nag to another.’ The man laughed but Jonah didn’t. ‘Never mind, mate,’ he said, ‘you’ll get that when you’re older.’ ‘My mother’s waiting,’ Jonah answered. ‘Here you go,’ said the man and he handed Jonah the horse. ‘Don’t want to keep your old nag waiting.’ The man laughed and turned back towards the register to write out a receipt. While his back was turned Jonah slipped outside to where he agreed to meet his

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

mother. He held the Mustang up to the light. The horse was dark grey and striped where the maker obviously used a chisel. It had long stiff limbs, dark eyes and a slightly open mouth and Jonah could see teeth. ‘What a beautiful pony,’ said a woman from behind him. ‘Is it a gift from your father?’ Jonah dropped the horse into his jacket pocket. ‘You don’t have to worry. I won’t tell,’ said the woman and she smiled. ‘Did you know that I’m a friend of your father?’ Jonah didn’t recognise her. ‘How do you know him?’ he asked. ‘We teach together,’ she said. Her lips were the colour of plums. ‘I’m waiting for my mother.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Okay. It was lovely to meet you, Jonah.’ The woman almost bumped into his mother. She was carrying an enormous basket of material. Jonah felt his ears burn. She was so embarrassing. ‘Pardon me.’ ‘That’s fine,’ said his mother. She giggled. Jonah hated her giggle. ‘Ready to go?’ The woman moved around his mother awkwardly and into the shop. ‘What were you talking to her about?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Jonah. His fingers wandered over the cool iron body in his pocket. ‘Nothing,’ he lied. ‘Look at this cloth,’ she said as she dragged a soiled sheet from inside her basket. ‘I think a sprig or two of wattle around the edge might be nice. Might even cover up some of the marks.’ Jonah didn’t take the Mustang out of his pocket until he was alone in the room he shared with Samson. The man at the antique shop was right about the Mustang’s eyes. No matter how close he held the Mustang to his face, the eyes never connected with his. He loved the proud way it held its front hoof up, bending the leg at the knee, almost as if the foot was about to be brought down on another horse’s neck.

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Sometimes he would lay the mare down beneath the Mustang’s hoof and imagine him trampling her to death while the foal looked on.

Mum always says, you are not Jonah and he is not you. ‘Why?’ I ask because we are born together and wrapped around each other. ‘Because you are different people,’ my mum says and we are different outside because I am big and my brother is small, and inside where we keep our favourite stories. Even though we are born together and wrapped around each other they are not the same. My brother’s favourite is when Shere Khan is dead in The Jungle Book and Mowgli dances on his skin. He likes it, he says, because it is a prophecy. What is a prophecy? I sign, and the sign for prophecy is two fingers diving down together beneath a flat hand. ‘Don’t do that,’ says Jonah. Sign language is not inside his hands. ‘What is a prophecy?’ I ask with my voice. The word “prophecy” is difficult. I start it twice. My brother says there are always two packs and everyone must choose. I choose outside.

‘I just don’t know why you packed mine in with his,’ said Jonah as he removed another of Samson’s rock jars from his packing box. ‘Give it a rest, darling.’ ‘They’re rocks.’

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‘Don’t forget to pack your books.’ ‘I’ll just dump them all over Samson’s stuff.’ ‘Pardon darling?’ He leant around the side of the couch so that his mother could see him from the kitchen and raised his voice. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Stop mumbling,’ said his mother. ‘Why do boys always mumble?’ When he was sure his mother wasn’t looking Jonah unwrapped his brother’s rock collection and folded the newspaper and bubble wrap in around his horses instead. He opened one of Samson’s jars. It smelt of salt and bitumen. Samson’s rocks weren’t special like quartz or something interesting like slate. They were just rocks. Some still had blobs of hardened bitumen stuck to them. Once when they were walking home from school Jonah asked Samson why he kept them but all Samson said was ‘for remembering’. ‘Remembering what?’ Samson didn’t answer. Instead he dropped his latest boring looking rock into his pocket and kept walking. The day after their father left, Samson said his rock collection was called a pod and Jonah laughed at him. ‘That’s for whales, and dolphins. Not for rocks.’ ‘It’s also for whales as rock,’ said Samson, and using his huge hands he swam two of his larger rocks through the space between them. Jonah swatted him away and wondered if his model horses were a herd, or whether he could call them a string. A string was only used for racehorses. Samson pushed their parent’s bedroom open with the rock still in his hand and looked inside. ‘Dad left quick.’ ‘I looked it up,’ said Jonah, ‘a group of rocks is called a pile, not a pod.’ Samson moved from beside him and sat down on the floor at the center of the room. He crossed his legs and Jonah thought he looked ridiculous, like a huge oblivious baby. ‘Did you hear what I said?’ ‘I heard.’

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

‘A pod is not a pile,’ Jonah said slowly, as if each syllable suddenly became too large to fit inside his mouth. Jonah knew he couldn’t use the name for Samson’s group. Samson ignored him. ‘Get up off the floor, Flops,’ said Jonah, using the forbidden nickname. ‘Do not call me that please,’ said Samson. He stood up. ‘Where are you going?’ Samson left and Jonah finished wrapping the horses. He taped the box closed. With a black marker he wrote Jonah’s Room on the top and while his mother was still busy in the kitchen he rolled Samson’s jars under the couch.

Outside in our yard there are red flowering trees and my mum says these are called flame trees and I ask her why and she says it is because they burst into red at the start of summer. ‘What happens after summer,’ I ask with my voice and my hands. ‘They burn out,’ she says. From the window of my dad’s office I can see the flame trees smoldering because the sun is almost gone and every night the flame trees burn out. My mum has used up all the boxes and even though they are for me and for Jonah, she has packed away some of her things as well. ‘Why?’ I ask her. She doesn’t say anything. Outside I watch my brother walking around beneath the trees and around them. He whips the leaves with his hands and runs around the trunk of the flame tree so fast it is like his feet are going to cut the tree right out of the ground. When he is finally tired and red in his face and his chest is going up and down Jonah stops. He rests his face against the tree and closes his eyes and it is like he is trying to disappear into the bark.

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The neighbors on both sides of their house were out in their yards. Jonah could smell the barbeques cooking and hear the hiss of oil and meat. On both sides kids were running and laughing and thumping plastic toys together. He hated living this close to everyone. Jonah wanted privacy. He wanted trees and mountains and places to tuck himself away for a few precious hours where he couldn’t be found and wouldn’t be teased or disturbed. Nothing was going right. ‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ said his mother. He didn’t answer. ‘Jonah,’ she said, ‘I know why you’re upset and I’m sorry. We can’t afford to send Samson anywhere else.’ ‘Why? How much did dad take?’ ‘It’s not that he took anything, darling. All our money is tied up at the moment.’ ‘But you promised.’ ‘I didn’t promise, I agreed.’ ‘You said I could go, just me.’ His mother sighed. ‘Think of me too, darling. I need some time away as well. Sammy is a lot of work. I think he’ll like Tasmania, and Clancy too.’ Their father used to tell them stories about their granddad Clancy. There was the story about him cutting down a huge tree with only one hand, and the stories about bees and brumbies and a house concealed in the bush. ‘The place where I’m from,’ his dad told them, ‘has lots of wild animals.’ ‘What sort?’ asked Samson. Their father smiled. ‘The devil, and the tiger.’ ‘Come on, Dad, there are no tigers in Australia,’ said Jonah.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

‘There used to be.’ ‘What were they like?’ asked Samson. ‘They’re like long, lean, tiger-dogs. Your granddad has a skin mounted on his wall.’ ‘Whatever, Dad.’ ‘Do they bite?’ asked Samson. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said his dad. ‘They’re extinct.’ ‘What does extinct mean?’ ‘It means we killed them.’ ‘But, Clancy has one on his wall?’ asked Jonah. He imagined the tiger hanging flat against the wooden wall of his granddad’s house plotting an escape. ‘That’s right. I reckon it’d be getting a bit rough looking these days.’ ‘Did they eat horses?’ Jonah asked. ‘No. Well, maybe. Not any that my pa or dad ever had.’ ‘Where do his horses come from?’ ‘Wild once. He breaks them for breeders. The old man loves the breaking.’ ‘What did he do before that?’ ‘Logging mostly. Poles towards the end. The horses are a bit of a hobby but there’s a big market for it.’ Jonah listened to his father tell them about how the wildness shouldn’t be trained out of a thing, that it was unethical and Samson asked what that meant. His father said the way the bush was trampled and destroyed by introduced species was a travesty and Samson asked what that meant too. ‘That means we are the introduced species, son,’ said their dad. ‘Try telling the old man that though, and you’ll get your block knocked off.’ ‘Does he make lots of money?’ asked Jonah. ‘I tell you what boys, the bloke who can convince a punter that he’s an Australian from the old days will always earn a bob or two more for sure,’ said their dad and he took a sip from his wine glass. ‘Mind you, the old man would hate to know that. No better horseman ever held the reins. He should’ve stuck to logging. Driving himself crazy up there.’

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

‘But the horses will be broken,’ said Samson. ‘Why do they want them broken, Dad?’ ‘They never really are, Sam. They just don’t buck you when you try to ride them, and we think that’s tame but the wild is never tamed out. It just waits. Sometimes it waits a long time.’ Jonah’s father ruffled Samson’s hair in a way he never did to him. ‘I could,’ said Jonah. ‘I could train it out. I’m going to break horses as a job.’ His dad smiled. ‘Is that right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘It’s rough work. I’d leave the breaking to bigger blokes, mate.’ Jonah knew he meant Samson. He knew his father meant Samson was bigger and stronger, and that he smelled like a man already. ‘But you’re not that big and you did.’ ‘Clancy is,’ said his dad. That night Jonah lay in bed listening to Samson snoring through the partition. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

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2.

‘I want to go,’ Jonah said into the darkness of his mother’s room. Her body stirred beneath the blankets. She half sat up. Her face was red and her eyes looked puffy. ‘Not now, Jonah. I’m tired.’ ‘I can still do Year 10,’ he said. ‘Even if I’m not here.’ ‘What will you do?’ ‘You need rest.’ ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said and then she disappeared beneath the waves of her bed. ‘Shut the door,’ she said. He did. Two days later she got out of bed and Jonah asked her again, she said yes, and called Clancy to arrange the details. Jonah sat at the table and waited. Samson was pretending to arrange his rocks on the floor. ‘It’s Alice… Alice. I’m calling about the boys.’ Boys? Jonah clenched his fist beneath the table. ‘They can come this week or next. Early next,’ his mother answered. ‘Are you going?’ asked Jonah and Samson shook his head without looking up. ‘They’re teenagers, they can mostly look after themselves.’ ‘Did mum say where?’ he asked. ‘I don’t remember,’ said Samson but ‘remember’ sounded more like ‘amember’ because of his lazy tongue. ‘I can. Wait on-’ Their mother’s face appeared from around the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. The phone was still pressed against her ear. ‘Can you be ready by the start of next week?’ Jonah nodded.

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‘How about the end of next week? …Okay. Good… All right, bye.’ She hung up the phone. ‘You can’t come,’ he said. Samson didn’t look up from his rocks. ‘Mum says.’ ‘You still can’t,’ said Jonah. ‘But mum says,’ said Samson again, but this time he signed something with his hands. Jonah didn’t know sign language. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. Samson gave him the finger. ‘Don’t do that,’ said their mother. She swatted Samson’s hand. Samson mumbled something under his breath. Jonah liked it when he was in trouble. ‘Would you like something to eat?’ she asked. Jonah shook his head. ‘You sure?’ ‘Me please,’ said Samson. Jonah pushed past his mother. Outside there were dozens of packing boxes and rolls of bubble wrap. More than they would ever need. His mother always overdid this sort of thing. Jonah knew they were never coming back to this house, no matter what she said.

My mum remembers Tasmania and our granddad, and she says they are the same. She says Clancy’s beard is like a wooly mountain, and the real mountain is behind him and behind his house, but the house is also sitting on the side of the mountain, which is also like his beard. I ask what that means and how it is possible to be inside and behind at the same time, and my mum says it is not like that. She says it is more like a mother holding a baby on her hip. She says Clancy’s eyes are pale blue, like Jonah’s, and also like icy water. Are there kangaroos and wallabies? I ask with my hands.

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Sing Fox to Me: An Investigation into the “use” of Down syndrome in both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel.

My mum smiles. ‘Sure,’ she says and she forgets to ask me to use words. ‘There are kangaroos in his beard, and wallabies sipping at the pools of icy water.’ I smile but it takes me a minute to understand. ‘He has a limp,’ she says. What was his smell? She thinks for a bit. ‘Like trees, and beer.’ I scrunch up my nose. ‘Yuck,’ I say with my voice and my face is also like the sign for yuck. ‘I remember the house pretty well,’ says my mum, ‘and the tiger skin. Your dad showed it to me.’ Was it big? ‘No, but it was long and the tail was pointy.’ Did it growl? ‘It’s not alive. Just a skin.’ ‘Can I ask dad about it?’ Mum touches my face. I close my eyes. ‘Your dad doesn’t like to talk about all that.’ Okay Mum, I say with my hands and because my mum doesn’t know much sign language it probably just looks like nodding.

Jonah whipped the flowers on his mother’s lavender bush with a dead branch. Swoosh, and purple arrowheads jumped into the air. Swoosh again, and they exploded into purple confetti. ‘Why’re you out here?’ said his mother behind him. ‘It’s going to rain.’ Jonah whipped the bush again. Purple sprayed into the air. ‘Don’t do that, darling.’ ‘What if he hates us?’ said Jonah and he meant, what if Clancy hated Samson.

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‘He’s your granddad, he won’t hate you.’ ‘I hate us.’ His mother put her arm around his shoulder. ‘I need some time for me.’ ‘Why does he have to come?’ ‘The business with that woman really shook him.’ His mother said “that woman” as if the words were made of salt and she was thirsty. ‘Dad said he has horses.’ ‘Who? Oh, Clancy. Yes, yes I suppose he does. Mind you, I think he’s scaled back quite a bit.’ ‘Will he let me help?’ ‘I’m sure he will,’ said his mother but something in her eyes made Jonah think she meant the opposite. ‘I don’t want to just ride them.’ His mother smiled. ‘Just tell him you don’t want any jokes about your height.’ ‘Why didn’t dad stay?’ His mother looked away. ‘Tasmania,’ he said quickly. ‘In Tasmania.’ ‘Your father left for lots of reasons. He and your granddad disagreed a lot. He wanted to be by the ocean.’ ‘Doesn’t Clancy like you?’ ‘Not then, no. He thought I was… oh what’s the word? I’m not sure, now. I suppose he thought that my family had too much money. I don’t think he thought I was a very good mother.’ ‘Are you?’ His mother dropped her arm from about his shoulders and walked back into the house. She closed the screen door behind her and Jonah watched as she filled the kettle and turned on the stove. ‘Come in, darling. It’s getting cold, and bring those in, would you.’ Jonah collected the packing boxes and stacked them just inside the door. ‘You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old…’ Jonah followed his brother’s voice to Samson’s open window. He was reading out loud.

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‘Or your head will be sunk by your heels.’ Samson was reading from The Jungle Book. ‘Hey.’ ‘Dad said I could,’ said Samson but he snapped the book shut. ‘It was in my room.’ Samson shrugged. ‘I am reading.’ ‘Give it back,’ said Jonah. Samson shrugged and opened the book again. ‘You can listen.’ Jonah wasn’t allowed to snatch or shout or tell his brother to fuck off. He didn’t want to listen to Samson stumbling over the words like shallow water over stones. He closed the window and thought of Clancy, and his horses. Jonah lined them up in front of him. He imagined a Brumby, tall and proud and wild, with an unshod hoof lifted high. He imagined Samson, small and scrawny and bending down to collect a pebble from the ground. Samson didn’t see the Brumby rear back and he didn’t see the hoof come down. But he felt it, Jonah imagined, he felt it for sure.

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3.

Jonah says I am going away. He says he is going away too, but they are different, he says, because we are not going together. It will be the first time we have lived apart. I say with my voice, ‘Mum, please can I go with Jonah?’ ‘I think he wants some time on his own,’ she says. Her face is red and her eyes are red and she has been crying. ‘Please, Mum,’ I say again. ‘Who will look after me?’ ‘You will,’ says my mum. ‘Mum, please,’ I say with my voice and I put my hands together and make a sad face. My sad face always works. ‘No, Sam,’ says my mum and this time she is irritated and so she says, ‘it will be like school, Sammy. Just like going to different schools.’ Jonah is part of regular school and my school is next door and is also a special school. With my hands I tell my mum that I miss Jonah when I am at school and from my classroom I can see his classroom. ‘Where am I going?’ I say with my voice because Jonah doesn’t want to learn sign language. ‘Sydney.’ ‘What about you?’ ‘I don’t need to.’ Sydney is where mum and dad fell into love, I sign. It might be like that for me. Maybe I would be near their house. ‘It’s nowhere near the assisted living place,’ says Jonah. One and then another of Jonah’s things disappear into boxes. He is smiling all the time. Then my mum says, ‘would you like to stay with your granddad, Sammy?’

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‘What about Sydney?’ I ask with my voice. ‘I’m not sure that’s the best place for you anymore,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t you rather go to the country?’ I don’t want to go anywhere away from Lucy and so I say, ‘not really.’ My mum’s face turns from soft to hard. ‘I was trying to make you feel included but it’s not your decision.’ She says ‘not your decision’ very slow and loud. I don’t know what my mum means because Lucy is nowhere in the process and so neither am I because we are like the salt and pepper shakers in my mum’s kitchen and she won’t pack us together. ‘There’s no more special school,’ my mum says even though I have four more years left and Lucy has three. Sometimes it’s hard for her to get a seat on the bus and sometimes me too, and so I talk loud and close to people sitting. They always move and sometimes the seat is for Lucy and sometimes for me. Mum says it is, ‘time to grow into a man’, but I am only fifteen and I am scared and so I think of Lucy and her soft skin and hair, and it is straight, like mine. ‘Unusually straight’ said her mum once and she thought Lucy and I were not listening, even though we were at the table with her. ‘She means “unnaturally” straight,’ says Jonah later and he also says ‘weird.; I think of Lucy and she makes me feel warm, even though my mum says she is not in the same kind of love as me. ‘She isn’t as high functioning, darling.’ ‘High?’ I ask with my voice and I imagine myself flying with my wings opening out into the deeper spaces. I don’t think that’s right, I sign. ‘I know you want friends who are closer to you, sweetie, but we don’t always find friends that fit with us, not right away.’ Lucy fits, I sign with my hands. Her hand fits inside of mine perfect. My mum makes a tired sound. ‘She can barely speak, Sam.’ She signs, I say. Her tongue is just loose. ‘What are you going to do when you need someone to talk to?’ We talk with our bodies, Mum. She presses her hands down into the table and says that she won’t talk about it anymore and the word ‘won’t’ stands out and sits heavy in her voice. After, my mum

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visits my teacher and Lucy isn’t allowed to be with me at school unsupervised anymore. So I write this word ‘unsupervised’ on the list of words I don’t like and I pick up a rock from the parking lot at school and it is for Lucy and so I put it in the Lucy jar. My list is short because there are not many things that I don’t like. So far my list is unsupervised, functioning and blue. I write down ‘assisted’ and under that I also write ‘Sydney’ and ‘J…O…N…’ but I stop and I do not finish.

‘Joey, the last of your washing’s on my bed,’ said his mother from the hall. He hated it when she called him Joey. ‘Don’t forget.’ Jonah walked down the hall towards his parent’s room, past his father’s office door. The bookshelves were empty and Jonah imagined the hard spines of his father’s books being lifted down from the shelf and dropped into a box. It was like everything was still waiting for him to come back. Even his half empty coffee cup was still waiting for him on the barbeque table outside. He left it the morning before he went away and every day since, after breakfast, Samson inspected the brown liquid as if it were a wounded bird that might have died in the night. ‘Isn’t it time to throw it out?’ their mother asked. ‘Soon,’ said Samson, ‘but not yet.’ Only Jonah seemed to realise that the cup was still there because their father didn’t give a shit about it. He threw it into the bin and Samson cried. Jonah walked in to his parent’s room to collect his clothes. It was like he never lived there. As if he never kept a cup of pens beside his bed, or left hair shorn from his chin in the kitchen sink, or kept his leather satchel outside the door of their bedroom ready to collect in the morning on his way out. Now

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the room was decorated with his mother’s stuff. Useless stuff. Stuff she collected and thought she would be able to fix, but never did. Their dad moved out of their bedroom and into his office months before he officially moved out. He slept on the foldout surrounded by musty books and half empty biros. Every morning he quietly rolled the bed back up and smoked his first cigarette of the day “secretly” while having a shower. ‘It’s easier for me to work late at night,’ he told Samson when he asked him why he was sleeping in his office. ‘That way I don’t disturb your mother.’ Jonah collected his washing from the bed. It was neatly folded and smelt like sun and chemicals. ‘Did you get your washing?’ asked his mother from behind him. Jonah shrugged and moved out of his mother’s way.

I ask my mum, ‘how did you love dad?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘How did you love him?’ ‘Repeating yourself doesn’t make it any clearer, darling.’ ‘Did you love him with your bodies?’ ‘Yes, we loved each other with our bodies.’ ‘In sex.’ ‘Yes, Sammy, with sex.’ ‘Lucy’s mum says sex is only for inside bedrooms.’ ‘Lucy’s mother shouldn’t be speaking to you about sex at all. That’s our job.’ My mum and dad must be doing a bad job because I do not know anything about sex except what Lucy has told me. ‘What about you and dad?’ ‘Well,’ says my mum and her voice is like a wave as it comes up but before it crashes down again. ‘Your father is finding his fun elsewhere.’

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I think about the words ‘fun’ and ‘elsewhere’ and I find them confusing because I didn’t know about sex and fun and what is between them. And it is hard to say what I mean and I wish my signing had sounds so my mum could really understand.

Jonah dropped the stack of clean clothes onto his bed. They toppled over and a few shirts fell out of their folds. ‘Onah?’ ‘What do you want,’ he said. ‘Ee Am ere? Jonah shook his head. ‘What?’ ‘Ee Sah-am ere,’ she said, slowly this time and with more emphasis. Jonah shrugged. ‘I don’t understand,’ he lied. Lucy looked flustered. Sometimes her big, flabby body looked almost like a woman, but her face ruined it and her pinched, tiny eyes were weird, like a pig. ‘Okay,’ said Lucy. ‘Orry.’ ‘You forgot these,’ said his mother and she dropped a stack of towels on the end of his bed. ‘Hi Lucy.’ Lucy waved slowly and smiled. Her smile was lopsided. ‘Samson’s in his room.’ ‘Okay,’ she said again. Lucy knocked. The wall shuddered with the force of her hand. Samson pulled back the edge of partition. ‘I’m not sure if your granddad will have sheets,’ said his mother. ‘I doubt it.’ ‘I’ll pack them,’ said Jonah. ‘Okay darling.’ His mother closed the door.

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Jonah could hear Samson and Lucy clapping and clicking their mouths through the partition. Why did they even bother to mouth words when they were signing? It was noisy and gross. Jonah heard Samson laugh.

In my own bed room where I have all my rocks and my own window where you can see just a little bit of the ocean, in the corner up the top, I ask Lucy what she thinks. So, he’s gone? asks Lucy and she is signing because her voice is not very clear and her tongue is fissured but neither of us really know what this means. Yep. Without a trace? she signs. Lucy likes to use words like this because she loves detectives. She says it is nice to have things solved and that she would like to be a policewoman some day. I think she would look beautiful in blue. Without a trace, I sign, even though my mum says I should not repeat things. We could try to find him. There are always clues. Clues? Lucy leans closer in towards me like she is telling me a secret and I watch her fingers. Things to help us find his where and abouts, she signs. Sometimes Lucy likes to use a word there is no sign for and so we improvise, and that is a Lucy word for pretending quickly. I don’t think he wants us to find him, I sign with my hands. We can start today. It’s raining. Lucy rolls her eyes. Rain can’t hurt you Sam, she signs. What about thunder? And this question I think and I do not sign or say out loud, because only little boys are scared of thunder and I am almost a man, mum says.

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Thunder used to make me afraid. I would hide under my bed and listen. But that was before, and now I am not afraid. I tell this to Lucy and she says she wasn’t afraid of anything but I know she is scared of rats because she was born on a farm and there were rats there and they lived in the barrels of chicken food and it was Lucy’s job to feed the chickens. When she lived on the farm with her mum and dad Lucy couldn’t speak and didn’t know sign language yet and her dad got angry because he didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand him and so he yelled at her and that was when she started to like police shows and police movies. With her hands Lucy says, I open the food for the chickens and it came out at me. What did? I ask with my hands. Rats, she signs, and the sign for ‘rat’ is like an angry little paw with two fingers stretched out and it is like the paw is trying to claw her face and almost like the sign for rat is a rat. Mum says we don’t fit in together, I sign and I can see Lucy is thinking about what she wants to say. She holds her hands up and I can see the same crease that the doctor saw on me and I can see the same small fingers but when I look at Lucy I see her eyes and I know we are different. I hold my hands and she does not look for the same things. She is not interested in my short fingers, or my crease. She presses our palms together and it feels like sparklers inside my hands. We fit, she says and this time it is only with her eyes.

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Their mother leant up against the doorframe and stared at him. She tapped her nail into the wood. Tap, tap, tap. Jonah hated when she did this, why couldn’t she just be normal. Why did everything have to be a production? She was wearing the apron she often wore when she was restoring something. ‘I really don’t like that girl. She has a bad effect on Sammy, don’t you think?’ It wasn’t really a question. His mother’s questions were never really questions. ‘I dunno.’ ‘He seems quite keen on her.’ ‘So?’ asked Jonah and it wasn’t really a question either. ‘I don’t want to raise another one,’ she said. ‘Another what?’ ‘Child.’ ‘You know they can hear you, right?’ ‘They won’t know what I mean,’ said his mother. ‘Just make sure they aren’t up to anything.’ Jonah nodded. ‘Sammy can be a bit… oh what’s the word,’ she said. Their dad said Samson was naïve. ‘What is my word, Dad?’ Jonah asked. Without looking at him his father said, ‘wily.’ Jonah looked up wily in the dictionary and the definition said “skilled at gaining an advantage.” He didn’t know if his father was trying to compliment him or insult him, but Jonah didn’t really care either way. He knew everything about everyone who lived in his house. He knew his father slept in his office, and his mother was taking anti-depressants. He knew Samson and Lucy had sex and Jonah knew his dad smoked drugs. He checked the brick at the back of the shed. The weed was gone. Later Jonah saw Samson moving the brick. ‘Find anything?’ Samson turned around quickly. ‘No.’ ‘It’s gone.’ Samson stared at the hole in the wall. ‘What was it?’

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‘It makes you sleepy.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘I tried it,’ Jonah lied. Samson walked around him, and back into their house. Inside, almost every light was on except for their mother’s bedroom where she slept for most of the day. Jonah wished she were still depressed. When she was depressed she was out of his way. ‘Remember, only two suitcases and two boxes each,’ his mother said again. ‘I don’t want to give Clancy a heart attack.’ ‘Can I have one of Samson’s?’ asked Jonah. ‘No, he can have them for whatever he wants.’ ‘Rocks?’ ‘If that’s what he wants to take.’ ‘There are rocks in Tasmania.’

Samson? asks Lucy with her hands. A long time ago Lucy and I made special signs for each other and our names, and so we don’t have to sign each letter and we can get to talking faster. Yes? Lucy sits in front of me and she takes my hands in her hands. Her hair is soft and straight and I know that she has brushed it specially. I can tell because of how it fluffs up around her face. The bit in the middle is different today as well. She has more hair on one side of her face and sometimes it touches her eyelash. Even though you are gone I still love you, she says and I feel her voice deep in my belly. She smiles at me. I love you too, my Lucy, I say. We can both hear her mother outside in the kitchen talking to my mum.

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‘I thought it would be best,’ I hear Lucy’s mum say, ‘in case they make a kafuffle about being parted.’ ‘Good idea. It’s been so hard without David here.’ ‘I’m sure it has.’ I have made a plan, says Lucy. Where is the plan? Can’t say now, Silly, and she signs silly like it is my name. ‘Come on, Lucy,’ says her mum from the doorway. ‘Hello Sam.’ Hi, I sign. ‘We are trying to get Lucy out the habit of signing,’ says one mum to the other mum. ‘It makes integrating them so much easier later on. Say goodbye kids.’ Goodbye, Sam. Farewell, my Lucy. Lucy laughs because she likes it when I sign like a knight and say things like farewell. Her mum takes her by the hand and leads her out of my room and my chest feels shaky like when I used to be afraid of thunder. I can hear the mothers talking in the hallway and so I get into bed and cover my face with a pillow. I try to think of a different day and I hear the door open and close. I remember the day of the white rock with the shape of the road pressed into it. ‘Do you like your name?’ Lucy asks, but she also signs so I can understand it both ways. It is from a bible story, I say. It is the other Samson. Tell it, says Lucy and I have told her before, but I tell her again. I tell her about the other Samson’s strong arms and strong legs and his weak heart because he fell in love with a girl who cut away his hair. He was arrested, I tell her, but he had one last bit of strength and this strength was from god and the other Samson used the gift to push down the entire city. It is about how to be strong, and how to die, I tell her. Lucy is outside and she is next to me. Our mums and my dad are all inside but Lucy and I are looking at the stars because it is nighttime and cold. I am under a blanket but Lucy is not. She tucks the blanket around my knees.

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What do you mean? she asks me with her hands and because we are lying down we have to sign into the sky with the stars behind our hands. We can die strong even if we don’t live strong, I say and because my arms are behind my head I can’t turn but I know my Lucy is there. Lucy sits up and smiles and hands me a stone. It is a white stone and has the shape of the road pressed into it. So I can remember, she says with her hands.

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4.

‘We don’t need this much,’ he said. ‘How much of this is yours?’ she asked as she shoved another box into the boot of the car. She was sweating. ‘I needed two boxes,’ he said, ‘for my books.’ ‘Okay boys, are we ready?’ Samson was sitting on the back step eating a piece of toast thick with jam. He nodded. ‘Joey?’ Jonah opened the passenger car door. ‘Shotgun!’ shouted Samson. Globs of jam slipped from the side of his mouth onto his shirt. ‘I was here first.’ ‘My legs are bigger.’ Jonah felt his cheeks burn. He swatted his brother away. ‘Piss off.’ ‘Don’t swear, darling,’ said his mother, ‘let Sammy have the front. I don’t want him getting car sick.’ Jonah slammed the front door. Samson shoved the rest of the toast into his mouth and picked up his backpack. The pack looked heavy but Samson heaved it onto his shoulder. It made a clunking sound. Jonah got into the back and pressed his knees into back of the front seat. Samson wriggled uncomfortably. ‘Okay, off we go,’ said their mother and the first time she tried to start the car it stalled.

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‘I’m closing the curtains,’ Samson said. He propped a pillow behind his head and pulled his long hair in over his face. Samson smiled at his own joke. It never took him long to fall asleep. Their mum said the vibration of the engine made him drowsy. ‘Something to do with his muscles,’ she said. ‘Sammy’s body is sore because it’s harder for them to grow. The movement makes them hurt less.’ Jonah remembered watching her walk up and down the hallway jiggling Samson in her arms. He was heavy and crying and she looked flustered. ‘He doesn’t like it that way,’ said Jonah. ‘Daddy does it different.’ She smiled, ‘how does daddy do it?’ ‘He goes on the motor bike,’ said Jonah. ‘He does what?’ asked his mother. Samson cried louder. ‘Samson likes it.’ ‘It doesn’t matter what he likes,’ she said. Their mother said it was safer to let Samson scream and made their father sell the bike. ‘This should be a nice drive,’ said his mother. ‘Would you like to listen to some music?’ ‘No,’ said Jonah. He really hated the back seat.

In the bedroom for my mum and dad, my dad’s coat hangers are empty. In his drawers I check for socks and his pants and also for his secret books that I found once and put back. But they are all gone. Dad’s gone, I think with my mind and so I say, ‘dad’s gone,’ with my voice. My mum is red and so I think she has probably been crying. ‘I can see that, Sam.’ And so I sign, dad’s gone with all his things.

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Instead of saying ‘yes’ she closes her eyes. I put my arm around her and she shakes a little bit and it makes my belly tight and my chin wobbly. ‘He will come back, Mum,’ I say, but my voice sounds like a question and she shakes harder and my question fills us both. Mum stops using her coat hangers, because she doesn’t change her clothes. She is in bed and I bring her a piece of toast and a cup of tea after I wake up. Mum doesn’t wake up and when I take it away, the toast is hard and the tea is cold and I pour it down the sink, even though we are not supposed to waste tea. I count the days she is in bed. I count four, five, six like mum says I should when I am sad or when I am angry. Seven and it floats past me like a cloud and I wonder about that word floating. I think I like ‘sailing.; White clouds sailing, are sailing, white clouds sail, and my dad says this is called ‘tense’ and I know this means nervous and I wonder why the words are nervous and I think it is because they are about my dad or maybe because it is harder to have two babies at once. ‘One is hard enough,’ says my mum, ‘let alone two.’ Mostly she does let us alone, and so all we have is being twins. Dad says we are like two halves. I am the brawn and Jonah is the brains. My brother is my twin and that means we share the inside of a belly. Jonah, and his name is after a bible story too but not a story like mine. My dad says my story is about how to be strong, no matter what. Samson was strong and that is why I don’t like having my haircut and my mum says she gives up and I can have it long. To be different, Jonah always gets his hair cut short. ‘Brush your hair, Sammy,’ says my mum every day but most of the time I forget or decide not to on purpose. I came first. Jonah came second and he stayed tangled up. Mum says I was big and fat and have cloudy blue eyes. I am floppy, not bouncy like babies are, and my eyes are still different. I am floppy and Jonah is tangled up because of how I left him. Jonah is blue-faced and small and he doesn’t want to come out. He doesn’t want to be born. Mum says maybe it is because he wants his own birthday. Mum says they checked my hands and said, ‘yes, there is a crease’ and ‘yes, there are also stubby fingers.’ She says they looked into my eyes and said, ‘yes, they

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are shaped like almond-nuts facing down.’ They checked my legs and my stomach and they checked my heart last. Mum says she saw the pictures of my heart. She says it was right through the middle. ‘A hole’, she says, ‘and you filled it in all on your own.’ Jonah says it is because I am damaged and sometimes he says ‘useless’, and so I try to face an almond nut down, just to see what they mean. But I can’t find the up, so I can’t find the down either. Mum says she cried when she saw Jonah and she cried when she saw I was floppy. She doesn't cry for long though because she needs to name us. She calls me Samson the strong and my brother Jonah because he stays in the belly for as long as he can. He stays in so long that the doctors have to peck him out. My mum still has a scar and she didn’t cry when they cut her open and she said it didn’t hurt that much because she was foggy. But right after we were born mum did cry. She cried about my floppy body and she cried about Jonah's blue skin. White hospital walls and the smell of clean. Two babies in a bed together, Mum says, tangled back up again just like in the belly. Jonah inside my floppy arms and legs and mum cried because he was not blue anymore. We didn't know our names until later.

Jonah packed his father’s books in with his. He found them on a shelf next to his mother’s bed. There was The Jungle Book, Gulliver’s Travels and Tarzan and the Apes. He packed all of his books into a box except for his copy of The Jungle Book, which he put in his school bag. The Jungle Book was special, even though it didn’t have any pictures. It smelt different and the pages were thin and gauzy, almost like skin. The cover was dark red and looked like leather. There was an inscription inside. It said, “Happy birthday, Cobber.” It was messy writing, almost like a child’s. Jonah assumed his dad was

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“Cobber” even though he never heard him called that. It didn’t say who gave it to him. ‘Whatever you will need for your first few nights,’ his mother said, ‘put in your backpack.’ ‘What for?’ ‘That way you won’t have to take out everything the moment you get there.’ Jonah rummaged around in his school bag. He packed The Jungle Book along with a pair of pajamas, his toothbrush, and three pairs of clean underpants. His snakeskin was in there too, coiled up on a brown paper bag between the pages of The Jungle Book.

‘Are you ready?’ says my mum and even if I am not I cannot answer ‘no’ and so I say, ‘okay’ with my voice. ‘Remember boys, I’ll have to leave almost straight away,’ says my mum. ‘How long will it take?’ asks my brother. ‘Two days,’ she says, ‘if I can manage to drive straight through.’ ‘Good,’ says Jonah. ‘I want to go straight to the horses.’ ‘Look, I can’t hear about the horses the entire way. Get in please, both of you.’ My house is behind us and we are leaving. Jonah sits in the back of the car behind my mum because my legs are long and I always sleep and so I get the front seat. Jonah pushes his legs into my seat. ‘Have you got everything?’ asks my mum, and I want to say that I do not have her and I do not have dad and I do not have home anymore. ‘Yes, Mum,’ I say with my voice and I try to sound happy. My face is wet under my eyes because I am thinking about Lucy and my dad and the bit of ocean I can see from my window. It is not ‘thinking’ anymore but remembering because they

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are already rushing away from me and I am going too. I close my hair in around my face because I do not want my mum to go back to sleep in her room. ‘Bye house,’ my mum says. The house does not answer. Goodbye, I say with my hands and it is a goodbye to everything else as well.

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5.

Outside the car there was an almost endless patchwork of dry grass and dead trees. Sometimes a shack would emerge from the horizon like the boat balanced on the crest of a dry wave. Jonah wanted to feel excited, but everything looked the same. ‘Those are shearing sheds,’ said his mother. ‘Your dad read me a poem about shearing once.’ Their father never read anything to him. Not even when Jonah asked him questions about what he was reading or writing. Sometimes Jonah would lie in his room trying to hear the conversations in his father’s office. Waiting to hear Samson’s voice dwindle into nothing and for his footsteps to pass his door. That was when he would take his father a cup of tea. ‘I’ve been reading The Jungle Book, Dad. I like it. It’s got lots of characters in it though.’ His father didn’t answer. The room smelt like burnt leaves. ‘Everyone thinks Mowgli is so special and he has all these adventures, but it must be hard to be a real son.’ ‘The brother’s hardly in the story,’ said his father and he handed back the cup of tea. Jonah took it. ‘Goodnight, Dad,’ he said gently. ‘Shut the door,’ said his father. Jonah took the cup to the sink and dropped the still warm liquid down the drain.

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The car is bumpy and sometimes my body wakes up and sometimes my mind wakes up but never both together. I can see the ocean from my window and it smells like salt and ice and my mum says, ‘it’s okay, Sammy, we’re crossing on the boat. Remember?’ A blue grey whale balances beneath us, taking us across. My mum smiles and says, ‘it’s the Abel Tasman, remember?’ But I remember a different boat. A boat from when I was little. A boat shaped like a shell and Jonah was the captain. I remember the thump, thump, thump of us going over the waves. Through and over. Through and over, like my mum and her needle. Through and over, and I think of the ocean and the wide empty space and I close my eyes. Through and over and my dad shouts, ‘what’re you doing, Sam?’ because he is on the jetty and I am in the boat. ‘Sit down,’ says Jonah. But I can’t stop and I grow out and over the boat and over the deck and spill over the sides like I am made of water and I cover everything and am everywhere. ‘I’m growing,’ I say and I try to take Jonah with me but he shakes me away and through I go and over I go and down. Down. Beneath the water I am still and quiet and I turn my body and in the turning I change. I turn, and I don’t have arms anymore and my legs join together and I laugh when I see my tail, and when I laugh bubbles pop out my nose. I am not afraid. Not tight in my lungs or stinging up my nose. Not any of those things until later. When they drag me out and throw me down and I start breathing again. I fall and I don’t float and maybe it is because my muscles are floppy and it wasn’t really falling because Jonah pushed me and I am laughing again. ‘Samson, Samson.’ I feel another ocean. Land-body ocean, arm ocean, a silver skinned pulling- me-up ocean. A dad ocean, and it is not really an ocean because it is air and I feel my dad pull me out. My tail melts and the bottom of the boat is wet.

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I hear my mum before I see her. ‘Samson,’ I hear my mum call and my name feels like a trap. My name will lock the heavy land body back in around me. I grow legs and shrink. Jonah says ‘he’s fine’, and ‘what an idiot, he knows how to swim.’ I think about how I can see water through water. A head full of drops and I remember now because I am laughing. Jonah watches me and he smiles and then he is laughing too. ‘You idiot,’ he says. ‘I know,’ I shout and then my mum is shouting again and she says things like ‘is he okay?’ and ‘why are they laughing?’ and ‘stop them David’. I see my dad. Storm cloud dad, and ‘get him up’ dad, and he lifts me and holds me and I am almost as big as him now and he shakes me and his fingers are hard like fence posts. ‘What is wrong with you,’ he says and we are not laughing anymore. Wet and dripping, and his drops fall on me like words. Words, drop, drop, dripping onto me and between my eyes and this is ‘tense’ again, says my dad, but this time it means both tense for words and tense for our feelings and I am wrong, he says. ‘What were you doing, Sam?’ ‘We can’t keep doing this,’ says my mum and her voice is high up like a bird. ‘He almost killed himself.’ ‘He’s fine,’ says Jonah. ‘He’s not fine,’ says my dad.

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Their mother pulled the car gently into the dimly lit petrol station. The clock on the dashboard didn’t work. Jonah’s watch said it was two in the morning, but he didn’t feel tired. Samson was fast asleep and snoring in the front seat ‘Can you fill the car up please,’ said his mother. The image caught in the rearview mirror was sallow and drawn. She looked sick. ‘Do I have to?’ he said but it wasn’t really a question. Jonah knew she would make him. Her eyes narrowed and she turned around to face him. ‘Yes,’ she said sharply, ‘you do.’ ‘Fine,’ mumbled Jonah and he opened the car door. ‘Here,’ she said and she passed him a fifty dollar note. ‘All fifty.’ Jonah took the note and stepped out of the car. He slammed the door but his mother didn’t say anything. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back onto the seat. Jonah flipped the cap and slotted the pump into the car. When the counter ticked over to forty-nine dollars he hung the nozzle back onto the pump and walked inside. He handed the money over the counter. The man’s face stretched into a smile. Beneath the harsh lights and Technicolour snacks his pale skin looked almost transparent. ‘Long drive?’ asked the man as he looked through the register for change. ‘Yep,’ said Jonah and while the man wasn’t looking he slipped a roll of peppermints into his pocket. ‘Where you headed?’ ‘Tasmania.’ ‘Always wanted to go to Tassie. Lovely country, they say.’ ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘Dangerous too,’ said the man. He handed Jonah the change. ‘Why?’ ‘Long way ahead of youse yet,’ said the man. The till made a ding sound as it closed.

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The radio is on and scratchy and the song is nice. It is from before. Before we came away and maybe even earlier, maybe when I was small. I try to remember but I can’t. That is what happens when my body wakes up before my mind. …singing in the dead of night… I can hear my mum next to me and even though she is driving her head is against the window. She sings along but in a voice I can hardly hear and I remember this is my dad’s song. …take these sunken eyes and learn to see… My body isn’t awake and so my mind curls back under the curtains and falls asleep again. In my sleep I think of Lucy and I think about my mum too but my mum is differently. ‘Sammy, come out from under there, I need to talk to you about something,’ says my mum, after Lucy has gone for the last time from our house. ‘Yes,’ I say coming out. The air inside my chest is warm from being under the pillow and when I come out from under my blankets it is also out from under my sleep as well. The air is sharp and I can smell the cold on my skin. ‘Your granddad might find you a bit strange, or uncomfortable. Just to start with. He’ll get used to you, darling, like we all have. Give him a chance.’ I don’t say anything. ‘Do you understand, Sammy?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Like this sort of thing, darling, not answering with full sentences. Your grandpa might find that odd.’ Yes is a full sentence and so I say with my voice, ‘I am not odd.’ ‘Some people think you are,’ says my mum, ‘or can be. You need to stop signing. That was just to help you when you were little,’ she says. ‘You’re not deaf, are you?’ I shake my head.

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‘Use your words, darling. Remember when we talked about you using full sentences.’ ‘Okay, Mother. I will use full sentences,’ and I say this in my robot voice and I make my robot arms. Lucy always thinks this is funny but Mum sighs and puts her forehead into her hands and this is her telling me that my answer is not the right answer. … for this moment to arise… I think I hear my mum crying.

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6.

Jonah’s guidebook said it would feel like the end of the world, and it did. It was early morning and it felt like the car had been climbing the mountain for hours. The only evidence their mother wasn’t sleeping was her occasional turn of the wheel. Samson was asleep, with his face pressed up against the window. He missed everything. Outside the air looked thick and smoky. Sometimes Jonah would catch a glimpse of the gorge deep beneath them. The car ambled up the mountain swirling around bends in the road and slowing down on sharp edges that seemed to jut out over the gorge. Jonah quietly rolled down his window and took a deep breath of the cold, heavy air. ‘You’re awake,’ said his mother from the front seat. ‘How far away are we?’ ‘An hour, maybe.’ ‘Did you call him?’ ‘When?’ ‘Did you tell Clancy we’re going to be late?’ His mother caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘We’re already late.’ ‘Does he know that?’ ‘Not unless he’s psychic.’ Jonah’s groin felt heavy and uncomfortable. ‘I need to pee.’ ‘You’ll have to wait until there is somewhere I can pull over.’ Jonah looked out of the window. The road curled around the mountain for what looked like hours of driving, and the edge of the bush was so close on either side of them that they couldn’t pull over. Samson mumbled something in his sleep. ‘I’m going to piss myself.’

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‘Jonah, I can’t pull over.’ There were dark grey circles under his mother’s eyes. Why was she tired? She and Samson slept on the boat coming over from the “mainland” while Jonah wandered around the deck, looking over the side and making sure he knew where the lifeboats were kept. He was too excited to sleep. ‘I need to go now.’ ‘Fine, Joey, but if we get rear-ended by a truck coming up here you can…’ ‘What?’ ‘Don’t be smart,’ said his mother and she pulled the car away from the middle of the road and edged it into the bush. Jonah heard something crunch beneath the wheel. ‘Go pee.’ He opened the door. ‘Put your jumper on.’ ‘Don’t watch me.’ She closed her eyes and didn’t answer. Outside the trees were so thick along the side of the road that Jonah could hardly see through. He imagined the men who first made the road, each one leaving a clean, even trail behind them. It was freezing. Jonah wished he were wearing his jumper. After checking that no one was watching, Jonah found a cluster of ferns, pulled down his track pants, and made a game of peeing into the ferns to make waterfalls. He could already tell Tasmania was going to be different. Someone on The Abel Tasman called the rest of Australia “the mainland.” Jonah liked it. He liked knowing that Tasmania was different from where he came from. There was a crack. Jonah stopped. His hand moved from holding, to covering his penis. ‘Come on, Jonah,’ shouted his mother. ‘This is dangerous here.’ Jonah tucked himself back into his pants and walked to the car. ‘Seatbelt,’ said his mother as he pulled the belt across his chest and locked it into the buckle. ‘What took you so long?’ Jonah didn’t answer.

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His mother switched on the radio and static gushed from the dashboard. She tried five channels before she gave up and they drove in silence. The car climbed the mountain and when she turned it gently around a tight bend in the road Jonah felt his body curl inwards around it. He was almost home.

My dad says things can stay hidden in Tasmania. He says, ‘there is still bush in the west no one’s ever seen.’ And I think this means that when you go west the trees all join in together and are so thick you cannot get through and it is like a song from Special School that goes, ‘you can’t go over them and you can’t go under them. You’ll have to go through them. I’m not scared, what a beautiful day.’ ‘Can you get through,’ I ask with my voice because my dad doesn’t like it when I sign. ‘Not even with a Whippersnipper,’ says my dad. I laugh because I like the new Whippersnipper. My dad has one ‘for the edges’ he says, and no one else has one and the first time he uses it everyone comes out to watch. Just like when we got a computer and everyone comes over for a barbeque and to play Sticky Bear. My dad says the Whippersnipper is very useful but he only uses it once and it is somewhere under mum’s stuff in the shed. Jonah says something that sharp should be able to snipper out from under her doilies and get away. I wish that mum gave me the Whippersnipper because we are west and the trees are pressed together so tight sometimes I cannot see through. I wind my window down and take a breath of this new air into my mouth. There is a sharp stab in my nose and inside my mouth and it is so cold that it is like the air is trying to bite me from the inside.

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Outside everything smells like it has come up from under the ground and maybe not because it wanted to. I wind my window up again and I do this a lot when we are driving and I am not sure why and my mum looks tired and the skin around her eyes is dark blue mixed with grey. Mum? I pat my hand onto my head once and my mum knows this sign because it is the sign for her. I only pat once though, because twice is mummy and I call her mum. Jonah calls her mother. ‘Yes, Sammy.’ With my hands I say ‘are you coming back?’ and the sign for back is a pat over one arm and onto my back. My mum tries to look at me but she also keeps her eyes on the road. ‘Use your words, Sammy,’ she says even though I am. ‘Are you coming back?’ I ask and even though I use my voice and full sentences my mum does not answer.

The town didn’t have a sign. Jonah wondered if that meant that it didn’t have a name either. His mother said it was the closest town to Clancy’s mountain. ‘Calling it a town is a bit of a stretch though,’ she said. ‘It’s only a strip of shops.’ There was a post office built into the side of a takeaway shop, a petrol station that looked more like a public toilet behind a pump, a small convenience store, and a pub with a wooden Tasmanian Tiger lunging from the brickwork over the door. There were ‘For Sale’ signs at the end of almost every driveway. Some of the signs looked as if they’d been waiting for a long time. After she finished filling the car with petrol their mother said she was going to pop into the pub and book a room. ‘Eye spy?’ asked Samson. Jonah sighed loudly, even though he wanted to play. ‘Okay,’ he said.

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Samson rubbed his hands together and smiled. ‘Eye spy with my little eye… something beginning with…’ Jonah watched his mother open the doors of the pub and walk inside without giving the wooden tiger a second glance. ‘T!’ There was a red truck parked just in front of them. ‘Truck?’ Samson laughed and shook his head. Jonah looked around. There was a green or black water tank tucked behind every building on the street. ‘Tank.’ ‘No,’ said Samson. ‘One more.’ Jonah wondered if his mother was really booking a room in the pub, or if she was taking the phone receiver down off the wall and calling someone, his dad maybe or a friend. The tiger over the pub door seemed to be watching too. It made him think of something his father said. ‘Tassie loves the tiger…’ ‘Why?’ His father swallowed a mouthful of wine and kept talking. ‘…Cascade’s putting one on their labels. Did you know that? What does a tiger have to do with apples? Leave it a few years and kids’ll be wearing a tiger on their fucking uniforms. Bet they won’t make them look like the sheep killing little buggers they were either?’ His father stopped to take another sip. His teeth were red like a wild dog after a feed. ‘They’ll probably even put one on license plates. The entire country’s going to be saying sorry forever.’ Jonah understood what his father was getting at now. The tigers on the signs and bottles looked the same. They were tame tigers, never shown to be walking or rearing up or opening their mouths. They were frozen tigers. The tiger over the door to the pub was different. Its mouth was open as if trying to warn something dangerous to keep its distance. Jonah remembered the game of eye spy. ‘Tiger,’ he said. ‘Nope, trees,’ said Samson and he clapped his hands even though he wasn’t allowed. Mother said too much clapping made Samson stand out. ‘Your go,’ said Samson, but Jonah didn’t want to play anymore.

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7.

Jonah first saw the horse paddock from the car window. He couldn’t see any horses but he knew they were there. Waiting for him. He could almost smell them. ‘Look! Look!’ The car swerved. ‘Don’t shout like that, Jonah,’ said his mother. Jonah wasn’t listening. ‘Horses, Mum, horses,’ he said. ‘Pull over.’ ‘Don’t take your seatbelt off yet,’ she said. ‘I need you to calm down. This is tricky driving.’ Jonah put his hand on the buckle and kept it there. It took his mum ages to park the car. ‘Park anywhere.’ ‘I can’t just park anywhere,’ she said. ‘Can you see your Granddad?’ Jonah looked out of the window towards the house. He couldn’t see anyone. ‘I told you to call him.’ The car grumbled to a halt. Jonah was first one out. He wanted to bolt but he wasn’t sure how. Should he wait for his granddad, or could he go down to the paddocks on his own. ‘Calm down, Joey,’ said his mother. She knocked once on the front door. There was no answer. ‘He’s not here.’ ‘I told you to call him,’ said Jonah again but his mother ignored him. ‘He’s probably feeding the horses or something.’ ‘Maybe,’ said his mother. Her voice sounded strange. ‘Why don’t you have a look?’ ‘Now?’ Jonah asked and he felt his entire body twist up in excitement. ‘Can you smell that?’ asked his mother. Samson sniffed the air.

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Jonah nodded. ‘I think its smoke.’ His mother covered her nose with the back of her hand. ‘You boys will have to wait for him.’ ‘Can you stay until he gets here?’ asked Jonah. ‘You don’t need me, darling,’ said his mother. ‘Do you want to go as well, Sammy?’ ‘Not walking,’ he said. ‘I want to go inside.’ ‘Don’t touch anything, and if you see Clancy let him know Joey is meeting the horses.’ Samson nodded and went inside. His heavy footsteps sounded like thunder on the verandah. ‘You think he’s going to break something?’ asked his mother. She didn’t really need an answer. ‘I’ll see you in a few days, okay darling?’ ‘Yes,’ he said and he let his mother hug him. ‘Take care of each other,’ she said but he knew she meant, take care of Samson. She squeezed him once more and Jonah smelt lavender, like when he was a little kid. He felt the water on his neck. She pulled away and wiped her face on her sleeve. He shivered. It was cold without his mother’s arms around him. ‘Make sure you dress warm,’ she said. Jonah nodded. ‘Good boy,’ she said. She went inside to say goodbye to Samson. Her goodbye to Jonah took longer.

My granddad’s house is not like my house. His house is old and feels stretched even though it is messy, it feels like everything is put away just where it wants to be. The

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walls are made from wood and in the lighter wood I can see dark circles, and they are like rings in the water after I throw a pebble in. Plop and down it goes. That pebble was not for remembering. The walls look like that. At home the walls are white. Once when my brother was angry and before he swallowed it up the way my dad said he should, he punched the wall and left a hole. My mum said it was just plaster and she fixed it with lumpy white from a can. It never went flat even though mum pushed it down. The lumps kept coming back. ‘I quit,’ she says and the lid stays off the tin and so the lumpy white paint goes hard and cracks. Sometimes when I know Jonah is mad I press my ear to the hole and see if I can hear the inside of the house. The lumps push into my face but I don’t mind because it makes my house feel more like a tree and I like trees. ‘Jonah?’ I say, because sometimes I think he dropped himself down into the hole and my mum sealed him in. I think maybe the paint is lumpy because his fingers are behind, trying to push out. On the wall of my granddad’s house there are photos but none of my dad and none of my mum or Jonah and none of me. On the kitchen wall I can see a dark brown shadow. Something used to hang in that shadow. It looks like a bat. There is one glass on the sink and even through the air feels cold I am still thirsty. I turn the tap and there is a groaning sound. My legs jump back and they take the rest of me too. My legs are always afraid. This is not like home. My granddad’s house is quiet and it is a quiet from emptiness and no laughing or telling stories and no kids and I don’t want to break the silence, not even with full sentences, because the silence is loud like an empty belly because when a belly is empty, it rumbles louder. ‘Sammy?’ ‘Yes,’ I say with my voice and my hands. ‘I have to leave now,’ says my mum but only with her voice. ‘I’ll be staying in town, okay? Okay Sammy?’ ‘Yes, Mum.’

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‘Come here,’ she says and she holds out her arms and we are almost the same height now. She grabs my shoulders. ‘You be good.’ I nod my head and this is a sign everyone knows. ‘Try and blend in, Sammy,’ says mum. ‘Use full sentences, and keep your tongue in your mouth.’ I clamp my teeth shut and accidentally bite my tongue. My mum pats me on the shoulder, and I know this means she is going to sign. She starts ‘please’ and the sign for ‘please’ looks like thumbing a ride except the fist comes down from the chin and not out towards a car. The way my mum does it though sometimes looks a bit like the sign for beautiful. ‘Don’t’ is two hands facing down that quickly turn over. My mum turns her hands over a bit too far. She is trying. ‘Hate’ and hate is a closed cage fist pressed up against her chin and her hand flings away from her face, like she is chucking something out. ‘Me.’ I shrug my shoulders because I don’t understand. ‘You will, Sammy,’ she says.

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8.

The fence surrounding the paddock was old and rusty. Inside Jonah could see the white training yard fence and a small shack where they must keep the saddles and whips. Jonah lifted the heavy iron-gate and walked it open. The hinge creaked. ‘Oi,’ said a man from behind him. Jonah turned. ‘That’s private property,’ said the man. He was wearing dirty, loose jeans and beneath the brim of his hat Jonah could see a small bird resting on his shoulder. It was black, like a crow or a butcherbird. The man was an Aborigine. ‘I was just looking,’ said Jonah. The man nodded and the bird shuffled back, as if trying to disappear behind the man’s neck. ‘You a grandson?’ Jonah nodded. The man tipped his hat and wiped a slick of brown sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The bird seemed familiar with these sorts of gestures and moved around them in an awkward dance. ‘Who’re you?’ ‘Murray,’ the man said. ‘This is King.’ ‘I thought kookaburras were brown,’ said Jonah. ‘Most of ‘em.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘He won’t bite,’ said Murray. Jonah stretched his hand out towards the warm, soft looking body of the bird. His palms were red from the rusty fence. The kookaburra shook his head and shuffled back. ‘Why’s he black?’

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Murray shrugged. ‘Born that way.’ King lifted his wing and cleaned the feathers down one side of his body. There was a shiny blue stripe hidden in amongst the black. It reminded Jonah of the oyster shells back home. Once the oyster was gone it didn’t take long for the shell to shed and become dull. Murray was watching him. Jonah felt his cheeks burn. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away. ‘Where’re the horses?’ ‘Horses?’ ‘Brumbies.’ ‘Haven’t been any horses up here for ten years or more.’ Jonah’s throat felt dry. From somewhere behind him he heard a stallion whiney. It sounded like a bird cry. ‘Why?’ he asked. Murray frowned. ‘Sold ‘em. Clance can’t do that kind of work no more.’ Jonah closed his eyes. He could hear hooves smashing into the earth, kicking up chunks of grass and dirt. He felt the full weight of the mountain close in around him. ‘You okay, kid?’ Murray’s voice bent in around him as if searching Jonah for faults. Jonah opened his eyes. He knew they were here somewhere. His string. His horses. Each one was suddenly alive and breathing and lined up in front of him, waiting. The sound of their snorting noses, and stomping hooves, and whinnying voices, twisted up and around him. ‘My mother said I was supposed to help,’ said Jonah and his voice sounded high and shrill. He heard the mare grunt and strike her hoof into the ground. ‘Is your mum here?’ asked Murray. One by one Jonah’s string broke the line. He felt each horse cut through the air and disappear into the smoke folding down the mountainside like mist. He could see Murray’s face, like burning coal, staring at him through the shroud. Jonah clamped his arms into the side of his chest, and tried not to let the force of the stampeding horses knock him down. The Mustang was last. It turned to look at him just once before pushing through the curtain of smoke. ‘Best get you back to your granddad,’ said Murray.

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It sounded like thunder. Jonah wanted to follow. He wished he were one of them.

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“You might see what Clancy saw, And know what Clancy knew.”

Banjo Paterson

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9.

Clancy lay in his bed willing the ache in his leg to disappear. Sunlight crept along the floor towards the bed. He felt like telling it to bugger off. A familiar spike of pain made itself known in his thigh and groin. He called for his dog. There was no answer. Clancy never used the dunny anymore. Essie wouldn’t like it. She always reckoned just because they both lived in the bush it didn’t mean they shouldn’t be civilised. There was a door at the far end of his room. It opened out onto the back verandah. He opened it and the smell of the early morning bush swelled up around him. He pulled his dick out and pissed over the garden bed. The daisies Essie planted were long dead. His piss clung to the skeletons like early morning dew. It was warm for Tassie. Clancy tied his hair back into a ponytail. The back of his neck was already sweating. In the kitchen he filled the kettle, switched it on to boil, and waited. It was easy to do everything these days. When he was a boy his mother used to boil their water in a tin billycan on the stove. Coffee just didn’t taste the same anymore. Len from the hardware reckoned it was because the external elements on the kettles meant you weren’t contaminating your water, but Clancy missed the taste of tin. He drank two cups and called for Queenie again. She didn’t come. He shuffled back to his bedroom. The floorboards were bloody cold. Clancy kept forgetting to ask Murray for a pair of slippers. Back inside he took off his pajamas, folded them, and left them on the edge of his bed. They were thin. He knew he should get another pair, but Essie made them and he wasn’t ready to sleep without her.

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‘Hello girl,’ said Clancy. Queenie wagged her tail. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ He scratched her behind the ears. She nuzzled into his hand trying to get him to scratch harder. ‘Time to get your ears looked at, girl,’ he said and he knew he should but a vet clinic was too close to a hospital. He’d only been inside a hospital three times. Each time scared him shitless. The first time was when David was born. Not River though, River came two weeks early and quick as the first pup of a litter. Essie knew what she was doing and gave birth to their baby on the kitchen floor. ‘Lucky she was the second,’ said Essie. Then the cancer came, and took the tissue in Essie’s breasts. ‘In you come,’ he said to the dog and he held the front door open for her. Queenie plodded past stopping long enough to lick his free hand and thump him a few times with her tail. Clancy checked the calendar on his kitchen wall and tried to remember what day it was. The boys would be here today, or maybe tomorrow. He wasn’t sure. Queenie barked. ‘You here Clancy?’ called a voice from the far side of the house. It was Murray. He opened the door and kicked his boots on the doorframe. Murray’s bird was sitting on his shoulder, like always. ‘Not in here,’ said Clancy. ‘Yeah, yeah. I know the rules,’ said Murray and he lifted the kookaburra from his shoulder and placed it on the verandah railing. ‘Should shoot that bird, Murray. Bloody pests.’ ‘What’s he going to do?’ ‘Bullies. The lot of them. Introduced, you know. Saw one attacking a honeyeater the other day. Little blighter was terrified.’ ‘You should probably thank the little fella,’ said Murray. ‘The honey eaters raid your bee’s nests.’ ‘Nothing worse than an Australian in the wrong part of Australia. Your dad told me that.’

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‘Cuppa?’ ‘Sounds good.’ Clancy switched the kettle to boil again. It started burbling almost immediately. ‘How’s the honey coming?’ ‘Right as you can expect. Smoke’s making them crazy.’ ‘Ted reckons they’re burning off down in the valley.’ Clancy flicked the cap off a bottle of instant. Three scoops and he poured the hot water in. ‘Ted doesn’t know his arse from his elbow,’ he said. He stirred the coffee. Clancy wanted to tell Murray that some days he felt more at home in a tiger skin than his own, but instead he said, ‘one of those idiot fox trappers from down South told me a story about kids getting taken in Western Australia when his grandfather was a boy. Reckons they walked right into camps, picked up kids and carted them off into the bush. Mind you, grain of salt with those blokes. He also reckons the tigers raised the kids like wolves in India.’ Clancy thought of his own girl. He handed Murray the cup. ‘Dad told me something similar about tigers taking aboriginal kids from the fire camps. Outside?’ said Murray. He gestured towards the door. Clancy nodded. Murray went out first and propped the door open. ‘Been looking much?’ They sat side by side on the white cane chairs just outside the door. Essie chose from a hardware catalog not long after they were married. Clancy never liked them. ‘Forestry don’t want any tigers getting found,’ said Clancy. ‘They’d lose whole forests once the Greenies got wind of it…’ Murray took a sip. ‘Christ that’s strong, Clance.’ ‘…Maybe even the whole bloody state.’ ‘Kirra reckons she saw one in her back yard.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Turned out to be her cat.’ Clancy laughed. ‘Hey, that reminds me,’ said Murray, ‘did you see the smoke last night?’

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‘What smoke?’ ‘Saw smoke, but couldn’t smell nothing.’ Clancy wanted to tear the tiger pelt off the wall, like a Band-Aid being ripped of a healed wound. ‘Reckon it’s kids from town,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ said Murray and he set his cup down next to Clancy’s untouched coffee. ‘Why would kids come all the way out here?’

Clancy wasn’t the only one still looking for tigers. Years back, maybe even as many as ten or twelve, two blokes came to the mountain asking if they could look for evidence of the existence of Thylacines. ‘Gunns or council?’ he asked. They said neither. He asked them inside. After they introduced themselves Clancy poured them both a cuppa. He couldn’t remember the scientific bloke’s name but the other bloke was second generation Tassie Dairy farmer. His name was James. ‘You hunters?’ Clancy asked remembering the tiger men from when he was young. James smiled. He had a nice round face, like most dairy farmers. Must be something in the milk. ‘Not the killing kind,’ he said. ‘We want to protect their habitat,’ said the scientific bloke. He reminded Clancy of David. University blokes were all the same. ‘But first we need to prove there is one-’ Clancy interrupted him. ‘What does that have to do with my mountain?’ James leant forward. ‘This is one of the last places they were seen.’ ‘I know,’ said Clancy. ‘I’m the one that seen them.’ ‘Really?’ said the scientific bloke looking down at the papers in front of him. ‘We were told it was your daughter that saw the tiger?’

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James looked at Clancy. There was ‘sorry’ in his eyes. Feeling sorry was in every real Tasmanian’s blood. It was built beneath the skin of the country like plates beneath the earth. James would’ve heard about River’s disappearance. He might even have read about it in the paper. The most famous article published about them was called A Tiger Stole His Baby. The bird who wrote it said he should be in jail alongside Lindy Chamberlain. Clancy stood. He was done. ‘Feel free to look around,’ he said. He didn’t finish his cuppa. James and the other bloke put cameras up around the mountain and a few weeks later they came and took them down again. ‘Reckon I can get a copy of this?’ ‘Should be able to,’ said James. Both men shook hands with Clancy before they left. The scientific bloke sent him the footage. It arrived on four videotapes. Clancy bought a video, but he couldn’t work out how to hook it up. Murray did it for him. ‘What made you get a VCR?’ Clancy shrugged. ‘I didn’t think you liked TV,’ said Murray. His hands were buried in a web of black and grey cables. That night Clancy watched the footage. It showed four different views of the mountain. Inside the throbbing green and silver footage Clancy saw devils and possums. Even a few wombats. ‘You’ll know a tiger,’ James said over the phone. ‘The eyes of a tiger glow white.’ Clancy didn’t see any white. Sometimes, when the veins in his leg pushed up from beneath his skin and his leg was too sore to follow her up the mountain, Clancy would put the tape into the video player and watch the footage of the empty mountain until he fell asleep.

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The tiger pelt was where it always was. Hanging on the wall behind the kitchen table. Sometimes it looked like an orange bat, or a glider possum caught in mid glide. The first time Clancy took it down was years after they hung it on the wall. He remembered peeling the skin away from the wooden shadow. At first it didn’t budge. He yanked. Outside the kookas laughed. Sometimes it was like tearing skin off a living body. ‘Come on.’ One of the front paws gripped into the nail. A shot of pain went through his leg like a hot poker stocking a campfire. If he’d known he was going to have a bung leg for the better half of his life, he would never have hung the fucking thing so high. One last tug, and the pelt tumbled into his hands. It was still warm from the sun. He gave it a dig pat. Rough, but knowing. They knew each other well. The wall held the shadow of the tiger’s body. The head nosed into his wrist. Sometimes, he thought about crushing the tiger’s skull. It would do the same if the roles were reversed. Throughout his life Clancy heard plenty of stories about tigers crushing throats and suffocating prey. He read somewhere that they made good parents. He often wondered if River had grown up alongside the striped cubs of a different mother, and if she knew the difference between a litter and a sibling, a human father and a tiger. Clancy lifted the pelt onto his back. The head jostled into place. It reminded him of when Queenie was a pup. Sometimes she would curl into his neck and lick the hollow made by his collarbone. David said it was like she was still searching for her mother’s milk.

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‘Where shall we start?’ ‘Kitchen?’ Essie smiled. ‘Sounds good,’ she said. Her hair was long and tied back from her face in a colorful scarf. Some of the new music she loved was playing on the radio. It trickled down the hallway like a river song. Every room was filled with boxes. ‘Crikey,’ she said looking at the dozens of unopened boxes waiting in the middle of the kitchen. ‘What now?’ There was a box on the table. It belonged to Clancy. ‘Why do you have boxes?’ she asked. His da didn’t like what was inside. ‘Just one,’ said Clancy and he opened the box. The tiger pelt smelled musty and old. Essie asked what he was going to do with it. ‘Hang it.’ ‘Where?’ The only wall wide enough was in the kitchen. ‘You reckon the sun’ll discolor it,’ said Clancy. ‘I’m not sure I can cope with it anywhere else,’ said Essie as she started to unpack a box marked Kitchen. Clancy hammered eight nails into the wall. Two under each side of the head, two under the armpits, one for each front paw to hang from, and one on either side of the tail beneath its arse. ‘See,’ he said, ‘looks good, hey?’ He turned around. Essie was in the living room unpacking something else. Clancy gathered up the stack of empty boxes and took them out to the Ute. He’d drive them to the tip tomorrow.

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The image in the window was a grey formless haze. It shivered, like a reflection in water. ‘Who’s there?’ he said quietly. His voice sounded different. Clancy walked towards the ghostly figure and the outline of his body settled into place. He looked like his da. Clancy stepped back from the window and the image grew hazy again, like he was standing in mist waiting for it to clear. He tried to remember where he’d been standing when his da told him he’d be an old man some day. Clancy waved. The mist waved back. ‘You won’t recognise yourself,’ said his da. He ran his fingers through his beard but the rough tendrils didn’t part. The mist twisted around his da’s chin. Clancy poured himself a glass of water from the tap. His da hated his beard. ‘Your ma likes it when you boys are neat and tidy,’ he said, ‘can’t go to church looking like that.’ ‘You’re right,’ said Clancy and he stopped going to church. Water poured over the side of the glass and down his arm. The tap was still running. He turned the knob to off, and drank his water. The mist melted back from the window like night frost disappearing beneath the gaze of morning. He left through the front door. Clancy never bothered with shoes.

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10.

The mountain was quiet for the morning. Ordinarily, the kookas would be reaching the crescendo of their dawn chorus, and wallabies would be bounding noisily through the bush trying to get away from the cackling. Not today though. Today was like an island of ice shifting through water. The tiger furled in around him. It was cold, even for the West. Clancy’s hand instinctively reached for his crotch. His dick was tiny and his balls felt shriveled and sore. He needed a pouch of warm fleshy fur, like the male tigers. He kept walking.

The wind was worse. Clancy held his newborn girl close, but for a moment it felt like they might lift up off the ground and float into the sky. He wondered what the mountain looked like from inside clouds. River’s body locked into his, and suddenly Clancy thought of Sunday school and the story of Adam and Eve. He smiled. This was his missing rib. ‘Morning.’ Clancy turned. It was Bill. ‘Morning.’ ‘How’s Esther?’ ‘Tired.’

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‘Reckon she would be,’ said Bill. He looked at the baby and nodded. Clancy held her closer. She squeaked. ‘Mind if I say G’day?’ Clancy walked towards him slowly, shifting the tiny body away from inside the safety of his chest. Handing her over. ‘You nurse the little one,’ said Bill and he took a step back. ‘I meant Esther.’ ‘Right,’ said Clancy and he pressed River back into his chest, this time more gently. He rocked his baby back and forth, like she was the canopy of the bush and he was the wind. ‘She’s in bed.’ Bill nodded and walked past him and into the house. He heard Essie say, ‘Bill’. Then she fell silent. Clancy imagined them sitting together on her side of the bed signing. Passing their thoughts to each across waves of silence. He looked down at his baby girl. She was watching him, her eyes wide and almost black. ‘Your daddy has green eyes,’ said Clancy and he wondered if she could understand him yet, or if she knew how powerful her hold over him was. He took a deep breath and River sighed.

Sometimes, on his long treks up the mountain, Clancy felt eyes watching him. They followed him up through the dusky light on one side of the mountain, and down through the late morning air on the other. It wasn’t the bush. After all these years, the bush knew him. It knew his paths, and the way he moved. Even the skittish wallabies knew him. Several generations on from the first time he wore the pelt and they were not afraid. They didn’t even stop chewing. But it was getting harder. The pelt seemed heavier. He couldn’t search like he used to. Even if he did find a tiger, Clancy wasn’t sure he what he could do to get her away from it. In the years following River’s disappearance Clancy would often conceal his smell by covering his naked body with dirt, but not these days. These days he just tried to make it up the mountain. If he was honest with himself, these days he

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didn’t search so much as stare at his feet as he forced himself forward. The only thing he cared about was staring into the earth until the imprint of her feet floated to the surface. Years ago he would have looked for tiger tracks. Not these days. ‘No tigers left,’ everyone said. ‘Stupid old bugger.’ ‘Crazy fucker.’ ‘Lost his daughter, poor bastard.’ ‘Doesn’t he know the tigers are cactus?’ Clancy knew how he looked. He knew what he was. Clothes and boots left at the front door. Pelt lifted down off the kitchen wall and shrugged over his shoulders. Years ago Clancy saw tracks along the far side of the mountain, above the caves. There were three imprints of a foot with four toes and a long middle pad. He even saw signs of leaning back onto a tail for support. There were feathers nearby and a bloodstain at the base of a eucalypt. He remembered pushing his way through the trees, running for the first time since the accident. Running home to tell Bill about the tracks and find out what he should do. Bill always knew. ‘Bill,’ he called. ‘Bill!’ He opened the door. The kookas started up again. He couldn’t see the little buggers, and he never brought his gun with him. A bloke from the Midlands told him once that animals could smell guns. The laughing grew louder. More kookaburras joined in and then other birds. From somewhere further up the mountain he heard a devil shriek like a howling ghost. It started the rest of the animals off. The laughing turned to cackling, and the cackling turned into screeching. Clancy pulled the tiger skin in closer and kept walking.

They were all at the waterfall. Clancy and Essie were lying on a blanket, with River on her back in between them. David was on the other side of the creek stretched out on a towel, reading. River kicked her legs and blew bubbles from her mouth like she was already swimming.

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‘She has your eyes,’ said Essie and she tickled her daughter’s feet. River kicked her mother’s fingers. ‘My eyes are blue,’ said Clancy. ‘That’s not important,’ she said. ‘It is to me.’ ‘She has your inside.’ ‘What does that mean?’ he asked. Essie looked up from her daughter and caught his eyes with hers. She was still so beautiful. Her eyes were green. ‘Don’t push so hard,’ she said, ‘or Rivy and I might roll all the way down the mountain and you’ll never get us back.’ River laughed. Clancy stood up and walked to the edge of the creek. Sunlight danced through the surface of the water like thousands of tiny firebugs caught in a spider web. Clancy took a deep breath. Mud folded into the falls and fell with the clean water from the spring. The creek slowly turned brown. ‘I’m still your wife,’ said Essie. Clancy held his breath, and jumped.

Clancy opened the fridge, took out a plate of cold roast beef, and threw Queenie a fatty scrap from near the bone. Beneath it on the plate there was a clear sheen of congealed jelly. The dog’s jaws made a clicking sound. She swallowed it whole. She wouldn’t come near him while he was wearing the pelt. ‘What’re we going to do,’ he said as he shoved a slice of cold meat into his mouth. ‘Eh girl?’ Queenie’s ears stood up. She wanted more scraps. He threw her a slice. It slapped into the floorboards. She scurried to get it. ‘They wouldn’t know squat about living in Tassie.’

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He wanted Jack to help, but he said it was best if he only came round in the evenings for a while. ‘After the boys are in bed,’ he said. ‘Let them get used to the idea of me first.’ The pelt slipped as he reached for the meat again, almost as if it knew they were home. Back in the civilised world. Clancy left it on, and ate the last slice of cold roast beef over the kitchen sink in the sun.

There were other pelts in Tassie. Clancy saw one in a museum in Hobart, and another in a pub on the way to Deloraine. Neither was particularly well preserved. Both looked small and scraggly. Not his though. Clancy’s pelt was the size of a large dog. A tiger man from Launceston told him once that if Clancy’s pelt were still alive, it would easily be the biggest he’d ever seen. There used to be lots of tiger men when he was a boy. It was still legal to shoot tigers on sight and even though the government didn’t pay for pelts anymore, plenty of farmers still did. Clancy saw the tiger man from Launceston coming up the road with a swag hanging over one shoulder and a bag with old bloodstains over the other. He had a long wooly beard and short hair, and even though his clothes were old and dirty the tiger man’s boots were shiny. ‘You,’ said the tiger man and he pointed to Clancy, ‘you the man of this house.’ Clancy wanted to say ‘yes’ but he shook his head. The tiger man smiled. The sides of his mouth cut through his beard like it was chopping down trees. He had one broken tooth. ‘Mind if I take a look round your land,’ he said. Clancy thought he saw the bloodied bag move. ‘Sorry sir,’ he said and his voice sounded small and light as if it could easily be swept away. ‘Not sure my ma would like it.’

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The tiger man’s eyes darted to the house. ‘Is your ma in there now?’ Clancy felt their house loom up behind him. His mother was in there, watching to see if he could send the tiger man on his way. ‘You can’t come in,’ said Clancy. The tiger man smiled. ‘Not even by the hair on my chinny chin chin?’ he said, laughing. The tiger man walked right by him into the house.

Clancy shoved the last slice of roast beef into his mouth and dropped the empty plate into the sink. Queenie’s throat rumbled. She sat up. ‘You right, girl?’ She sniffed the air, and glared at the door. Clancy thought he saw a body dart across his veranda. He stopped and waited. There was shuffling. He reached for Queenie’s collar. There was no way he was going to lose a tiger to his dog, not after all these years. A scratching sound, followed by a cough, and a large boy with long hair stepped into his doorway. The boy waved. ‘Hello,’ he said, and Clancy could tell right away it was the one with problems.

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11.

‘So, you’re one of them,’ said Clancy. It wasn’t a question. ‘One what?’ answered the boy without blinking. His voice sounded rough and gravelly. He couldn’t remember this one’s name. ‘One of the grandkids?’ The boy knocked his fists together once and his index and forefinger together twice. Clancy only recognised half the sign. It meant father. Essie would sometimes tap her fingers twice together like that. Sometimes she would even joke that there was one finger for each of them. River and Clancy on one hand, and David and her on the other. ‘Why are you mostly naked?’ ‘To hide me smell,’ said Clancy and for a moment the boy looked like he was going to try and smell him. ‘You deaf?’ The boy shook his head. ‘But you’re doing all that,’ said Clancy and he waved his hands around in front of the boy, mimicking Essie. ‘Sign language,’ said the boy and then, because it must explain something, he said, ‘I have Down syndrome.’ Clancy nodded slowly. ‘I did hear something about that.’ ‘I can see your penis.’ ‘Lucky you, mate.’ ‘Didn’t you know we were coming?’ ‘Your mother told me.’ ‘Why are you wearing that dog?’

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‘Not a dog,’ said Clancy and he took hold of the nose the way he always did and shrugged his body out from under the pelt. Without his body it became limp. ‘What is it?’ ‘Tiger,’ said Clancy. He didn’t like the way the boy was looking at his pelt. ‘Can I touch it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why are you wearing it?’ ‘Another tiger took something from me,’ said Clancy and he hung the pelt on the wall. ‘Trying to get it back.’ The head dropped into position on the sun stained wall. Clancy reached for his pants slung over the back of a nearby chair. ‘My brother is outside.’ ‘What about your mother?’ His grandson shrugged. ‘Gone,’ he said.

Clancy’s phone rang. It was too late for anyone he knew to be calling. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. There was a long distance click. ‘Not buying nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘No, Clancy, it’s Alice.’ ‘What do you want?’ ‘My sons want to stay with you.’ ‘Why are you whispering? Speak up.’ ‘I can’t, the boys are asleep.’ Clancy checked the clock, it was ten-thirty Tasmania time but he didn’t know what that meant in Queensland. He imagined his daughter-in-law squatting just outside the door with a long phone chord curling back into the house like a path of silver mucus left by a snail.

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‘David left.’ Clancy opened the door to the low combustion heater. The fire crackled and a gust of warmth enveloped his chair. ‘He has a girlfriend. A woman he teaches with. He’s moving in with her.’ Clancy could hear the tears in her voice. Essie never cried. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked. ‘I think you owe me,’ said Alice. ‘We’re not bludgers.’ Maybe he did owe them. ‘Hello?’ said Alice. ‘Are you still there.’ ‘Too dangerous up here for kids.’ ‘They’ll be fine.’ ‘Can’t look after kids.’ ‘I won’t stay. It’ll just be the boys,’ said Alice and she sniffed. ‘Stop blubbering,’ he said. Alice stopped. ‘They can visit. But they can’t stay long.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘You’re not to stay here, and not David neither. I see him and all four of you go back down together. You understand?’ ‘He won’t,’ she said quietly, ‘I may need to spend the night.’ ‘There’s always a room free in town,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said, ‘to work everything out.’ ‘Why can’t we do that now?’ ‘I want to arrange it in front of them.’ Clancy wanted to ask if the older boy was still in the same shape but he didn’t know how to word it or even if he should ask. After a while Alice said, ‘Jonah’s very quiet. You won’t even notice he’s there.’ She tried to sound cheerful, but Clancy could hear the lies tangled through her voice like strangler figs around the trunk of a tree. ‘What’s the other one called?’ He asked but Alice had already hung up the phone.

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Clancy watched his grandson finish his tea in one mouthful. ‘Do you want me to get my brother,’ he said. ‘I can, if you want.’ ‘Where is he?’ asked Clancy. The boy stood up, pushing the chair out from under him with his thighs. ‘I always find him.’ The sound of his grandson’s voice burst into many pieces like a dandelion weed pummeled by the wind. One by one the seeds caught the earth of him and grew into the sounds of his little girl. He heard the song of her again. The song of her squealing and laughing and tearing through the bush, like a foal that’d just discovered running. ‘You have a dog,’ said his grandson and, like always, River’s voice seeped back into the bush, beneath the cricket songs and bird shrieks. Down into the roots of whispering trees and wombat tunnels. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. His grandson patted the middle of his chest twice, ‘Samson’, he said. It reminded Clancy of the old black and white Tarzan films. Jack loved Tarzan. Clancy missed black and white. Queenie sniffed once at Samson’s feet and nuzzled into him. ‘We never have a dog.’ ‘Want one?’ ‘Dogs are not sure about my brother.’ ‘Maybe we can share her,’ said Clancy. Samson scrunched up his nose. ‘She is pretty old.’ ‘Too old you reckon?’ ‘Here girl,’ said Samson and he held his hand out for the dog to lick. Queenie sniffed him once and licked his finger. ‘There you go,’ said Clancy, ‘it’s a done deal.’

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‘My dad never had a dog,’ said Samson without looking up. ‘He told me.’ Samson tousled Queenie’s fur and just for a moment Clancy thought he could smell the musty, copper scent of puppies.

Clancy watched David help Alice out of the car. She looked nervous and unsure, making comments about the bush on either side of them and holding David’s hand like it was an anchor. They walked up the drive. ‘Hi Dad,’ shouted David from the fence. Clancy didn’t wave. ‘What you got there?’ ‘This is Alice.’ The girl smiled. She was pregnant. ‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ she called but her voice was tiny and the wind carried it away. Alice was pretty enough. Skinny and fair, nothing like Essie. She was young too. Younger than David. Clancy tried to remember how old his son was. Was he born in 57, or 48? It must have been 48 because River was younger. Essie wanted to hear Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear but it all happened so quickly and Clancy couldn’t find the record. Instead he played Wake Up Little Susie and later on Essie asked him if he did it on purpose. ‘Bring her in,’ said Clancy. Either way, his son was old enough for a wife. They didn’t stay long.

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‘Do you mind how my sentences are?’ asked Samson and he tucked a clump of straw-like hair over his ear. Clancy’s leg throbbed. Trying to keep up with his grandson’s pace down the drive was making his back hurt. Even Queenie was lagging. ‘My speech,’ said Samson, ‘is it all right?’ ‘It’s fine.’ ‘You’re kind of grumpy for a granddad.’ Clancy smiled. ‘Got reason to be grumpy.’ ‘Hooroo,’ yelled Murray. There was a small boy beside him. ‘Found your grandson wandering round.’ Queenie growled. ‘Down.’ She growled again. His other grandson took the hint and took a step back. ‘Sorry mate,’ said Clancy. ‘The old girl’s almost deaf.’ ‘She is our dog now,’ said Samson. Jonah shrugged and kept his distance. ‘So, you’re the other, hey?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘the other one.’ ‘Jonah, isn’t it?’ ‘My mother named me,’ said Jonah. ‘What were you doing down there?’ said Clancy. He gestured towards the old horse paddocks. ‘Looking for horses,’ said Jonah. ‘Your brother said you were interested. No horses up here anymore.’ ‘He said,’ Jonah pointed to Murray. ‘Reckon the kids been given the wrong end of the stick,’ said Murray. Clancy shifted the weight off his damaged leg. ‘Lots of jobs round here need doing.’ ‘I’m supposed to be working with the horses,’ said Jonah. Clancy shrugged. ‘They’re all gone, mate.’

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In the early days after David left for university he would send a postcard or sometimes an invitation. Clancy never read the invitations and he never wrote back. The postcards stopped after a year or two. Around the time David met Alice. Clancy got used to living on his own. Jack came round more and sometimes he even spent the night. With David gone, Jack didn’t have to worry about being seen. Then he got a phone call. David said he was in Devonport and coming to visit. He called from a payphone. Clancy could hear traffic. He looked different when he arrived, older. More like Essie. ‘How’re you doing for yourself?’ Clancy asked. He and David were having a drink on the verandah. Alice was asleep. ‘I graduated.’ ‘Sorry I missed that.’ ‘It’s not really about the graduation,’ said David. He took a sip of beer. ‘It’s about getting out there and starting to teach.’ ‘Anything to avoid the blue collar?’ ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Even as a little boy David refused to wear navy or green saying it made him look like he was blue collar. He said “blue collar” like it was the opposite of “university.” ‘Alice is really bright,’ David said, ‘and creative.’ ‘Didn’t notice.’ There was silence between them for a few moments. ‘It’s twins.’ ‘That right?’ said Clancy. He could feel David’s fingers curling around his wallet. ‘We’re happy about it.’ ‘You can’t send them back.’ ‘It’ll be difficult with four of us.’

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‘I see,’ said Clancy. He was surprised at the anger adrift in his voice. ‘We’re thinking we might have the babies here.’ ‘You can’t replace her.’ ‘What’s going on,’ said Alice from the doorway. She looked bed tousled and sleepy. Filled with pups. Clancy didn’t have another whelping in him. He left them standing in the kitchen and went to bed. Jack wasn’t waiting for him. Most nights he walked up from town and stayed for a few hours before walking back. He must have seen David’s car in the driveway. Clancy fell asleep quickly. ‘Clancy. Clance.’ Jack shook him awake. It was dawn. ‘Listen,’ said Jack. His voice sounded like a question. Together they listened to David’s car driving out of the carport and down the mountain.

Jonah stared at him. The boy looked like David, but darker. Smaller. Like a runt that got mean after a few years with the wrong owner. ‘You know where she is?’ Both of his grandsons shrugged. ‘Did she say where she was staying?’ ‘Town,’ said Samson as if town could be anywhere. ‘She booked a room at the pub,’ said Jonah. Samson put an arm over his brother’s shoulder but Jonah shrugged him off. ‘Mum will be back soon,’ said Samson quietly. ‘We’ll find her,’ said Clancy. He’d said it before.

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After what happened to Essie, Clancy left West Tasmania only once. It was hot, he remembered and there were flies in the waiting room. The nurse at the front desk had a tissue bunched up against her nose. Her face was flushed. She sniffed. Clancy asked where the babies were kept. ‘Name?’ she asked and she shoved the snotty tissue into the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘Fox,’ he said. She looked up. ‘First name?’ ‘I don’t know yet. It was just born.’ ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘your first name?’ This is why he hated leaving the mountain. ‘Clancy.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Clancy Fox?’ ‘That’s right,’ he said. Some people were never going to forget. She checked a stack of papers on her desk. Her nose started running again. ‘Fox… Fox… here they are. Oh it’s twins!’ she said. ‘Samson and Jonah. What lovely names. Are you the granddaddy?’ Instead of answering Clancy asked again where the baby room was and the nurse pointed to a room down the hall. ‘Congratulations,’ she shouted. Clancy ignored her. The room was behind glass and filled with plastic pods on wheels. It took a few minutes to find his grandsons. He saw Jonah first because his pod was hooked up to a machine helping him breathe. Jonah’s skin was marbled blue and grey. His mouth was open like he was trying to scream but there was no sound. Clancy tapped the glass gently and started another baby crying. He pressed his hands against the glass between them and tried to steady himself. Samson was in a crib next to his brother. He was a large, ruddy baby with blue eyes. But there was something not right about him either. His eyes were glassy, and pulled taut at the sides. His face was too fat and round. He looked like a blonde piglet. Clancy stepped back from the glass. Jack put a hand on his back. It was cold. ‘What do you reckon dad thought of us?’

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‘We were all right,’ said Clancy. ‘Ma never let me hold you,’ said Jack and he looked at the babies almost like he wished he could throw himself into one and be reborn. ‘Why not?’ asked Clancy. Jack didn’t answer. ‘They don’t look like anyone.’ ‘Come on,’ said Jack, ‘let’s go. I need a durry.’ Outside they saw David. He was bent over the steering wheel of his Datsun. His spine heaved up and down. He was crying. A few weeks later David sent him a letter saying he was moving his family to Queensland. He held the thin ruled paper in his hand and thought of when River cut her first tooth. She didn’t cry but when she bit him, as she often did, she drew blood.

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“How we gnaw at the barrier, because we are two.”

Anne Sexton

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12.

In the story of the other Samson he picks up two mountains and rubs them together like they are just lumps of dirt. On my granddad’s mountain I dig my hands down into the dirt and take two hands full and rub them together. The mountain falls from between my fingers like a shower of dirt. Some blows away, some falls back into the hole I dug it from, and some stays under my fingernails. I wonder what happens to the dirt and rocks and trees falling though the other Samson’s fingers. I wonder if he ever thinks of throwing the mountains. I do. I think about throwing the dirt in my hands like they are weapons. I think about throwing them at Jonah sometimes because he calls me names and when I tell he gets in trouble and I feel worse. ‘Why do you always have to dob?’ he asks me. ‘You did it,’ I say with my voice. ‘So? That doesn’t mean you have to tell everyone.’ I do not understand and he shakes his head and says, ‘you’re so dumb sometimes, Sam.’ ‘Samson,’ I say. ‘What?’ I crush the dirt in my fists and close my eyes and think about throwing the mountains in my hands. ‘My name is Samson,’ I say and I crush Jonah into the earth and cover him over with the mountains in my hands. Jonah shrugs. ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘I’m going inside.’ I let the dirt tumble out of my fingers and around my boots and it is like mountain rain and my brother is not crushed anymore and I pull him out again.

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Jonah waited in the doorway. It was his first bedroom on his own. There were no partitions, or bunk beds. He didn’t even have to share a wardrobe. It was just his. He and Samson always shared a room. They shared a crib when they were babies and, until they moved to their house on the coast, they even shared a bed. But this new room was all his. Jonah wished he had one of those bedroom door signs that said Jonah’s Room; Do Not Enter. ‘You can have the one at the end of the hall,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s the smallest, but then so are you.’ Clancy laughed and hit him across the back. Jonah decided he hated his granddad. The room had a single bed in the corner under the window, a standing lamp, a small wooden table with no chair, and an old wooden wardrobe. ‘Your dad used to hide in there,’ said Clancy pointing to the wardrobe. ‘It’s pretty small,’ said Jonah opening it. The hinges creaked and the air inside smelt stale. ‘He was pretty small.’ Jonah imagined kicking Clancy’s foot out from under his body and slamming the door in his face. ‘Nothing wrong with being small,’ said Clancy. ‘My big brother was slight.’ He liked the word slight. It made him think of darting foxes, and scurrying down burrows and cats gliding over rooftops. ‘He was a jockey. Before the war.’ ‘I’d really like some privacy.’ ‘Right,’ said Clancy, ‘fair enough. Take a look around when you’re ready.’ ‘Okay.’

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His granddad turned, and hobbled back down the hall. Jonah closed the door. His door. He smiled.

In my new room I sit quiet and by myself. My hands are dirty. I rub them on my pants. The bed is different to my bed at home. The noises are different and the smells are different and the bed is hard and it belongs to someone else. I do not fit the shape. The furniture is creepy and dark brown and at home my furniture is all different colours and I cover them in stickers. I will be in here, says Lucy with her hands and she points to her chest and down into my heart and lungs and bones where I keep her. But even with Lucy inside me, I am alone now because I have never slept without my brother. Jonah breathes me in and out. We send dreams between our beds. We read stories, sometimes, and push them out into the ocean between us and they are like islands. The jungle is one island and the Shere Khan roars from the middle. The wild is another island and monsters live there. The city is an island too, and the lights of the skyscrapers wake me up sometimes when they float past. Together, we watch every story. Sometimes, we hold hands across the darkness of our room. Jonah says he hates it and not to tell. Sometimes our hands are together because there is a thunderstorm and this is for me. But sometimes, it is when our parents are fighting and this is for Jonah because I know our parents cannot fight forever. I do not unpack the rocks and stones and pebbles from my boxes because there are already too many memories and they are spinning around me.

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First Jonah unpacked his books and arranged them on his desk in neat piles. There was The Jungle Book and Castaway Island and his father’s copy of Call of the Wild. His father said he might like it. Jonah wasn’t sure he would. He liked stories where people were lost for a long time and became someone different. He didn’t think Call of the Wild was going to be like that. ‘Take it with you,’ said his father. ‘If those boys give you a hard time again just thump them with it.’ ‘With a book?’ ‘Why not, it’s heavy isn’t it?’ Jonah took the coiled snakeskin out of its brown paper bag and rested it on top of his books. Jonah touched the delicate scales. ‘Do you like our new room?’ The snake didn’t answer him.

Sometimes when I am inside thunder or when I am sad or lost, I imagine we are back inside my mum’s belly together. We hold hands like at the aquarium when we were little and Jonah is there and even though he is beside me he is not holding my hand. We are watching. We are watching the sharks and whales and fish swimming together and not eating. ‘Why aren’t they attacking each other?’ asks Jonah and it is like he picked up a pebble from inside me. ‘They are too well fed,’ says our dad.

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It is cobbled light, and blue dark, and today we are all Jonah, and we are all in the belly. ‘Do you see that?’ says Jonah. ‘No.’ ‘Just there.’ ‘I can’t see it.’ The ghost mouth moves towards me and it is like there is a hole in the ocean. ‘It’s so huge,’ says Jonah and I let go of his hand and both my hands press on the glass and it is cold but like always it takes my skin time to feel it. The water is filled with the whale. It has a long dark blue body and wide hard fins and the skin is speckled with white dots and they are different sizes and look like bubbles near the surface. The whale opens its wide mouth and moves through the water and the sharks scatter and the fish scatter and even the seagulls high above are gone. ‘I see it,’ I say with my voice and for once my voice is faster than my hands but my voice sounds rusty. ‘It’s called a whale shark,’ says my dad and he is behind us and I have almost forgotten he is there because he is distracted and sometimes when my dad is distracted I let my mind go limp and slip away too. Jonah asks, ‘how does it fit in there?’ The whale shark glides past us and disappears into the darkness of the water and the other fish and the seaweed. It does not come back. I open my brother’s door. Jonah is inside his new room and he is looking at his horses. Most are still in the box. Only one is in his hand. It is gold and I think I hear him say, ‘they’re gone,’ and I want to say ‘I am not Jonah,’ but I don’t because my mum is always saying not to butt in. He hears me and turns around. ‘What do you want?’ My chest feels tight and I want to tell my brother I am lonely and I miss our mum, and our dad and Lucy and our room and our home because this is just a house but because I might cry and my eyes might open up and spill water all over my face and hands I say, ‘to see you.’

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Jonah drops the gold horse into the box. It disappears. He stands up and walks over to me and I want him to hug me the way my mum sometimes does or say ‘everything is okay, Sam’ like my dad. ‘This is my room,’ says Jonah. I nod. ‘You understand? My room?’ ‘Yes,’ I say with my voice and it sounds like a creaky gate. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Get out,’ he says. Even though I am not at the aquarium, the whale shark glides past me again and it is just beyond my hands and the mouth closes and the tail disappears and I stay there and I step back in the hallway. My brother closes his door and it is not like the partition at home. I press my ear to the wood but I cannot hear him and I cannot move the wall and I cannot look behind or take it down. I am not crying because I do not make any noise, but water spills from my eyes anyway. I catch it in my hands and hide it in my pockets.

Jonah heard Samson shuffle down the hall. He opened his door. The handle clicked when it turned. He stopped. Murray and his granddad were talking in the kitchen. He didn’t look out. If he did, they might see him. They were quiet and so Jonah knew they would be talking about something good. ‘Did you find her?’ asked Clancy. There was no answer. ‘She’s just through,’ said Clancy and his voice dropped right down when he said, ’shot through.’ Jonah gripped the edge of the door tightly and tried not to make a sound.

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‘No one’s seen her in town,’ said Murray. ‘Kirra reckons she never came into the pub.’ ‘Shit,’ said Clancy. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘What’re you going to do?’ ‘What can I do? Keep them. Put them to work.’ From across the hall Jonah heard a noise like a sniff. He pushed his door all the way open. Samson was standing in his doorway listening too. His eyes were wide. It looked like he’d been crying. Jonah closed the door again.

In the hallway I hear quiet voices and I follow them like a bird following crumbs. ‘Did you find her?’ one of them says and it sounds like my granddad. It is quiet and so I think maybe it is because someone is signing. ‘Where do you think she’s gone?’ ‘She’s shot through.’ More water spills down my face because I know mum is missing and I don’t want my mum to be shot. ‘She can’t have.’ ‘No one’s seen her. Never came into the pub.’ My face feels red like it is burnt and maybe she is shot and maybe she has shot herself to get away. My chest hurts and I wish Lucy was with me because she would solve this case for me. Jonah opens the door to his new room where he is all by himself and I wonder if he misses me. With my eyes I try and say that I miss him and I miss my mum and I am lonely even though there is a dog on the mountain. With my eyes I try and tell my brother that I still want him even if he is on the other side of the wall but my eyes must not say any of this, because Jonah closes the door again.

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Jonah crept down the hallway. The floorboards were cold and he wished he’d remembered to wear socks. It was dark. Darker than he knew existed. There were no streetlights, because there were no streets, or moonlight. Everything was closed to the outside. He felt the kitchen tiles beneath his feet and took a step towards the window. The curtains were so cold they felt damp. He pulled them aside and turned around. For a second Jonah stopped breathing. It was the tiger. ‘Hello,’ he whispered. The skin was dark amber and the stripes across its back were so pronounced they almost looked like huge claw marks tearing through the tiger’s flesh. He counted them. There were sixteen. The skin was splayed out over the wall with its chin resting between two nails and the front legs hooked over two more. Jonah wondered if Clancy ever took it down. Jonah jabbed the end of one of its claws. It wasn’t very sharp. They were fake. So were the eyes and nose. Jonah didn’t mind. He liked glass eyes and stuffed animal faces. He saw some once in a museum with Samson and his dad. ‘Daddy, look at the Bear,’ Jonah said pointing to the huge, angry Grizzly frozen inside a glass case. The bear was up on its hind legs, rearing back ready to swat some smaller animal with one of his huge paws. The jaws were open and it was baring its teeth. Mimicking the shape of the bear Jonah turned around and growled. He didn’t realise Samson was behind him, also trying to see the bear. When he saw the terrified look on his brother’s face Jonah froze, his fingers still curled into claws. Samson started to cry. ‘You scared him,’ his father said picking up Samson. Samson was huge and sometimes it was a strain for their father to carry him. ‘Why did you do that?’ ‘Sorry,’ said Jonah dropping his hands down. His imaginary bear claws recoiled back into his fingertips. ‘Jonah, use sign,’ said his father. ‘He can’t understand you otherwise.’

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Sorry, he signed and it was the only sign word he needed to know.

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13.

Outside his bedroom window Clancy heard the gate open and close. Murray’s footsteps crunched noisily across the gravel drive. He never knew how Murray found his way to the shack without a torch, but he always did. The radio was on his side of the bed. Clancy flicked it on. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his pants. He couldn’t reach his shins anymore. Clancy ran his hand over his thigh. The veins in his leg looked like dozens of overflowing streams just beneath his skin. ‘… already been several fatal accidents coming up to the Christmas period…’ That was the time of day when he missed Essie the most. ‘… and outside Devonport two accidents involving unidentified…’ Essie would wash her face, and slip into her nightgown. Clancy would put on a clean shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. That part of the routine was separate, but it always came together over the sink while they were both brushing their teeth. Most nights it stayed together until morning. Clancy switched off the radio. The air lifted, and fell back around him. It was silent again.

‘Shouldn’t keep horses like this, Da,’ said River as she tucked an almost dreaded tendril of black hair behind her ear. She was such a grub. ‘They got to be wild.’

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‘What would we live on?’ Clancy said. He was smiling at her. River chewed on a long blade of grass. ‘The mountain will give us what we need,’ she said finally. After she disappeared Clancy let the mob go. There were only a dozen by then and he didn’t want to care for them, but he didn’t want to sell them either. He opened the gates. ‘Go on,’ he said. One caramel mare nuzzled his hand. She was asking for food. ‘Go on,’ he shouted and he pulled his hand away from her. His voice echoed around the valley and up through the mountain. She was the first to bolt. The others followed. River hooped and hollered. ‘Go, go, go,’ she chanted and she ran with them. A few hours she came back. Her dress was ripped and her face was wind swept and wild. ‘Where’d you go?’ he asked her but River didn’t answer him. Years later a mob of wild brumbies were photographed travelling up the coast. There was a hazy black and white picture in the paper. Clancy stared at it for a long time. Searching for a stowaway rider. Sometimes he saw horse prints on the mountain and he wondered if the mob broke, or maybe one just got left behind.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ asked Jack. He was wearing a brown linen suit Clancy had never seen before. ‘Did the kids see you?’ ‘Nah,’ said Jack. ‘You’re safe.’ ‘Nice suit.’ ‘Thought I’d dress up a bit,’ said Jack. He walked over to the curtains and looked out into the night. ‘Just in case I got to meet the boys.’

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‘Not tonight,’ said Clancy. His leg ached more than usual tonight. ‘You could try finding David.’ ‘I wouldn’t know how,’ said Clancy. He walked into the bathroom and didn’t bother closing the door.

Clancy watched David pull his little brown Datsun around to the front of the house. He got out but left the engine running. The car coughed. It needed a service. Clancy waved him back into the car and David obeyed. He was wearing a red jumper over a shirt with a white collar. He leant in through the window and pulled the belt across David’s chest to make sure it was secure. ‘Know what roads you’re taking?’ ‘Yes, Dad.’ ‘Doubt it will get you there.’ ‘I had it serviced. They said it was fine.’ ‘Off you go,’ said Clancy and he knocked the roof of the car twice with this hand, trying to feel his son through the roof. ‘Bye, Dad,’ he said, but Clancy didn’t reply.

Jack took his coat off and folded it over the arm of Essie’s chair. He lit a cigarette with the gold lighter he always kept in his pocket. Jack reckoned a friend gave it to him before the war. The casing was gold and cut to look like diamonds. ‘It’s a real Zippo,’ said Jack. ‘He said it would bring me luck.’

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Jack never told Clancy who the friend was. ‘Why not just get them jobs,’ said Jack. ‘Is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time?’ ‘Mulling,’ said Jack. Clancy pulled the sheets back. ‘Well?’ ‘I’ve already thought of that,’ said Clancy. ‘Murray can take Samson. He needs help with the bees.’ ‘It’s a waste of time,’ said Jack. ‘No one buys it.’ ‘People used to. When the kids were young,’ said Clancy. ‘Bill’s honey could cure anything.’ ‘Oh well, I mean shit… if it was Bill’s honey.’ Clancy sighed. ‘Samson knows sign language.’ Jack shrugged. ‘So?’ ‘Bill signed,’ said Clancy, ‘and I reckon that’s why his honey was so good.’ ‘Oh that’s right,’ said Jack. ‘Who taught him again?’’ Clancy heaved his leg over the side of the bed and pulled the sheets up. ‘That just leaves the little bloke,’ he said. The sheets were cold. Clancy moved his feet around quickly trying to warm them up. ‘I don’t think he’s up for much.’ ‘You reckon leaving him with nothing to do is a good idea?’ Clancy laid his head on Essie’s pillow. It didn’t smell like her anymore. It smelt like Jack.

Essie was curled in their sheets like a delicious oyster. ‘Wouldn’t you like to learn?’ she asked him and she shifted into the space beneath Clancy’s arm, resting her head on his chest. ‘His nook’, she called it. Her breasts parted. ‘What?’ he said. Clancy closed his eyes and smelt her hair.

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‘Sign.’ ‘I don’t reckon.’ ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I’ve enough trouble with English.’ ‘It is English,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can, love,’ said Clancy and he held her body closer so as not to see the disappointment on her face.

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14.

Clancy cooked up a pan of bacon, and scrambled six eggs in the grease. He made toast and left the butter open on Essie’s table. He called the boys. They were both still wearing pajamas. ‘Take the pan out to the fence and throw the bacon grease onto the grass,’ said Clancy. Samson nodded and walked outside holding the pan carefully. Clancy thought of River. She held a bird’s nest like that one. Samson almost dropped the pan twice and went nowhere near the fence like he didn’t know it was there. ‘Why do you do that,’ asked Jonah. ‘No reason,’ he lied. An old bloke from Malbina told Clancy tigers couldn’t resist the smell of bacon fat. Jonah asked if there was any multigrain toast and Clancy said no, and not to ask for anything that wasn’t already on the table. ‘We have multigrain at home,’ said Jonah. ‘Mum says it’s better.’ ‘Tough.’ Samson filled his plate with eggs and bacon. He stabbed his toast down into the middle like the sails of a ship. Jonah said he hated eggs and only ate the bacon. ‘Can I eat outside?’ asked Samson. ‘You can eat on the roof if you want,’ said Clancy and he ladled instant coffee into a mug. The cup was still damp from the sink and the granules turned to thick black syrup. The kettle boiled and he poured hot water in over the top. Samson sat on the steps and balanced the plate in his lap. Clancy could hear the scrape of his fork and knife against the plate. Jonah buttered two pieces of white toast, made himself a bacon sandwich, and sat at the table opposite the tiger pelt. The boy ate in silence.

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The table belonged to Essie’s mother. The legs were Walnut but the top was Huon pine. Her parents found it tucked away under the stilts of their first house. At first they thought it was junk, but when her mother wiped her hand along the dusty tabletop a streak of golden honey appeared. Essie’s mother cleaned the table with a cloth dipped into a bucket of soapy water even though her father said it wasn’t worth it. They had a dining table already. The corners were shaved down, he said, and struts added that weakened the legs. The leaves, used to expand the table, were against a nearby box and made from another wood again. Pauper’s pine, her father said, but Essie’s mother moved it into the dining room all the same. Sometimes Essie joked that her mother might have made a different decision if she could hear him, or if he could sign. After her father died and her mother was moved into the retirement home Essie and Clancy drove to Sydney to bring the table back. Clancy remembered how the table filled the rear view mirror on that drive back to Tassie. It followed him all the way, sitting up in the tray of the Ute as if to say, ‘I know her better than you.’ Essie pushed it up against the kitchen wall beneath the pelt. ‘I like that tiger better now,’ she said with her hands on her hips and the first signs of David showing through her middle. A few months later Clancy stained the table reddish brown while Essie was visiting her mother in the hospital. He intended to varnish it with one layer of shellac but dust and insects kept dropping into the thin tacky layer and puckering the finish. Clancy painted layer over layer until the table looked like dark brown crystal. When Essie got home from the hospital she cried and even though he couldn’t understand the words caught in her hands Clancy realised he was just one more person trying to turn the table into something it wasn’t.

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‘You drink coffee?’ Jonah looked up from his bacon sandwich. ‘My mother doesn’t let me.’ ‘Well, she’s not here,’ said Clancy and made another, weaker, cup and handed it to his grandson. ‘What’re your plans for today?’ ‘Aren’t we going to the pub?’ ‘Murray asked around for us. She hasn’t checked into anywhere in town,’ he said. ‘Not yet anyway.’ Samson was still sitting on the back step. Queenie was next to him. Every now and then Samson would give her a bite of his food. His plate was almost empty. Clancy turned back to Jonah. ‘Has your mother ever shot through before?’ ‘Shot through?’ ‘Left.’ ‘She went to a caravan park once, in Noosa.’ ‘And?’ ‘We didn’t know she was going on holiday. Not until the night before,’ said Jonah and he took another bite of his sandwich. ‘She sent us a postcard.’ ‘Do you have any idea where your father is?’ Jonah shrugged. ‘With the woman from his school. I don’t know where she lives.’ Clancy heard footsteps. ‘Let’s not talk about it in front of your brother. Does he upset easy?’ ‘No,’ said Jonah. He tipped the full cup of coffee into the sink. Samson opened the door. It swung shut behind him. ‘Finished,’ he shouted.

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‘Finished,’ said River and she dropped her fork into the middle of her untouched plate of food. ‘No you haven’t, baby,’ said Essie. ‘Look, you haven’t even started.’ River crossed her arms. ‘It’s good,’ said David. Bright orange mush swirled around his tongue as he spoke. ‘Where’s Moonie?’ River asked again. She meant Murray. ‘He left for a while.’ ‘Where?’ ‘He didn’t say,’ said Essie. ‘Why?’ Essie looked at Clancy. He wasn’t going to help her, not this time. ‘Try some of your dinner,’ she said. River shoved her plate away. The cutlery clanged and a lump of sweet potato oozed onto the table. ‘River,’ said Clancy. His voice darkened like a thunderstorm. ‘Stop grizzling and eat your tucker.’ River pursed her lips. Her eyes flashed. She had a storm of her own. ‘No.’ Clancy pushed the plate back in front of her. David stopped chewing. Clancy reached towards his daughter and pulled her left hand out from inside her crossed arms. ‘Clancy, don’t.’ ‘Where’s Moonie!’ River shouted. This time, it wasn’t a question. She was accusing him. Clancy picked up her fork, forced it into her tightly closed fist and bent her arm. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘No.’ She opened her hand and dropped the fork. ‘Eat.’

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River shoved her hand down into the mush and picked it up. Clancy let go. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said. River opened her mouth and shoved her hand inside. She scowled and mash dripped down the side of her chin. Clancy started to laugh.

After breakfast Clancy told Jonah to go outside and play. Jonah said he was too old to play and he went to his bedroom instead. The dog barked and something crashed into the side of the house. Samson clearly wasn’t too old to play. ‘Sorry,’ he shouted. A few seconds later Clancy heard Queenie bark and Samson laugh. The phone was in the living room next to Clancy’s armchair. He dialed the number for the pub. Kirra answered. He could hear the breakfast crowd behind her. ‘Clancy?’ said Kirra. She sounded surprised. ‘We haven’t heard from you in a while.’ ‘Been busy,’ he said. ‘How you been?’ ‘You know how it is, same shit different day.’ ‘How’s your boy? Murray said he wasn’t well.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘He’s in remission now, but still can’t seem to keep anything down,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘I’m looking for someone.’ ‘The woman Murray was asking about?’ Clancy nodded. Kirra cleared her throat. ‘Who is she?’ Clancy didn’t answer. He’d never called Alice his daughter-in-law before. Silence grew up between them like weeds. He thought about Lou’s skin beneath his

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hands and her legs around his waist. He remembered her smell. Like grog and roses, a warm afternoon in a flowering garden holding a cold beer. ‘Hey Clance?’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you with her?’ ‘With?’ ‘Seeing her?’ Clancy thought of the night with Kirra, all those years ago. She was hardly more than a girl and he was already turning into an old man. It was long before she was married, before her son was born, and before her husband shot through. She was young and pretty. Completely fucked up and trying to get free of the mountain just like David. Kirra was the driftwood he clung to after the storm hoping she could pull him free but instead she was caught in the eddy and her life was washed away down stream. ‘No,’ said Clancy. He hung up the phone. In his bathroom he opened the medicine cabinet and took down a bottle of Essie’s hand lotion. He opened it. It smelt like honey and cream. Clancy locked the door.

She pushed him through the door and slammed it shut. His breathing was heavy. They could see his chest moving up and down. Two buttons didn’t rip. She undid them quickly with her fingers. ‘Clancy,’ she said. Her voice sounded like a hiss. She loosened his belt and he stepped out of his pants. The buckle scraped the floorboards. Her lips were warm and her breath felt wet. She lifted her dress up and he saw her breasts. He pushed his palm into them like he could force them back into her, or pull them out. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. He lifted her left leg and

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clamped her knee in against his waist. She was breathing heavy and saying things. He pushed her shoulder back and looked down. He was taller. He bent his knees and pushed his dick up inside her. She yowled and said she loved him.

After he cleared away the breakfast plates Clancy went looking for his grandson. He found Jonah sitting on the bed in his room playing with a little golden horse. Clancy knocked on the door and Jonah shoved it under his thigh. He smiled. The boy was obviously embarrassed to still be playing with toys. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked. Jonah nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I reckon you boys need jobs,’ said Clancy. ‘You ever had a job?’ Jonah shook his head. ‘I’m only fifteen.’ ‘I had my first job at twelve,’ said Clancy. ‘You’re father should’ve had you working.’ Jonah shrugged. ‘Well he didn’t.’ ‘I was thinking you might like to help me,’ said Clancy. ‘I’m trying to find something.’ ‘Will you pay me?’ ‘You want to know what I’m looking for first?’ Jonah waited. His face looked like a question mark. ‘Tigers,’ said Clancy. ‘Will I get to shoot any?’ ‘I’m not giving you a gun, mate,’ said Clancy and because the boy looked bored and annoyed, ‘but you’d in like Flynn if you found a live one.’ ‘Does that mean I can go anywhere?’ asked Jonah. Clancy nodded. ‘But, if you see anything else-’

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‘Like what?’ interrupted Jonah. His eyes were sharp. Clancy wondered if they could cut him. ‘Why don’t you have a look around today?’ said Clancy and he thought of the pelt. His skin tingled. ‘See what you think.’ ‘Samson can’t come,’ said Jonah. ‘Take your brother,’ said Clancy. ‘He’s too slow.’ ‘So take him and walk slow,’ said Clancy. ‘What’re you going to do?’ asked Jonah. Clancy shrugged. He didn’t want them to know about River and the pelt. Not yet. ‘Reckon I’ll take a bit of a walk,’ he said. Jonah scowled and walked outside. He slammed the screen door. ‘Come on,’ he said to his brother. ‘Where?’ asked Samson. ‘Hurry up.’ Clancy watched them leave. Samson waved goodbye. Jonah walked with his hands in his pockets and his face towards the bush. It was almost as if the boy was waiting for something to emerge from the underbrush. Clancy held his hand out. One drop of water and then another. It was starting to rain. Spitting, his dad called it. Not enough to fill the creeks but enough to make the ferns droop and the ground smell like wet dog. Back in the kitchen he lifted the tiger pelt down from the wall and wrapped it around his shoulders. As a rule he tried to avoid getting the pelt damp, but today he needed to talk to Essie and he never missed a chance to hunt the wild tigers. Besides, he didn’t reckon it would get much heavier.

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15.

Outside the house where my granddad lives there are long white trunks stretching up and up and when I look at them I think they look like thin ghosts reaching for the sky. At home my mum keeps ferns in pots and she says ‘adds a bit of lushness to the garden’, but on the mountain ferns are piling over each other and draping across trees and ground and water. Sometimes they are so deep it is like the sun has given up. I lift one and look and underneath the smell is of secrets. On the mountain there are lots of birds and nests and hollows beneath trees where insects live and spiders make wide silver webs. The sound of birds is always everywhere. At home the sound is of one loud bird followed by another and they are swooping over and sometimes a bird drops something from their beak like a nut or a dead lizard. But on the mountain the birds are many and I can hear them but they are also hidden. Further into the bush and there are drooping ferns casting shadows like cages and hollowed-out logs with new plants peeping through sheets of thick green moss. I take a deep breath because this is what my dad says to do when I am scared or stressed. ‘Take a deep, deep breath, Sam. That’s it, and another one.’ The bush smells like dust turning into mud, or like light dipping into darkness, or a cocoon just as it opens. I imagine my dad on the mountain and maybe he is almost fifteen, like me, or maybe he is younger. I think about his footsteps next to mine like when we go walking on the beach at home. My dad is all the way in the front and Jonah is squeezed in beside him but my dad is so large sometimes that there is not much room for Jonah and so I stay all the way back because if there is no room for Jonah then

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there will be no room for me. One by one the footsteps of my dad become my footsteps because I do not make any new ones of my own. ‘A footprint is like an imprint,’ says my dad but I think something else. I think a footprint is like a memory and maybe that is the same thing.

Jonah had never been cold. Not really. Sometimes it got chilly at school because the classrooms were built near the ocean and the wind coming across the water could get pretty strong. But it was nothing like the cold on the mountain. It was the kind of cold that crept into your skin and sat in your muscles and bones. It wasn’t possible to shake that sort of cold, or protect yourself from it. Even through his flannelette shirt, two jumpers and singlet Jonah felt freezing. He wished he had gloves and a beanie. The cold was in his bones. ‘Do you like walking?’ asked Samson. Jonah didn’t answer. ‘I like walking.’ He took a deep breath. The cold afternoon air welled up in his lungs. He coughed. Samson hated walking. He complained about his sore knees every time they went to the shops. ‘How long are we walking for?’ asked Samson. ‘Shut up,’ said Jonah. He licked his lips hoping to dislodge the tightness in his mouth but the layer of fresh spit only made his face feel colder. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and ran his fingers over the bronze body of the Mustang. It felt dead. ‘Hey,’ said Samson and he sounded almost out of breath, ‘you walk fast.’ Jonah wanted to walk so fast that his brother would never catch up. He imagined kicking Samson out of a car on the side of the road. Like a mongrel dog. ‘Did you see that brown thing?’

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‘What brown thing,’ said Jonah. ‘The trees?’ ‘No, over there. Look.’ Jonah didn’t look. They walked for a while in silence. ‘Granddad likes me,’ said Samson eventually. He sounded out of breath. The old man did seem to like his brother. Jonah couldn’t understand why. Their mother said once that people liked Samson because no one expected anything of him. ‘He’s a lovely surprise,’ she said. ‘Why?’ ‘They think everyone like him has bowl haircuts and spend their days mindlessly clapping their hands,’ said his mother, ‘but Sammy isn’t like those people, he’s different.’ ‘Hey Jonah?’ ‘What?’ ‘How long before mum comes back?’ The mention of their mother hung between them like a dark cloud. Neither of them wanted to finish a conversation about her, just in case someone said she wasn’t coming back. Jonah took a deep breath. The bush swelled around him and the silence of their bodies cut through the rustling trees like an empty riverbank. ‘Stop following me,’ he said but Samson was already too far behind him to hear. ‘Fucking idiot,’ he said quietly. For the first time in his life no one told him to apologise. Jonah waited. There was no one to tell him. He was alone. Jonah could say anything and no one would try and stop him. No one would look at him like there was something wrong with him. On the mountain he could do anything he wanted.

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My brother walks very fast and is almost running and he leaves me and I am nervous. I am not nervous because I am alone or because I am outside or because I do not know where I am. I am nervous because I am being watched and I am also being followed. At first I think it is something large like in Jonah’s book. Maybe it is a tiger or a panther or a bear. I try not to look into the bush where it is dense and dark and there is no grass like at home, only sharp rocks and white tree trunks. There is a humming, almost like music far away that I can only just hear because it is playing for someone else. The music makes me feel safe and so I look into the trees. I look into the white trees and over the sharp rocks. I squint my eyes and I see a shimmer and the thing that is following me is like a brown ghost. I wave, and the brown ghost disappears.

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16.

Clancy walked with his eyes down, following the creek. It was raining. Dirt turned to mud. Ferns and trees were bending with the new weight of the rain. Tassie bush was different in the rain. The white ghost gums were darker, drunk on rainwater. Huge King Ferns sprang up between tree trunks and fishbone ferns drooped over the ground as if sighing at the sky. Sometimes the clumps of ferns got so thick it was impossible to find where they were growing from. Clancy pushed the ferns out of the way. Fronds flicked water across his chest and arms. He shivered. Years ago he saw tracks along the far side of the mountain, above the caves. There were three imprints of a foot with four toes and a long middle pad. He even saw signs of whatever it was leaning back onto its tail for support. There were feathers nearby and a bloodstain at the base of a eucalypt. Clancy remembered pushing his way through the trees, running for the first time since the accident. Running home to tell Bill about the tracks and find out what he should do. The forest floor stopped crunching. Clancy looked down. Everything was being slowly drowned by dark black brown mud. Beside him, the creek was full to bursting. Years back, towards the end of the dry season, the kids tried to make their own waterfall further down the creek. Clancy told them it wouldn’t work but they only laughed at him. River oversaw the entire thing, while David and Murray were what she called, ‘heavy lifters.; Together they built a bridge with rocks from the bank. It was one of the only times David ever joined in with something outside of the house. Clancy remembered watching River play in the tiny waterfall. ‘Put ya bottom up against the rocks, Moonie,’ she squealed. ‘The bubbles go up ya arse.’

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The bridge took two days to construct. A few weeks later, the first big rain punched through the bridge and scattered the rocks. Most of them were still there. Clancy heard the waterfall before he saw it. He stepped out from the awning of ferns, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Clean, open air filled his lungs. He opened his eyes and steadied himself on a tree trunk. The falls were louder than usual. Jack was on a rock jutting out ahead. Waiting for him, although Clancy didn’t know how Jack knew he would be there. His jeans and shirt were damp and muddy but somehow his cigarette was dry and burning. ‘Take it easy,’ he shouted. ‘Oh fuck off,’ said Clancy and he took a swing at him even though he knew he would never reach. Jack laughed and the kookas followed.

‘Come on, son,’ said Clancy. He was standing in the shallows beneath the falls waiting for David to join him. ‘It’s not even up to my waist.’ David was wearing a pair of swimming shorts and waiting on the bank. He shuffled nervously. ‘But you’re tall.’ ‘If something goes wrong, I’m here. I’ll get you,’ said Clancy. ‘You never said anything about something going wrong,’ shouted David. Clancy imagined the creek surging up, lifting his son into the water, and carrying him downstream. David was lucky. Clancy’s father taught them how to swim by throwing them in a dirty dam when they were five years old. ‘Don’t be a chick shit, son,’ his father shouted. He said something else but Clancy didn’t hear because he was struggling to keep his head above the surface of the water. David was still on the bank. ‘Come on, mate,’ said Clancy, ‘you can’t be afraid of everything.’ David shook his head. His teeth were chattering. Clancy dropped his arms. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Put your clothes back on.’

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They walked home in silence. Clancy tried to talk, but David wasn’t interested. ‘How’s school?’ Nothing. ‘Like any girls yet?’ The boy turned his face away and stared into the bush. The moment David could see the house he started running. He flung the door open and went inside. Clancy closed the gate and walked up the steps. Behind him the hills hoist creaked. The kitchen smelt like warm cake. David was sobbing into his mother’s shirt. ‘What happened?’ asked Essie. ‘Nothing happened. I tried to take him swimming.’ ‘I didn’t want to,’ David sobbed. His voice went up and down in hysterical heaves. ‘Dad wouldn’t listen.’ Clancy wanted to slap David across the face but Essie was between them. She stroked David’s hair and tried to calm him down. Clancy left them and walked out on to the verandah. The air felt crisp and fresh. He walked to the railing and held himself as far away from the house as he could, without actually leaving it. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ said Essie, ‘sit at the table and you can have some cake.’ ‘Okay, Mummy,’ said David.

There was something floating in the water. Clancy slid out from underneath the pelt and hung it carefully over the branch of a nearby tree. Bunched up, it looked like an old lady’s fox stole. Women didn’t dress like that anymore. In stoles and Sunday hats. He could understand why. It felt like removing layers of clothes. He was sweating.

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The water was murky from the rain. It was slippery along the bank. The ground smelt of mud and shit, and the crashing waterfall sounded like applause. Clancy looked into the water. An eye. It was open. Lips curled into a frozen cry. Teeth. He pulled back from the bank. The kookas started again. The Tasmanian devil bobbed helplessly on the surface, swollen, like an inflatable ball. There was something over its other eye. He looked closer. A fat black muscle pulsated. The devil was covered in leeches.

Essie was facing away from him. She unbuttoned her shirt and lifted it over her head. The white material billowed like a flag. ‘I surrender,’ she called and she let it go. Her shirt floated gently to the ground. Essie crossed her arms over her head and the gold of her new wedding ring caught the light. It looked like a candle flame. She stretched. The scoop of her back looked like a deep riverbed. Clancy wanted to fill it. Her arms uncrossed and two small mounds of fat settled back into place, just beneath her shoulder blades. He wanted to suck them. The waterfall thundered. ‘Aren’t you glad you married me,’ she shouted. She unbuttoned her skirt and stepped out of the fabric. She wriggled out of her underwear and left them on the rocks as well. The skin on her arse was lightly marbled. She held out her arms. Essie’s body didn’t have the same gentle undulations as the women he saw in Jack’s dirty magazines. She was different. The curves of her body didn’t hint. They swallowed. Clancy wanted to hold her hips and press her arse into him. He wanted to taste the skin on her neck and drink the water from inside her mouth. She turned to look at him. He could see the side of her breast and nipple. ‘It’s fucking cold,’ she shouted.

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Clancy smiled. Essie laughed. ‘I’m going in.’ ‘It’s too cold.’ She removed the clip holding her hair and dropped it. She shook her head. Thick coils of brown curls fell over her shoulders and spilled into the curve of her back like she was already part of the waterfall. Essie laughed again and dove into the water.

Clancy’s path came to an end at a large rock jutting out from the side of the mountain. The rain stopped and the sun enclosed the mountain in a sheath of auburn. Everything was dripping gold. ‘Hello, love,’ he said to Essie’s grave, ‘and you too, mate,’ he said to the patch of ground beside her where Bill was buried. Clancy smelt smoke. ‘I don’t know how you can call him that,’ said Jack. ‘He is,’ said Clancy. He wished he could reach down into the earth and pull them both out alive ‘A mate?’ said Jack and he sounded like their father on the grog. ‘He didn’t do it on purpose,’ said Clancy. ‘Fuck off he didn’t,’ said Jack.

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Everyone called his brother ‘Good Old Jack’ as if it were his christened name. Good old Jack, everyone loved him. Jack was small and wiry, handsome in his own way. He was five years older than Clancy, which was a decent space of time in those days. Twin girls were born between them but died soon after they took their first breath. Jack never cared much about anything. Not until he discovered the horses. ‘Reckon I’m slight for a reason,’ he said after he won his first race, ‘and the reason’s going to make us bloody rich.’ With his winnings he bought Clancy his first beer at the pub in town. They talked for hours. ‘You can break them, mate,’ said Jack and he slapped Clancy across the back, ‘and I’ll fucking ride them.’ That night they figured it all out, Fox and Fox. ‘We’ll be rich,’ they said hitting their pony glasses together. ‘The Fox brothers,’ they shouted together and beer sloshed over the side of their glasses and onto the table. ‘Give us a ballad, Jack,’ shouted one of the men at the bar. ‘Good old Jack,’ said someone else, ‘he’s always up for a ballad.’ The bartender started a cheer. ‘Come. On. Jack.’ They all joined and it was like each word was it’s own cry and each cry was only slightly disconnected from the last. Someone hollered. It sounded like a wolf cry. Jack stood, teetering just slightly. He tipped over the table in mock drunkenness. ‘He can’t,’ shouted Clancy. ‘He can’t hold his drink.’ In one quick movement Jack was up and on top of their table, his hand outstretched. ‘Jack. Jack. Jack,’ they all shouted. Some of the blokes further down the back were hammering their fists into the tables like a drum beat. He cleared his throat and the bar fell silent. ‘What lies beyond the western pines, towards the sinking sun,’ started Jack, ‘and not a survey mark defines, the bounds of Brumby’s Run…’ Not long after that night Jack was conscripted.

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The first time he saw Jack after the war was the week after he buried Bill. Clancy was wearing his suit jacket and carrying flowers. He was on his way up the mountain to the graves when he saw his brother. ‘Is that you?’ Clancy asked. Jack smiled. ‘What you doing out here, mate?’ ‘Visiting a friend,’ said Clancy and the word ‘friend’ burned through his throat like a bushfire. ‘Where’s he at?’ Clancy gestured the bunch of flowers in his hand towards the tip of the mountain. ‘Taking these.’ ‘How long’s he been up there?’ ‘Last Thursday gone.’ Jack kept his eyes on Clancy while he took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘With Esther?’ ‘It’s what she wanted.’ Jack flicked the butt into the bush and it disappeared. ‘Want some company?’ Clancy felt his body relax. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The Army told his parents Jack washed off deck while he and a mate were sunbaking. Neither body was ever found. ‘Bloody well wouldn’t be, would it? Not in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,’ said his father after he delivered the news to Clancy and his mother. ‘What did the army bloke say about it?’

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‘The army bloke,’ his father scoffed. ‘The army bloke said Jack was sun baking, bloody sun baking. Reckons he wanted a tan for home, he said.’ ‘Sounds like him,’ said Clancy and he couldn’t quite bring himself to say Jack’s name. He felt it shivering on the end of his tongue like a sob. ‘Might never have been swept off if he wasn’t such a bloody slight little bloke,’ said their father. ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Clancy’s mother who was holding either side of her clean kitchen sink like it might save her from falling. ‘A bigger bloke might have survived it. Might not have been so easy to wash away.’ After he gave them the news, Clancy’s father went back to work. ‘He was so close to home,’ was all his mother said and then quietly went about making dozens of jars of lemon butter. Clancy watched her pushing the halved bush lemons into the juicer. She forced them down, sharply flicking her wrist to squeeze out all the juice. The jars of lemon butter stayed in the pantry for a long time before she threw them away. It was the first and last time his mother ever threw glass jars away. Clancy knew their mother loved Jack more. She loved him in the way all women love sons that other women covet. Their mother didn’t know Jack wasn’t really interested in girls. No one did except Clancy. None of them ever spoke much of Jack after that. ‘Ah, me, before our day is done, we long with bitter pain, to ride once more the Brumby’s run, and yard his mob again…’

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17.

My dad tells me the stories of the other Samson. He says the other Samson finds a lion and tears it apart with both his hands. I wonder if the other Samson signs and if this is his sign for lion, or fight, or winning. ‘Samson is so moved by the experience,’ says my dad, ‘that he doesn’t tell anyone about it.’ That doesn’t make sense to me and so I sign, what is the experience? ‘Use your words, Sam.’ So I say, ‘what is the experience?’ but the word experience is hard to say and catches behind my teeth. My voice tastes like rusty metal. ‘The heavenly light appears to him,’ he says. ‘That is, if you believe that sort of thing.’ The name for me, and the name for the other Samson, both mean “man of the sun” and so I say, ‘is it because Samson means sun, Dad?’ My dad looks at me, and in his face there is something surprised. ‘It might be,’ he says. There is no sun on the mountain and no light in the water either because this water is not meant to be here. It wasn’t here when people first came and maybe not the second time either and now the trees mourn the coming. I know that word, mourn, because my teacher at Special School told me. She said she didn’t know the sign for mourn and so she showed me grieve instead. Grieve is a fist coming down and away from my chin and it also looks like the sign for beautiful. But beautiful pushes further away, and the hand for beautiful opens out, while the hand for grieve is closed. ‘Grieve,’ says my teacher with her voice, ‘is when you cannot quite say goodbye to someone dead.’ But I think mourning is sadness for the lost ones and

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these trees stretch out to their lost ones, the drowning ones. Dead, rotting trees in the water. Some left standing and now drowned and frozen black and skeletons. I want to find Jonah but I cannot see him. My brother is gone and he does not know the way back and I do not know the way back. A tender light flickers like wings over the mourning trees. They are stiff. They do not recognise the wind. Maybe they are too sad to bend. I think I feel what the other Samson felt and so I sign, what is the experience? to the bush and the water and the sky and the air but they do not answer.

Jonah found the dam. It wasn’t far from the horse paddocks, but he didn’t want to go there again. The dam was full after the rain and the ground was squelchy. It made him feel like drinking. He imagined approaching the bank like a horse or a wild dog and, keeping one eye out for possible predators, sinking his tongue deep into the surface. He liked knowing men could cut the earth open whenever they were thirsty and drink from it like a cup. It was the perfect resting place for the mestengo. After the man at the antique shop told him about the other name Jonah looked it up. The Spanish word was mestengo meant “an animal that strays.” The mesta in mestengo meant mixed. A mixed animal that strays. A foreigner. From inside his pocket Jonah took the bronze horse. The hoof was still lifted. Still pointing towards something, but Jonah knew the truth now. It wasn’t pointing his way forward. How could it? The Mustang was aimless, directionless. It knew nothing about what he needed. His mother lied. She wanted Samson gone, and Jonah was pulled along behind him. There was nothing for him on the mountain and nothing down below either. ‘You lied,’ he said, turning the body of the horse over in his hand.

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It looked at him, frozen and quiet. ‘I could kill you if I wanted.’ The Mustang’s eyes didn’t blink. Its nostrils were still, and its tail was stiff. No flies would bother him. Each muscle felt so light in his hand that it could have evaporated, disappeared. He let go. The dam swallowed it whole. He knew he would bring the other horses. He knew he would hear that sound again and watch the water cover over the entire string. Jonah knew he would return. The new plan could not include Clancy or his mother, and especially not Samson. On the other side of the dam Jonah could see his brother. Samson followed the edge of the water, always looking into the bush beyond rather than behind to the creeping lip of the dam. Jonah said the word he was never supposed to say. No one stopped him. Samson turned. ‘Retard,’ said Jonah again, and this time he smiled.

It skips across the water and is like a pebble. One, two, three skips, and I catch it. My fingers close in around it and I feel the hot, angry pebble of my brother inside my hand and it burns. Retard. I drop it. But nothing falls away and so I look into my hand but I cannot see anything because it has disappeared inside of me. One, two, three skips and my brother has called me this before when I was at school. Jonah shouts over the fence between regular school and special school. I cannot hear him and I walk closer and closer until we are facing each other and the fence melts like water. ‘I did not hear,’ I say with my voice. Jonah’s face is red and his hands are making fists. He looks behind him to the other boys. ‘Go back,’ he says. His voice is very quiet.

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‘Why?’ I ask with my voice and then his face turns red and he calls me the name. Across and on the other side of the dam I see Jonah. He is walking slow and light. He is a black shape with warm sun around and behind him. I wave my hand and I feel my face smile. There he is, my brother and the sign for brother is two closed fists rubbing up against each other. He does not look up and is not like me. He does not bend with the wind. His skin is not cold. My brother is a mourning tree.

‘Why do you all act like every single thing Samson does is genius?’ he asked his mother once. ‘Because the expectations for Samson are different.’ ‘Different how?’ asked Jonah. He often asked her questions like these. He liked hearing that he was smarter than Samson. ‘Our expectations for Sammy need to be low, and our expectations for you are really quite high. Expectations are not like love,’ she said, ‘you have different amounts for different people.’ Samson waved. ‘Get lost,’ he shouted. His voice made coiling ringlets across the surface of the water. Samson shook his head. The silence of the dam shivered. Jonah knew he could break the stillness if he wanted. He could say it here. ‘Retard,’ Jonah said quietly. The air bristled. Samson shook his head. He couldn’t hear him. ‘Retard!’ Together they watched the word drop into the surface of the water. It fell heavy and deep and made thin silver rings that folded over both of them.

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Samson shrugged. Jonah closed his eyes tight and waited for the spray of shimmering dust to burst behind his retinas. When he opened his eyes Samson was still there and his tongue was hanging out. Not from the side of his mouth like a dog, but out the front. ‘Put it back in,’ Jonah shouted and Samson tucked his tongue back behind his lips. They both smiled. Jonah used to tease his brother about his tongue. ‘Lizard,’ he would call him and sometimes, ‘gecko.’ He stopped after they saw the teeth inside a large geckos mouth. Sometimes Jonah would flick his own snake-fast tongue into his brother’s mouth. Samson hated it but he always laughed. ‘Wah?’ Samson pawed at his lips as if he could rub Jonah out of his mouth. ‘It’s disgusting,’ said Jonah. ‘Put it back in.’ ‘Wah bah in?’ ‘Your tongue. Put your tongue back in. Or I’ll lick it again.’ Samson always smiled and rolled his tongue back in. Before all the lessons with speech therapists and sign language teachers, Jonah was the only one who could really understand him. Words twirled inside Samson’s mouth and spun into each other, pushing out consonants and keeping only the vowels. Sometimes he changed them on purpose, bored of the few words their parents used around him. ‘Sammy. Sammy Sam. Say mummy, Sam.’ ‘Nunny,’ he said and his voice was gravelly and overused even as a little boy. ‘No, mum-meeeeeee.’ Jonah first word was Samson. Samson’s was Jonah. Then their parents took Samson to the weirdo’s school and Samson started to sign, and keep his tongue hidden. He became one of them. ‘I made a friend today,’ said Samson and his school uniform smelt acidic. ‘She’s pretty.’ Jonah held his book between them. Samson pushed his hands down and grinned. The pages crumpled. ‘My teacher says I am special. She says we are all special.’

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‘You know that means stupid, right?’ said Jonah and he watched his brother’s face slip into thought, where it always got stuck.

The word my brother calls me skips across the water and is like a pebble. One, two, three skips and it is inside of me. I shrug, and it means I am lost for words and the pebble cannot ever come out now. I shrug again and I am trying to shake the pebble out from inside me and not be the thing he calls me. ‘Put that back in.’ Once, Jonah came home from his school once and his lip was bleeding and his eye was dark green and so I asked him, what happened? And the sign for happen is like an angry snake coming out from beneath a tree and there is no past for the sign of happen and I wonder if that means the snake never sleeps? Jonah does not answer and instead he pushes me away. ‘Did someone hit you?’ I ask the sheets and pillows and Jonah. ‘No.’ ‘Is that a lie?’ I ask with my voice. ‘No.’ ‘Why are you bleeding?’ ‘I fell over.’ Jonah stays in our room all afternoon and his tea of chops and mashed potato waits for him on the table. I think about how to take the bruise away, and the cut away and I sneak back into our room, and I read to him. The Jungle Book is his favourite and he knows all the words and sometimes he says things from the book when he is just talking. The words are like rocks and they catch my feet and trip me up and sometimes I need to look at the sign my hand makes to remember how to say the word.

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I read. Jonah is still. ‘What of the hunter hunting bold?’ Jonah still does not answer and so I read them again. This time from underneath his blankets Jonah says, ‘brother, the watch is long and cold.’ He does not need the book to remember, because the words are on the inside of him. I smile and I read, ‘what of the quarry you want to kill?’ and I say ‘you’ instead of ‘ye’ because my dad says they are the same thing. ‘Brother, he crops in the jungle still.’ ‘Where is the power that made your pride?’ ‘Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side,’ says Jonah. His voice is muffled because he is still under the blankets and pillows. ‘Where is the haste that you hurry by?’ I read. This time, Jonah does not answer. ‘Jonah?’ I ask and all of a sudden the blankets are spinning up into the air and falling down and the pillows are like fat, soft stepping-stones and Jonah is jumping and growling and baring his teeth. ‘I am not going to go to my lair to die,’ he yells out and his voice is made up of words and growling and he is turning the real words around and I like it better this way so I leave the book on my chair and jump on the bed as well. ‘Tiger! Tiger!’ we shout together and it is like the title of his favourite chapter from his favourite book. His mouth does not stop bleeding and the green is caught around his eye for almost a week but together we say ‘tiger’ and when we say tiger what we mean is brothers. ‘Come back,’ I shout and my voice sounds slow like when the black strip inside the cassette is almost worn through. Jonah turns. His sad, hung shoulders turn. His eyes turn, but he will not come with me.

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Jonah said it again. He could. Samson was gone. He looked around. Nothing. Once more but this time he said it louder and his reflection in the dam said it with him. No one stopped them. ‘Why can’t I say it?’ he asked his mother once. ‘Because they turn Sammy into something he isn’t with that word. And us too.’ His dad said, ‘words were just words. Every type of expression has a place, but don’t call your brother names.’ There was always a catch. He said it once more and this time he felt the life drop out of the bush. Everything was quiet. Everything felt like it was within his control. Jonah shouted it again and again. He turned himself in circles and imagined he was Mowgli dancing on the newly killed skin of his lifelong enemy. Jonah stopped and fell to his knees. He felt dizzy and his head hurt. It was like something was swirling around behind his ears. He could hear it, like a heavy fish in a clear bowl passing by one ear and then the next. Jonah rested his cheek on his knee and waited for the fish to stop turning. He needed a few moments to figure things out. He needed to make a new plan. He thought about his mother and going to garage sales with her and commenting on what she should buy and what she should leave. She never listened to him. ‘You’re the good one,’ she said. Jonah watched their mother weave around the kitchen spilling wine from her glass like golden thread from a spool. ‘You’re the good one, you know,’ she said. ‘To me you are.’ ‘Mum, are you okay?’ ‘You understand, don’t you, about your brother.’ ‘Yes?’ Jonah lied.

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‘He’s hard,’ said his mother and she started to weep. ‘He’s so hard. Everything is work and I try, I do, but I don’t understand him, and now there’s no money and I can’t send him anywhere.’ Jonah imagined his brother floating out into the middle of the ocean on a raft made of old gates and broken boxes. ‘I don’t understand my own son,’ she said and she cried. Jonah wondered if maybe he should touch her shoulder and pat her hair. He waited quietly by the door until she was finished. ‘You’re such a good boy,’ she said, and that was when Jonah knew he needed more than just his mother. ‘I love you,’ she’d say and it sounded like a trap he couldn’t help but stand in. After he put her to bed Jonah started to think about breaking horses. But the horses were gone. There was no money and she lied and sent them away. Clancy wasn’t what he expected. He looked the way their father described, and he sounded like he was supposed to, but there was something sick and wizened about him. Jonah wanted someone strong and hard to teach him how to be those things too. He could see where the hardness might have been once, in the deflated shoulder muscles and the ridges of his once thick neck. But the old man looked brittle, as if he could burn into ash in seconds. Jonah’s reflection shivered gently beneath the surface of the dam. ‘What’re you looking at,’ he said but his reflection only stared.

‘Is Jonah a retard, Mum?’ I ask my mum with my voice and my hands. I do not know the sign for retard so I use simpleton instead but they are like the same thing. The sign for simpleton is a flat hand shaking in front of my eyes blocking my view. ‘No, who said you were?’ says my mum and she is not listening.

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‘Everyone,’ I say. Retard follows me and so does Special and Flops and also Mong which my dad says is really a historical word and it is meant for people who look a bit like me but I have never seen them and sometimes I think maybe I am meant to be with them and not here with Jonah and not belonging to my mum and dad. I hear trees and whistle wind sounds. It is cold and my skin takes a while to catch up. It takes a while to feel it. But I feel. I feel ice fingertips pressing in around me and over me, and my tongue feels blue, and my lips feel blue, and I am finally cold. I pick up a stone from the ground. It is smooth and heavy and the colour of deep water. I will not forget.

Jonah spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the property. He stayed close to the drive and found a dead wallaby not far from the mouth of the track. One side of the wallaby’s body was caved in and the skin ripped open. Jonah poked the side of its body with a stick, the wallaby shifted towards him. The eyes were still open but the wallaby wouldn’t look at him. ‘Look at me,’ he said. The wallaby didn’t move. ‘Look at me.’ A fly landed on the side of the wound and Jonah brought his stick down onto the carcass. He didn’t know how many times he hit the wallaby but when he stopped the other side of its body was caved in as well.

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18.

In my bedroom I open my window and lean as far out as I can. I take a deep breath. My head feels heavy and my eyes, but I don’t want to sleep yet because even though it is past my bedtime it still looks like afternoon. My granddad is outside on his chair smoking a cigarette even though he says he doesn’t smoke. Sometimes I hear him talking and it is to himself but my mum talks to herself and I don’t think it’s weird. A puff of smoke comes from around the corner and it is from my granddad’s mouth and makes me think about my dad behind the shed at home. I stand at my window for a long time. My legs get tired so sometimes I lean on the windowsill. It hurts my stomach but my legs get a rest. I hear a humming. One bee. Another bee. Then another. Until out past where the grass ends and the dirt starts I see lots of tiny brown bees. They are gathering and getting more but they are not coming towards the house or me. ‘There’s the bees, mate,’ says my granddad and even though he is outside and I am inside he is not very far away and we are looking at the same thing. ‘You’ll have a go with them soon,’ he says. Outside the trees are rolling back and forth and it is like at home when the ocean rolls in and out over the sand. Green ferns covered with beads of water make music in the breeze and they sound like tink, tink, tink. Behind them the white tree trunks are catching up all the light and pressing it in behind the bark and lighting up like lamps in the city. They are saying, this way and I follow them to behind the house. There is a smaller wooden house. It is locked and so I press my face to the window. Inside I can see a big oven and three big metal pots. There are stacks of white buckets and two aprons hanging on the wall. I take a deep breath. The air smells like honey.

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At home the leaves on the ground rush and bristle because it is windy from the ocean and windy from the inland and sometimes they tangle up and rush everything around in little circles. Not here. Here there is only one wind and it rushes up to the edge of the trees and disappears and I know this because the leaves are still. I am still too, because my hands are remembering the sign for shoot and my eyes are crying because maybe my mum is shot.

The tiger skin was much better than the bear. The tiger was still empty and Jonah could imagine it sleeping, or leaping, or about to pounce. No one was there to cry or ruin it. The tiger was like the empty snakeskin in his bedroom. Jonah could fill it in with anything. He lent in as close as he dared and sniffed the middle of the back. The skin smelt like man, and dog, but there was something else, something Jonah couldn’t place. He wondered if it was the smell of being killed. His father told him once that a Tasmanian devil could find the dead body of another animal from miles away. Was this what the devil could smell? Jonah ran his finger over the last stripe on the tiger’s back. The fur was hard and rough. The stripes looked like a cage stuck to his back, like a turtle with a shell. Jonah sniffed again, but he still couldn’t place the smell. Could a body hold the smell of death for years and years? Maybe a Tasmanian devil would just wander into the kitchen one day and rip the tiger body from the wall? Jonah didn’t even know if the skin was a body. ‘Grandson?’

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Jonah stepped away from the skin. He sat at the table and tried to look like he was reading the paper. He could hear his grandfather hobbling down the hallway so he shouted, ‘In here.’ ‘You still inside?’ asked Clancy. He sounded out of breath. ‘Your brother’s been outside for hours.’ Jonah didn’t say anything. ‘Don’t you like the great outdoors?’ asked Clancy and he flicked the kettle on. He shrugged. ‘I loved being outside when I was a boy. So did my brother.’ ‘You have a brother?’ ‘I did have,’ said Clancy.

I smell melting sugar and I am not sure where it is coming from and then I see a bee. She is one brown bee and she is looping through the air. One loop, and left and around and through and over. Wait, I think, and I watch the brown bee very closely. Over and through and down, down, down and quickly up. She is singing. Home, home, home … the hive… inside… I do not know what to do and so I make the sign for stop, which is a hand up and the bee stops and hovers. She looks heavy and so I make the sign for friend quickly, which is two hands together coming down. The bee hovers. I make the sign again. Two hands and this time I flick them down emphatically and this is my teacher’s word for doing something bigger. The bee flies in the circle the same way as the hands on a clock. With my two thumbs up and the rest of my fingers in a loose fist, together but not touching, I make a circle too. This is the sign for friendship.

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The bee hovers and all of a sudden there is fright and up, up, up and she is flying and I am too surprised to move and too slow to move and not frightened enough to move. And now it is me who is hovering, and this is also like waiting. I wait until it is almost dark, holding the sign for friendship in my hand.

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“Merry, merry King of the bush is he, Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra.”

Marion Sinclair

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19.

Murray was standing by one of the apiaries wearing his bee keeping overalls. He lifted a slat out of the side of a wooden box. It caught the light. Clancy reckoned the comb could be gold bullion. Murray held the wooden slat over a large bucket next to him and broke away several large pieces of honeycomb. The bucket was almost full. ‘Hooroo,’ called Clancy. Murray looked up and waved. He was wearing gloves. ‘What brings you up here?’ ‘Got a question for you,’ said Clancy. Murray slid the wooden slat back inside the apiary and they sat down together on a nearby rock. Clancy asked him flat out if he’d like some help. ‘Sure,’ said Murray. ‘Who from?’ ‘My grandson.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘Samson.’ Murray took a while to answer. ‘I’m not sure. Is he up for it?’ ‘Your guess is as good as mine, mate,’ said Clancy. ‘Not sure what fellas like him are up for.’

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The bee tree was an old Eucalypt on the far side of the mountain, about twenty minutes from the house. Clancy’s da reckoned it was struck by lightning when he was a young boy. ‘Choppin wood with me da. Next thing, crack,’ said his father and he clapped his hands together for emphasis, ‘down it comes. Lightning. Like an arrow hitting a target. Right down the middle. That tree had me da baffled. It was dead through the centre, still is, but the rest is as alive as anything out there,’ said his father. He pointed out the window to the bush. There was no fence and no lawn back then. ‘The bees live in the dead part.’ Clancy was never sure how much of his da’s stories were real. No one thought to harvest the honey until Bill came. He was looking for firewood, and found the colony instead. That afternoon he and Murray came for tucker and Bill told Essie to save all her jars. A week later he built six apiaries. Some of the bees moved in. Some stayed living in the dead part of the tree. Afterwards Bill told Clancy he’d struck a bargain with them. ‘How?’ ‘With my hands,’ said Bill. ‘Essie’s teaching me.’ Sometimes Clancy walked up to the trees just to watch. Over time, the shapes he made with his hand changed, evolved, as if he and the bees were taking on parts of each other’s language. Once, Bill told him native bees are meant to be solitary and after raising their young they would often disappear back into the bush. ‘They like being alone,’ he said.

Clancy opened the gate and closed it behind him. His leg ached. He wasn’t used to wearing boots anymore. Murray told him to set a good example for the lads. They were heavy and cumbersome. His leg felt weighed down, like the anchor on a ship. Samson was playing at the fence with a pile of rocks from the driveway.

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‘Where’s your brother?’ Clancy asked. Samson shrugged. ‘Exploring.’ Clancy looked down the length of the fence. There were dozens of piles of rocks and stones dotted around the edge of the lawn. Not following the fence but almost in spite of it. The rocks were too large to be from the driveway. Each pile looked fragile, as if it could topple at any minute and break apart forever. ‘Where did these come from?’ asked Clancy. Samson shrugged again. ‘All over,’ he said. ‘You ready to start work?’ Samson’s eyes opened wide, he clapped his hands twice and then stopped. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You can start tomorrow,’ said Clancy and he thought of Murray searching for his missing bird. ‘Be sure to do what Murray says.’ ‘I will,’ said Samson. He placed a tiny white pebble at the very top of the pile. It didn’t topple.

Clancy knew a simple fella when he was young. Ray Cowley his name was. He lived outside town with his mother. They lived alone. Clancy remembered something about his father shooting through with a woman from the mainland. Ray had short brown hair and small eyes. His skin was pockmarked from acne and his lips always looked damp and chaffed. He was always licking them. Sometimes after school Jack would follow Ray home, calling out names and throwing rocks. Other kids cheered him on and threw rocks of their own. Jack loved attention, any type of attention. Ray walked with his head down. He never looked up from the road, not even if a rock hit him. Clancy tried to remember if he ever joined in.

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20.

The air on his granddad’s property smelt thick and old, the trees were sleepy, and the sun trickled instead of poured. There were no mosquitoes breeding in the folds of the water’s surface, no pelicans or seagulls. His granddad’s mountain was a patchwork of stillness and Jonah could rip it apart whenever he wanted. He could rip it with his crushing feet, and snapping branch hands. He could even tear it with his voice. ‘Jonah,’ he shouted and his voice skipped across the surface and filled every silence. Everything was Jonah. The dam was Jonah and the bush. Every tree was like one of his fingers. ‘JONAH,’ skip, skip… ‘jonah.’ Then everything went back to being still. If anyone ever dredged the bottom of the dam they would find hundreds of Jonah scattered around the bodies of his string. He drowned one horse a day and sometimes one every second day if Murray was about. Murray was always fishing or floating in a small boat, or taking Samson on long walks. But this time would be different. This time was special. This time the wire stock horse was going to drown and he would be the last one. Jonah was almost free. ‘Where’re you going?’ asked his granddad. Clancy was skinning potatoes over the kitchen sink and his hands were covered in chalky brown mud. ‘For a walk.’ ‘Where?’ asked Clancy. He dug the peeler into the side of the potato and Jonah watched as the outer skin slipped away exposing the hard white flesh. ‘Around.’ ‘Be careful.’

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With the stock horse concealed in the side pocket of his jacket Jonah followed the dirt track down the mountain. It was early afternoon and even though the sun was still in the sky, the air was cold and slithered under his clothes. Tiny fleshy bumps appeared on his skin. ‘Queenie…’ Jonah stopped and listened. ‘Queenie.’ The voice belonged to Samson. It sounded like he was walking back towards the house. ‘Come on girl.’ Jonah tried twice to explain to Samson that the dog was deaf but his brother didn’t get it. ‘There’s no point talking to her,’ said Jonah, ‘she won’t hear you.’ ‘There are deaf kids at special school,’ said Samson, ‘I sign to them.’ ‘She doesn’t know sign language.’ ‘She can learn.’ Jonah pressed himself up against a large tree and waited. ‘Queenie…’ Slowly the sound of his brother’s voice diminished like an ocean tide gently receding over sand. Jonah left the shadow of the tree and followed the track to the dam.

I do not see another bee for a few days but I know they have been watching me. I know they are the brown ghost and after I made the sign for friendship the brown ghost has been watching me. Sometimes they are in the bush and sometimes the ghost breaks apart and sometimes they are only three or four together. When they are only

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three of four they come close to my granddad’s house and sometimes even float inside. I am making my second sandwich. The tomato squeezes out under my knife and so instead of waiting for my tomato to reach the sandwich I eat it whole and red seeds slip down between my fingers. Outside the window I see one bee. It is different to last time and I tap the glass. The bee darts up. ‘Wait,’ I say and seeds flick from my hands onto the glass. My shoes are at the door and I pull them onto my feet even though my hands are sticky. Even before my laces are tied I am following the bee into the trees. ‘Wait.’ The bee disappears and I am surrounded.

Murray was standing on the bank flinging his rod into the water and pulling it out again. One hand coaxed the line through the reel and the other held the rod. Jonah watched him. When Murray pulled the line back it would spool out beneath him. ‘Caught anything?’ asked Jonah. ‘Not today.’ The lure split the surface and disappeared. ‘Are there any fish in there?’ ‘I’m fishing, aren’t I?’ They stood together quietly. Jonah watched the light trickle from the sky into the murky surface of the dam. ‘Did you ever come here with my dad?’ ‘Clancy got it dug after he shot through.’

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‘My dad takes me fishing all the time,’ Jonah lied. His dad took him fishing once and spent most of the day writing things down in his stupid notebook. They ate fish and chips in the car on the way home. ‘Is it still fishing if you don’t catch anything?’ said his father and it wasn’t a question because he used the voice they all hated. Samson called it “the teacher voice.” ‘Dad, I don’t know how to do this bit with the bait?’ ‘Just remember how I showed you,’ said his father without looking up from his notebook. ‘But it doesn’t make sense the way you showed me.’ ‘It most certainly does make sense.’ That night they ate fish and chips in the car. Murray flung the rod up and over his body as if it were an extension of his arm. ‘Saw you chuck something in the dam last week.’ ‘No I didn’t,’ said Jonah. ‘I saw you.’ Jonah felt hot behind his eyes. ‘Are you an Aborigine?’ ‘Your mob say Indigenous Australian.’ ‘Do you play the didgeridoo?’ He didn’t answer and Jonah wondered if Murray’s skin could blush. ‘What about corroborees? Do you go to corroborees?’ The line flicked over Murray’s shoulder and back into the water like a needle pulling thread through the surface of the dam. ‘I learnt about Aborigines in school, except my teacher said that there are no more real Aborigines left in Tasmania.’ Murray wound in the line, this time using the reel instead of his hand. He slipped the rubber lure from around the hook and dropped it into the tackle box at his feet. The lure looked like jelly. Murray closed the lid, clipped the latch, and picked it up. He walked back towards the mouth of the path and disappeared into the trees. ‘Fuck you,’ said Jonah quietly after he was sure Murray was gone. He took the stock horse to the water’s edge and hurled it in. Then he followed Murray.

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I am walled in by white trees and they are like a fence and I do not know my way out, and I am not afraid because I am still out of breath. The trees around me stretch up and up, and my head swirls. Sharp grass pokes through my trousers and my legs are itchy. I bend down to tie my shoelaces. Next to me is an old tree with a long trunk and not many leaves but hundreds of branches poking out all over the place. I press my ear to the rough, brown trunk and inside I hear the bees. It is not a buzz like I thought, but instead a big turning sound. Behind the trees are lots of wooden boxes on legs and they are winding and it is like the boxes and the trees are all winding up and up and bees will explode out of the top. Hello? I say with my hands. The winding goes louder.

Jonah crouched in the bushes and watched Murray moving around inside. The shack was weathered and rough. It was surrounded by trees. There was even a sliver of creek running alongside. This was where Murray lived. This was where he ate and slept, and changed his clothes. Jonah shifted his weight. He wondered how many rooms there were inside.

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Murray came out again, this time wearing his boots and his overalls. Jonah’s mouth felt dry and he tried to make himself as small as possible behind the tree. He held his breath. Two heavy brown work boots passed by. Murray didn’t have the kookaburra with him. Jonah smiled.

The bees come out one by one, floating like they are in water and together they spin in tiny circles like a ripple. They have black bodies and silver thin wings and they string together like beads. Up and through and around and words start to drop from the dance like drips from a tap. Murmur, murmur, murmur, and it is like dancing but also like the sound bees make with their bodies. It is not buzzing. It is a murmur. They move faster and together they pull in tighter and I can see and understand almost every word. Murmur, murmur, murmur… I am nervous but I get close anyway. A waving of grass, a song in the air. Over and around and through like weaving and also like sign language and also a dance. We toil everywhere. I reach out to them and they stop winding and dancing and bob in the air like buoys on the ocean. I am a ripple and when I get close they scatter and reform just out of my reach.

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‘Hello,’ said Jonah. The kookaburra cocked its head and stared at him. ‘I have something for you,’ he said and he reached into the pocket of his shirt and took out a few slivers of bacon saved from his breakfast. ‘Do you like bacon?’ The bird pressed its feathers flat against its body and Jonah noticed the vibrant blue streak hidden in the kookaburra’s wing. He stretched out his hand. The bird shuffled forward and turned its body away as if pretending to be looking at something else. ‘Come on,’ he said. King snatched the pink strips from Jonah’s hand. He felt the end of the kookaburra’s beak flick against his palm. The touch made his stomach flutter. When the meat was gone King shuffled back onto his perch beneath the water tank. His smooth black feathers glowed in the afternoon sun. His eyes stared at Jonah like two angry pearls. Jonah never found birds scary, not like some of the kids at school. Sometimes during summer he would leave class early just to watch the boys from school being swooped by the local nesting magpies. The magpies bombed bikes, and swooped running heads. Jonah often wished he could turn into one of the black and white birds just long enough to swoop whichever boy threw his school bag onto the roof that day. King opened his beak and left it agape. It was a warning. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘I just want to be friends.’ Jonah put his hands on either side of the wooden ledge, trapping King in the middle. ‘I promise.’ Jonah imagined training the kookaburra to do tricks and catch bacon in the air. At night he could sleep inside Jonah’s wardrobe where it was safe and dark. King shook his head. Jonah edged his hands closer. King flicked back his head and started to laugh. He covered his ears. The laugh whirled up between them in cackling trills and deep guttural chokes.

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‘Stop it.’ Jonah thought of his father laughing about him wanting to train horses. He thought about the boys at school yanking his bag from his back and laughing. He thought about Clancy laughing about his size. Jonah thought about Samson. ‘Stop it. Stop it.’ His hands were suddenly around the bird’s neck. He was shaking. ‘Stop it, stop it.’ The laughing stopped.

My hand waves. Hello, the bees answer. With my signing hands I say, please don’t sting me. We do not sting. I ask, do you understand me? The bees weave up and around each other. We understand. Am I hearing you? I ask with my hands. Not hearing us. No. Understanding. The dancing joins together, but not like before. Not joining, but overlapping and it is confusing and I put my hands up and they stop and hover like a brown rain cloud just before a thunderstorm. I ask them, how do I understand? Our dance. I ask, how are you understanding me? Your dance, they all sign together and I think if bees could laugh I think maybe they would be laughing at me now.

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Jonah opened his fingers and the limp body fell from inside his hands. He nudged the body with his foot. It responded gently, flopping against him like a limp baby. Jonah thought of Samson. ‘Was I a cute baby, Mum?’ ‘Yes, Sammy.’ ‘And strong?’ Their mother didn’t like it when he asked that question, but Samson always asked. ‘No. You were very floppy. Almost like a doll.’ Or a dead rabbit, thought Jonah. ‘But you grew, and your muscles hardened. You got strong.’ ‘Like the other Samson?’ ‘Yes,’ said their mother, ‘like the other Samson.’ Jonah didn’t notice Samson’s body turn from mush to muscle. He was too busy turning his skin from blue to white, and filling his lungs with air. But, it was part of the story of Samson. The story that began with how little Samson had, and how he grew big and strong and beautiful. While Jonah stayed small. ‘Why am I small?’ ‘Ask me later, darling.’ Sometimes if he asked enough his mother would say, ‘because you’re special’, or, ‘big things come in small packages.’ Jonah picked up the body of the kookaburra. It was still warm. He ran his finger across the blue streak. He thought of struggling for space and breath and life beside his brother. It was like they wanted him to stay small. He imagined Samson growing bigger and bigger, while Jonah’s breathing became wispy and small. No one could ever be as trapped as him. No one. He bit into the flesh.

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With my hands I ask the bees questions. The bees answer me but it is not like at home. At home, I ask a question and my mum sighs and tells me to play outside. At home, I ask my dad a question and he answers it but in his mouth my question turns around and becomes complicated and the sign for complicated is both hands like cages sitting on top of each other. One hand goes one way in a circle and the other hand goes the other way. This is how my dad answers me. He always goes the other way. The bees are different. They go my way. How many of you are there, I ask with my hands. Many, many, many. Do you have a Prime Minister? I ask with my hands but the bees do not know what I mean and so I sign, someone in charge? Queen. I think of the Queen in the photos I have seen and on the news and she is a different Queen to the bees and so with my hands I ask, where is your Queen? There is a flurry in the bees and together they sign, hidden and I know this means I am not allowed to know. How do you learn? I ask with my hands. How do you learn? My teacher, I sign and the sign for teacher is like two fingers pointing up and out and even if you like the teacher the sign for teacher always looks like getting told off. We learn from her, dance the bees and they lift up and move through each other making the shapes of each word.

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Jonah’s head felt dizzy and his eyes were watering. The body filled his mouth. Breathing through his nose was difficult at first but after a few minutes it felt easier and more natural. Jonah felt his lungs fill with stillness. It reminded him of dusk settling over the mountain. He shook his head back and forth. A dog with a stick. Feathers came away from the body and fell to the ground like black rain. The wind curled them across the ground and spread them through the bush. There wasn’t much blood, but what there was tasted metallic and warm. It spread through him lighting his muscles from the inside. When the body of the bird was gone Jonah buried the beak in a shallow grave and walked back to the house. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel angry or hurt or lonely. He didn’t feel anything.

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21.

Clancy heard someone walking up the back steps. Murray opened the door. His hands were dirty and the cuffs of his pants were covered in greasy mud. Usually he would sing out before coming in. Not today. ‘Been playing in the dirt, mate?’ ‘Have you seen him?’ asked Murray. He was out of breath and missing his hat. ‘Who?’ ‘King. I haven’t seen him in three days.’ Clancy thought of River and the missing dogs from all those years ago. If they could disappear with no tracks, what hope did a bloody kookaburra have? ‘Did you see the smoke again?’ ‘No. Where?’ Murray gestured towards the top of the mountain with his head. ‘Same place. Would kids take him?’ ‘Don’t reckon. What would they do with him,’ said Clancy, but both men knew boys in a pack could do just about anything. ‘Maybe I’m just seeing things,’ said Murray quietly. He scratched his head. His dreadlocks stuck off from between his fingers like black seedpods. Clancy wondered if it was River. Maybe it was her signal to him, and maybe she was still waiting for him up there, free finally of the beasts that took her. ‘King found me, after Julie and the baby…’ said Murray, ‘you know.’ Clancy wanted to comfort him. He wanted to tell him that he was still young and healthy and there would be another woman and another baby, but it would be a lie. ‘I thought he was butcherbird when I found him,’ said Murray.

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‘You still might find him,’ said Clancy, but it wasn’t enough. ‘Picked him up and saw that blue streak hidden in his wings.’ ‘Come on mate, sit down,’ said Clancy. ‘Let me make you a cuppa.’ Murray nodded but he didn’t sit down.

When Murray came back from Sydney Clancy hardly recognised him. The boy who packed his bags and walked defiantly down the mountain was strong and healthy. That wasn’t the man who came back. Jack saw him first. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘Down there?’ He was standing at the kitchen window. Clancy joined him. The man coming up the mountain was small and skinny and wearing an old army jacket. His pants were torn at the knees. His hair was plaited into two rows. He walked slowly, pushing himself through the middle of the driveway. The bloke looked ready to keel over. His boots were the colour of an old cowpat. There was something familiar, something that reminded him of Bill. Clancy ran outside. His leg hurt but he didn’t care. ‘Murray,’ he called from the edge of the verandah. ‘Murray.’ The man looked up. His eyes were dark, almost black and the skin around his lips looked pale and flakey. Clancy stopped. ‘You right?’ ‘I’m here,’ said Murray. ‘You’d best come inside.’ Slowly Murray lifted a black feathery ball out of his jacket pocket. It was a bird. ‘I found him.’ The bird ruffled its feathers. Clancy couldn’t tell what it was. A crow maybe? A Currawong? Two tiny white eyes stared at him. ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Clancy.

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Murray tilted his head back and let the twilight trickle over his face like warm water. There was a large flower tattoo on the back of his hand and the skin beneath looked almost grey. ‘Sydney,’ he said. ‘Back now, but.’ ‘How’d you get here?’ Murray turned to look back down the drive. There were seashells plaited through his hair. ‘You left something back there, mate?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Murray, ‘I left something there.’ ‘You want to come inside?’ ‘Came here by foot,’ said Murray. Clancy wanted to put his arms around the boy and tell him he could come inside, and feel safe. He wanted to tell Bill’s son that he missed him too and he was sorry about being part of a lie that forced them all apart. They all knew what River and Murray were to each other, and why he could never stay. Sometimes Clancy dreamed he was lying in the mud with the broken Huon still crushing his leg. Even in his dreams, Bill came. His hat protected them both. ‘The shack’s as was,’ said Clancy. Murray turned. The whites of his eyes were milky and sick. Then he fainted. The bird opened its eyes in terror and tried to cry out. It tumbled from Murray’s hand.

Clancy filled the kettle with water from the tap and set it down on one of the front burners on the stove. There were still leaves in the teapot from breakfast and he reminded himself to tell both the boys to wash the pot when they were finished. The tea was in an old tin above the stove. He took it down and dug a teaspoon into the dry black leaves. ‘Clance,’ said Murray and his voice sounded like it was coming back up the mountain again. Seashells in his hair. ‘You didn’t? King… you didn’t…’

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Black leaves toppled from the edge of the spoon and drifted to the floor. ‘No, mate,’ said Clancy. He wasn’t angry. ‘I didn’t.’ The kettle whistled.

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22.

To work with the bees I wear long overalls tucked into big, heavy boots and walking around the mountain and up the drive is heavier than it was before. Even though it is cold I still sweat, especially behind my knees and inside my socks. ‘Tuck your overalls into your boots,’ says Murray. ‘I don’t think that they will sting me,’ I say. ‘Not the bees I’m worried about mate. It’s the bloody leeches getting up the leg of your pants. They’re real bad round here.’ Murray teaches me about the bees, but he makes me stand back. He says they do not know me yet and neither does he, and he doesn’t know what I might do. He says I might frighten the bees without meaning. I do not tell him that I know the bees because I can sign to them. Murray might not understand. ‘Are you the only bee keeper?’ I ask him. It is morning and we are walking and behind my knees are not sweaty yet. ‘The only one now,’ he says. ‘Where are the other ones?’ Murray rubs his forehead with the back of his hand and does not look at me. ‘My dad kept the bees before me.’ ‘Did he sign?’ Murray stops walking and looks at me. His face is very serious. ‘What do you know about that?’ he asks. I look into Murray’s face and his eyes are wide and asking and sometimes people do not answer me when I ask them questions and so I tell Murray everything. I tell him I can sign, and I sign to the bees, and they sign back to me. I say, their way of signing is more like a dance and mine is like I learnt at Special School.

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Murray looks at me and is quiet. I shrug and say, ‘I just understand and so do they.’ He still doesn’t say anything. I ask him, ‘you believe me don’t you?’ ‘My dad could do that,’ says Murray and his face falls away into even more sadness. ‘He signed to them.’ ‘Did he go to Special School?’ ‘No,’ says Murray, ‘he learnt from your grandma.’ ‘Can you?’ Murray shakes his head which is the sign for no. ‘They’re just bees to me,’ he says, ‘and they never took to me. Maybe because of King.’ I ask Murray where the King kookaburra is, and Murray’s eyes change to sad. He says sometimes King goes for a walk and about.

Jonah slammed the gate. A bird flew out of the bush. He wanted his granddad to hear. He wanted everything and everyone on the mountain to know he was still there. He was tired of feeling like a stone falling endlessly through water, never hitting the bottom with no hope of resurfacing. He slammed the gate again. No one yelled. No one moved in the house or the bush. No one was paying attention. Jonah kicked the gate. It was cold, even though the sun was out. He wrapped his scarf around his neck and tied a knot in the front. The chill was affecting his voice. Every day he was on the mountain Jonah was finding it harder to speak. His throat sounded like the inside of an empty drum, rusted over and forgotten. The ground was covered in hundreds of tiny white and yellow flowers. He tried to step on as many as he could. He stomped. The ground wasn’t earth. Not really. There was no dirt. The grass and flowers were stretched over rock, like a heavy

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woolen bedspread wrapped around a mattress. Jonah imagined ripping the veil of vegetation away to reveal dozens of sharp grey boulders. He jumped on another patch of grass. None of it was earth. It was all rock, and rock meant caves.

‘What is a walk and about?’ I ask. ‘A walkabout is when you go on a long journey through the bush and the sky and the river,’ says Murray, ‘and yourself.’ I think about walking through light and darkness and a silver river curls around my legs and my feet melt into tiny thin slivers and sink down into the earth like the roots of a tree. I close my eyes but my body keeps growing. Up and up and up, and when I open my eyes my face is surrounded by stars, and I breathe thunderclouds and storms. ‘Is my dad on a walkabout?’ I ask. ‘Maybe,’ says Murray but his face changes and for a moment it is stern and I have said something wrong but I do not know what it is. Murray says, ‘do you know what the Dreaming is?’ I shake my head, no. ‘Did you learn about the big bang in school?’ I nod my head, yes. But what I really mean is sort of because sometimes I don’t listen at school. ‘Some people have different stories about how the earth got here, and those stories are just as important. Some people believe that a huge snake moved around the world shaping the mountains and the riverbanks and made it the way it is now.’ I imagine the snake slithering. Lifting up parts of the ground and pushing down other parts.

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‘I like the snake better,’ I say. ‘Me too.’ ‘How do you know that story?’ ‘Lots of places.’ ‘My dad tells me stories.’ ‘My dad didn’t know much about that story,’ says Murray. ‘His mum died when he was born and he lived with lots of different families.’ ‘Where is your mum?’ I ask with my voice but my hands are signing too. ‘Died. A long time ago. When I was little.’ ‘Do you miss her?’ ‘I miss knowing her,’ says Murray. ‘My dad is gone.’ ‘I know, mate.’ I think about my dad and my mum and I wonder if they miss me. I wonder if they are in Sydney falling into love again and making new twins. ‘Did your mum love your dad?’ I ask. ‘Not sure, mate. My mum worked on a station from when she was real little. Met my dad when he was still working with horses. They were both young.’ ‘Did she know stories about the snake?’ ‘She might have.’

There were spines sticking out of the ground. Jonah knew what it was. He saw an echidna once when their father was driving them to school. He didn’t often drive them so that day was special. They saw a small bundle of spines running along the side of the road. ‘Look,’ said Samson. He pushed his face up against the window. ‘Dad, stop.’

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Their father slowed the car and pulled over. ‘It’s an echidna. If you run up behind them clapping they’ll stop and curl over and you can get a look at them.’ Jonah ran at the echidna clapping. He didn’t want Samson to get there first. It turned and waddled back into the brush beneath the trees on the side of the road. He stopped to catch his breath. His father was laughing. Jonah looked back towards the car. Not even Samson was dumb enough to run after the echidna. Jonah felt his cheeks burn. Their father was still laughing. Samson tried to tell him it was okay. Jonah told him to shut up. Their dad laughed the rest of the way to school. The dead echidna was different. Jonah picked up a stick from the ground. It was damp and left a fine film of greyish-green dust on his skin. The echidna was inside the bones of something else. It looked like a cat, but he couldn’t be sure because the jawbone was buried beneath the spray of spines and the bones of the tail were scattered. Jonah poked the jagged end of the stick into the echidna. The spines tumbled out of shape. It reminded him of playing pick up sticks with his mother. Samson never played with them. He wasn’t allowed near anything sharp.

I think about Jonah and all the stories stretching back behind us. Past my mum and dad, and their love trapped in Sydney. Past Clancy who cut down trees, and my grandma who taught sign language. I think about all those stories being scooped up and locked away. I think about everything behind Jonah and me and it is like salt dissolving in water. It makes me angry but I don’t understand why I am angry and why parents disappear and why they are taken. So with my voice I ask, ‘why did your mum and dad get taken?’ ‘It’s complicated, mate,’ Murray says.

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And so I say, ‘when my dad does not understand something he says it is like “sound and something.” I never remember what the “something” is.’ ‘This isn’t like that,’ Murray says and his eyes are like a sky filled with rain clouds. ‘You can be my family,’ I say and it sounds like a question. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he says and his voice sounds like a sigh, ‘but I have my own.’ In the night I have dreams about Murray’s mum and dad being taken and my mum and dad are the hands that lift them up and take them away.

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23.

If Queenie weren’t as old as the hills, Clancy would’ve put money on her being pregnant. She was moody and lethargic. Like Essie when she was up the duff with River. Except Essie scoffed everything. The dog wasn’t interested in food and spent most of her time sleeping beneath the deck. Every morning, on his way to work, Samson would take her something from his breakfast. She left the toast but ate the bacon. ‘You feeding that dog?’ shouted Clancy through the kitchen window. Samson stood up. His fingers were oily. ‘No.’ ‘You lying?’ asked Clancy. He smiled. Samson couldn’t see him through the fly screens. ‘Bye,’ shouted Samson and he ran around the back of the house. Clancy laughed. ‘Is she sick?’ asked Jonah. He was sitting at the table in front of the pelt. He was onto his third serve of bacon. The boy only seemed to eat meat. The laugh died in Clancy’s mouth. ‘She’ll be right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ said Jonah. ‘She’s probably dying.’

Clancy kicked off his boots. They were covered in mud. His hands smelt like dead pups and river water. He washed them in the sink. The new pup’s milk bowl was empty.

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‘Pup?’ She was in the lounge with David. He was letting the pup lick his finger. ‘Can I name her?’ he asked. ‘Her name’s Queenie.’ ‘Can we keep her, Dad?’ ‘She’s a working dog,’ said Clancy and he took the puppy out of his son’s hands. She shifted her licking to him. ‘Don’t coddle her.’ Clancy took Queenie outside. ‘Good girl,’ he said gently. He let her lick him for a bit longer.

Clancy could smell honey. It was like the old days. He closed his eyes and lifted his face towards the smell. The wind carried the thick, earthy scent of pollen and propolis and wax. It didn’t smell like Bill’s honey. One whiff of Bill’s honey and you’d swear you were swimming in a golden sea. Even the trees looked auburn. Sometimes Essie joked that Bill’s honey must have a little magic in it. Clancy walked around the house to the enclosed wooden gazebo they called the honey room. He built it for Essie originally, before she was pregnant. ‘Break it apart,’ said Murray. ‘I can’t,’ said Samson. The boy said something else, but without being able to see his mouth Clancy found it difficult to understand him. He paused at the door of the honey room. Murray was inside and so was Samson. Two huge piles of honeycomb were on the bench in front of them. They were breaking it apart to boil down. Murray picked up a large piece of comb and bent it through the middle until it broke. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Easy.’

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Samson picked up a piece. It was tiny. He tried to break it but he couldn’t. He looked surprised. ‘Not this size,’ said Murray as he took the comb from Samson’s hands. ‘The small bits aren’t worth the time.’ He flung the tiny piece into a steel pot boiling away in the corner of the room. The thick molasses honey belched as the honeycomb disappeared. Samson’s shoulders slumped. ‘You can do it.’ ‘Says who?’ ‘I do,’ said Murray, ‘and I’m the boss.’ Samson smiled.

There was a banging on the window. Clancy turned. It was David. He was still wearing his pajamas even though it was almost ten o’clock and there was enough work on the property to keep three grown men busy until dusk. ‘Dad,’ shouted David. He pointed. ‘Look.’ Clancy followed the direction of his son’s hand. Queenie was at the edge of the bush on the far side of the lawn. Clancy called for her. The dog took two steps, looked towards him, lifted her front paw like a small child showing their mother a recent wound, and crumpled to the ground. Clancy ran. David banged on the window again. The earth was damp. Clancy almost slipped twice. ‘I’m here, girl,’ he said gently. Queenie made a sound somewhere between a yelp and a sigh. Clancy understood. He’d been trapped inside his body once too. He lifted her head into his lap. She was wheezing. He checked her entire body and found two puncture wounds behind her front leg. ‘David,’ Clancy screamed. ‘Get Bill.’

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David shook his head. ‘Can you hear me?’ His son stepped back from the window and shook his head again. Queenie licked his finger. ‘Come on, girl,’ he said and he pushed his arms beneath her body. She wept all the way to Bill’s house. Bill heard them coming. He was waiting. ‘Snake?’ ‘I reckon,’ said Clancy. He was out of breath and his leg felt so swollen that he half expected it to float away. ‘Bring her in,’ said Bill. He opened the door to the shack. ‘Put her on my bed.’ Clancy laid Queenie down as carefully as he could but she yelped when he took his arms away. He sat next to her. Bill finished washing his hands and picked up a knife. ‘What’re you doing?’ ‘Have to.’ ‘You’re not killing my dog,’ said Clancy and he heard his voice break. ‘Not going to kill her,’ said Bill. His face and voice were calm. Clancy thought suddenly of the dam. ‘Got to get the poison out.’ ‘Don’t kill her.’ ‘I won’t.’ Queenie looked up at him. Her eyes were weepy and grey. ‘Hold her down.’ In one hand Clancy took her two front paws, and he clamped the other down on her back legs. ‘Sorry, girl,’ he said. Quickly Bill cut from one puncture wound to the other like a game of connect the dots. Queenie howled and tried to kick her back legs but Clancy held her. Bill lowered his face into the cut and sucked. He spat a mouthful of blood and poison onto the floor beside them and pushed his lips back in. After a minute or two, it looked like there was almost as much blood and mucus on the floor as there was inside her. Queenie stopped kicking. Her eyes closed.

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‘We need to break the larger bits so they can fit in the pot,’ said Murray. ‘The big bits are easier to break.’ Samson stared at the stack of honeycomb. He reached in and removed a large triangular sheet. It was dark gold. A thin stream of honey poured from the middle like syrup. It pooled on the steel tray beneath them. Samson shook it slightly. ‘Give it a go,’ said Murray gently. Samson took the other end of the honeycomb in his hand and bent it through the middle bringing his elbows together until it came apart. He laughed. ‘I did it.’ ‘Told you. Now we need to crush it. See those big white buckets?’ ‘Yep,’ said Samson. He was still holding the two pieces of honey in either hand like trophies. ‘Drop those bits in there,’ said Murray, ‘and we’ll churn them up. Then we add some comb from an older harvest and boil it all down together.’ Samson wrinkled his nose. The honey was creeping down his wrists but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Why?’ ‘My dad said it was so that the new honey knew it was just the next part of a very long story.’ Samson nodded. Clancy left before either of them saw him.

Bill’s lips were covered in blood. His teeth looked rusty. ‘Get that jar.’

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There was a jar of dark red honey on the kitchen table. Clancy’s hands were shaking. He handed it to him. Bill unscrewed the lid and took a swig. He poured the rest into Queenie’ wound. ‘Come here,’ he said. Bill poured the remaining honey into his hand. It dripped between his fingers. ‘Hold it under her mouth. Try and get some on her tongue.’ Clancy knelt in the blood and lifted Queenie’s snout. She was limp. He rubbed his finger into the honey. It was thicker than any he’d ever eaten, almost like sap. He poked his index finger into her mouth and rubbed it on her tongue. Nothing happened. He did it again. Bill left his side and washed his mouth in the sink. He opened another jar of dark red honey and ate it with a spoon. ‘It’s not working.’ ‘Keep going.’ ‘Is she breathing?’ ‘Just keep going,’ said Bill. His voice sounded burnt. Clancy felt the dog’s tongue glide over his finger. ‘She’s moving.’ Queenie opened her eyes. They looked groggy, drunk. It took her a second to recognise them. Queenie lapped all the honey from his hand, sneezed and fell asleep. He felt Bill’s hand on his shoulder. ‘What was in that?’ Bill didn’t answer. They stayed that way for a long time, watching Queenie sleep. She jumped once and scared the shit out of them. Then her legs started moving. She was chasing something in her dream. Clancy felt the hole inside him open, like the freshwater muscles his mother used to steam when he and Jack were little. ‘Is it over?’ he asked. ‘She’ll live,’ said Bill. There was a sink in the corner. Clancy washed the blood and honey, and dog spit from his hands.

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His grandfather had been chewing the mouthful of lamb for ages. Jonah wondered if he had falsies. ‘Nice to have someone here who knows how to knock a meal together,’ said Clancy. ‘You’re a regular Peter Russell Clarke.’ Jonah heard the irritating theme music to Come And Get It in his head. He hated that show and he hated cooking. Clancy sighed, undid his belt buckle, and let his stomach free of his pants. ‘Your grandma was a wonderful cook,’ he said. ‘There was nothing she couldn’t do. Cook, sing, dance. And she could shoot a bloody sight better than any bloke I ever met, including me. Shot a snake clean over my shoulder once.’ ‘How?’ asked Samson, his mouth full of half chewed pumpkin. ‘Well, we were taking down two trees, dead already. Splitting them up for firewood. Just out the front here.’ He gestured outside to where the driveway ended, near the verandah. ‘I started to unload the wood. Your grandma was coming back from a bushwalk, she always took the shotgun with her in them days cause the wild dogs were pretty bad.’ ‘I didn’t think there were any dingoes in Tasmania,’ said Jonah. ‘No dingoes. Plenty of wild dogs. Not too many now. Back then they were fierce little buggers.’ ‘Did she kill them?’ asked Samson. Clancy smiled. ‘Only if cornered, mate. Never killed a living thing that wasn’t trying to make her its tucker.’ ‘Keep telling the story with the snake,’ said Samson. He lent forward. ‘Right, the snake. So, Essie come up the rise from over yonder and was walking directly towards Bill and myself unloading the truck. I didn’t see her.

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Anyway, I pick up one of the smaller logs and from underneath it comes this angry looking little bugger-’ ‘A snake?’ interrupted Samson. ‘Tiger snake. It flicks up quick and looks me right in the face,’ said Clancy and he mimed the movement of the snake with his hand. ‘I’m not ashamed to say I was shit scared.’ Clancy paused. Jonah looked up from his plate. ‘What happened?’ ‘It explodes all over me,’ said Clancy and he clapped his hands together. ‘The head opens and bits fly every which way. Even got some in my mouth. I heard the bullet as it went past my ear. Whoosh. I look up and there’s your gran, gun still pointed at where the tiger was rearing. Bloody shot the head right off she did, before I even knew what it was,’ said Clancy. ‘Tasted bloody marvelous.’ ‘Did you eat it?’ shouted Samson. ‘Is that true?’ asked Jonah. ‘All true,’ said Clancy. He smiled. ‘Except the bit about eating it.’ Samson whacked Clancy over the back. ‘That was a great story.’ Even Jonah smiled.

My brother always turns the taps in the kitchen before he plugs the drain. Mum and dad say he should do it the other way, but he never does. Bubbles spring up in the sink and around his fingers. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him with my voice. Jonah doesn’t answer. He finds the plug and pushes it into the drain hole. ‘Jonah?’

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‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he says. ‘Why don’t you just go watch TV.’ ‘Okay,’ I say with my voice but I am not really listening because I am looking at the tiger on the kitchen wall. The tiger is browny gold with black stripes. The tiger looks old because the edges of his skin are tatty. Just like my Indian Cover. ‘Why do you call it that?’ asks my dad and I know it is a question to catch me because his eyes are looking straight at me and he never looks at me unless he is going to catch me out. ‘Look,’ I say and I point to all the Indians all over my blanket. ‘They’re cowboys, Sam,’ says my dad and he sighs. My dad is just a memory and I can ignore him and switch him off like the radio when I don’t like the song. I do not want to touch the skin because it is not my Indian cover and it might not be safe, but I do want to touch it because I want to know how it feels. My hand reaches out towards it and this is a sign for coming closer. The air feels like when I put my hand out of the car window. ‘Samson,’ says Jonah and his voice is loud and I jump and pull my hand back from the tiger like it is real and wants to bite me. What? I say with my hands. ‘Are you going to help me?’ says Jonah and it is not really a question because I can hear in his voice that he does not want me to help. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Bugger off then.’ I leave the skin alone because my mum says to leave wild animals alone and if the stripes were still filled up with an animal I would not try and touch it. In the living room I turn on the television and watch the end of Hey Hey It’s Saturday. It is my mum’s favourite show and I laugh even though I do not think it is funny. I laugh because I wish I were laughing with my mum. I laugh because I do not want my brother to know I am crying.

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After dinner Jonah washed the dishes while his brother watched TV. Samson didn’t help. Their parents said he could never get the plates clean enough. ‘Never was one for the idiot box,’ said Clancy from the doorway. ‘Why have one?’ ‘For all my many guests,’ he said and he smiled ‘You like it here?’ ‘It’s okay.’ ‘Blokes from town used to call it Tiger Mountain. No more though.’ ‘Because the tigers are extinct?’ ‘Are they?’ Jonah thought of the skin hanging on the wall. He wanted to press his face into the fur and lay his fingers over the claws. ‘Why don’t you call it something yourself,’ he said without turning around. ‘I did.’ ‘What?’ ‘The Nevermind.’ ‘Like that poem.’ ‘Read that one, eh?’ The old man looked almost proud. It reminded Jonah of something he used to want. ‘It just sounds like talking,’ said Jonah, repeating something his father said. ‘True to our Irish roots,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s just about criminals, and people walking,’ said Jonah. He pulled a sheet of cling wrap over the plate. ‘What do you think Australia was before television and Rage …’ Clancy waved his hand, searching for the word, ‘…countdowns?’ Jonah picked up a glass left on the sink and turned away to fill it with water from the tap. He imagined smashing the plate on Clancy’s head and sending the bits of lamb flying all over the kitchen.

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‘Why don’t you take the left overs down to the shack before it gets dark,’ said Clancy. ‘Reckon he’ll be feeling pretty sore about his bird.’ ‘Okay,’ said Jonah and he heard Samson laugh at something playing on the TV.

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Queenie wasn’t at the door to meet him. Clancy called but there was no answer. ‘I’ve got a steak…’ he shouted. Nothing. ‘Queenie!” He checked under the back verandah. There were dozens of chewed sticks and one white bone. Her water dish was still full and so was her bowl of dry food. ‘Queenie!’ He walked around to the front of the house and looked under the lip of the verandah. There was an old bed sheet half buried in the dirt, but no dog. ‘Queen,’ he shouted again. There was no answer.

Clancy didn’t want to go, but Bill said it was important to know what the town wanted to do about the logging. So he went. It was useless. Just a bunch of idiots from both sides shouting at each other. The most civil thing anyone said was they should meet every week. ‘Fuck that,’ shouted Clancy and the row started all over again. A few hippies in white see-through shirts told him he was being aggressive. He told them to eat meat and fuck off. ‘Those blokes lakeside are as full of shit as they were before the forestry bastards showed up,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s a shitload of money though.’

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Bill turned the Ute onto the creek road. He didn’t like cursing. Clancy saw the garbage bag first and asked Bill to pull over. ‘Bloody campers,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll grab it.’ The bag was caught on the rocks of the creek bed. It looked thin and puckered. Clancy leant across the churning water and pulled it from between two rocks. The bag bumped against his thigh. It felt soft but heavy. He undid the red plastic tie and folded the mouth of the bag back. It was dark inside and took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. ‘Looks like fur,’ he called back to Bill, ‘cuts of Roo maybe.’ He was about to close the bag when something moved. The fur moved again. ‘Shit.’ The tiny black pup moved. ‘Come on little fella,’ he said reaching into the darkness of the bag. Clancy brought his hand out so sharply that he stumbled backwards. There were flies gathered around the pup’s milky eyes. It was dead. The small body flopped to one side and slipped back into the tangle of dead pups. He felt the water rush beneath his hands. ‘It’s full of pups,’ he shouted and his voice sounded like the river, fast and wet and tumbling over itself. There was only one pup alive. An exhausted red bitch with a scratch down the left side of her face and a nail missing from a front paw. She stretched towards him. The suffocated bodies of her siblings tumbled around her. Clancy lifted the bitch out by her neck. He pressed the small damp body into his chest. The pup smelt of death and mildew. It whimpered when he threw the garbage bag over the side of the Ute tray. ‘Oh sorry, little one,’ he said and he held the pup closer. ‘You right, mate? Take a bit of a fall, did you?’ ‘I’m fine,’ said Clancy and that was when he noticed that his hands were damp and his knees were muddy. ‘Found something,’ said Bill. ‘She’s a little fella, but.’

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‘Little battler, more like,’ said Clancy and he climbed into the cabin alongside Bill. Even though he moved as gently as he could the pup whimpered again. ‘How many more,’ asked Bill as he started the Ute and swung it back onto the road. ‘Not sure. Ten maybe.’ ‘Drowned?’ ‘Nah, they were dry.’ Bill reached over and scratched the puppy’s head. ‘Fucking poor little bugger,’ he said, and it was the only time Clancy ever heard Bill swear. ‘You sure you’re alright?’ Clancy thought of River and he held the small shaking body close. ‘Yeah, mate. I’m right.’ The pup slept in Clancy’s lap all the way home. It was a rough ride but Clancy kept his hand pressed in over the pub to keep her from flying off his lap when they went over bumps in the road. When they got back to the house they gave her some milk and buried the bag filled with pups beneath the Huon behind the house. Bill was angry. He was hardly ever angry. ‘They’ve got no respect for life,’ said Bill. Clancy wondered who ‘they’ were.

Clancy called for Queenie again and waited. Nothing. He kicked his boots on the doorframe. Flakes of hard mud came away from the heel. He hated wearing boots. He braced himself on the wall and tried to nudge off his left boot with the toe of his right foot. The boot wouldn’t shift. He tried again. It slipped to halfway, and snagged. ‘Bugger.’ He tried again. A bolt of pain moved through his right leg like an arrow shooting down the channel of his vein. He felt dizzy.

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Clancy slapped his hand into the wall and shouted. After a while he tried again. The boot slipped easily off his foot. Maybe the dog was searching again, after all these years. He left his boots by the door.

Clancy never wanted Queenie to breed but a wild mutt got to her before she could be spayed. Two little red pups were born with their eyes closed and their mouths open. He asked around in town to see if anyone wanted a pup. One little girl said she did. ‘Is there a girl one?’ she asked. Clancy nodded. ‘She’s red.’ ‘I’ll ask my mum,’ said the girl. She ran up the road and into the pub. He didn’t see Kirra again until she was much older and had a son instead of a puppy. No one wanted a dog bred from the wild. ‘Could be any blood in those mutts,’ said Les. They were sitting side by side at the bar. There were four empty ponies in front of them and two on the go. ‘Shove them in a bag and send them all down river.’ ‘That’s where I got my bitch from,’ said Clancy, but Les wasn’t listening. ‘Telling you, Clance, it’s the only way. Two pups’ll hardly weigh the bag down.’ ‘The only way to what?’ ‘To keep them from turning dingo.’ ‘There aren’t any in Tasmania.’ ‘That’s what they said about foxes,’ said Les as he finished his pony and gestured to the publican for another, ‘but I’ve seen them.’ Eventually the pups opened their eyes and started walking. Queenie looked happy and exhausted. ‘Your boy want one?’ Clancy asked Bill after a day out with the horses.

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‘Can’t take a dog to the city.’ ‘In that case, reckon I might keep them.’ ‘They’re from wild dogs, Clance.’ Clancy shrugged. ‘So?’ ‘Can’t tame a wild animal.’ The eldest pup was the first to disappear. Shadow went out with Queenie and Jedda in the morning and never came back. In the nights after his disappearance Queenie prowled the edge of the lawn howling into the darkness. Her son never answered her. The female pup disappeared a few days later. Queenie howled all night and for mot of the day. After about a week Jedda returned. Her mouth smelt of dead animal and she was sick. Clancy called the vet. Don brought his Basset Hound with him. It waited in the van. ‘It’s some kind of blood disease,’ Don said. ‘I just don’t know what.’ They buried Jedda beside the pups from the garbage bag and Queenie went back to prowling the edge of the lawn. She listened, but there was no sound from her missing pup. It was almost a blessing when she lost her hearing. The old dog finally stopped searching.

Clancy checked all of Queenie’s favourite places inside. He looked under the beds and behind the couch. He checked the floor of the pantry and behind the dryer. ‘Fuckin dog.’ Outside the bush seemed restless. Clancy wasn’t sure who to call for. He tried to push his wild, angry sadness back down through the middle of his ribcage and into his gut, but he couldn’t reach. He closed his eyes and for just a moment Queenie was licking the thick red honey from his fingers. Clancy took a deep breath.

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‘Queenie,’ he shouted. The bush quivered, like a huge snake digesting an animal whole. ‘Queenie.’ Nothing. ‘Fuck you,’ he said to the trees and rocks and creek. ‘Fuck you,’ he said to the mountain. ‘Fuck you,’ he shouted, and this time he meant the entire bastard state. The kookaburras laughed. ‘And fuck you,’ he shouted. Clancy called for his dog until his voice sounded like a wild thing had clawed its way out.

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26.

The track was so overgrown Jonah almost missed the entrance. He jumped off the edge of the driveway and onto a huge grey rock covered in dry moss. Jonah wondered if men put the rock at the mouth of the track, or if it came earlier. He saw a small brown wallaby. It bent down to taste the grass. It caught Jonah’s smell and lifted its head to look at him. ‘Hello.’ The wallaby’s eyes widened. It flung itself back into the bush. He heard it jumping away through the leaves. There were pellets of kangaroo and wallaby crap everywhere. He kept walking. The track disappeared so slowly that Jonah didn’t realise it was gone until he was walking through dense, unending bush holding the cling-wrapped plate of cold lamb out in front of him as if it might show him the way.

I go looking for the old King kookaburra. I want to find him and tell him he is Murray’s family and should not run away from home. I look all through the bee shack. I look all around the biggest bee tree and all the apiaries, but there is nothing. I ask the bees with my hands. They answer me in their dance. We saw. In the ground.

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Not our way, dance the bees and they whirl up and around and through each other and it is like chanting. He’s dead? I ask them. Parts, dance some of the bees, other parts gone. Gone. Eaten. Inside. Not animal, dance the others. No animal. I ask the bees, do what? Turn inside out, they dance.

Their parents lost Samson on their seventh birthday. They were walking up a narrow track to a picnic spot overlooking the beach when Samson disappeared. Jonah was the first to notice but he didn’t say anything because he was hungry. Eventually their mother noticed and she went hysterical. ‘Where did you leave him?’ asked their father. He was holding her by the shoulders. Jonah couldn’t tell if his father was trying to comfort her or shake her. ‘I don’t know. He was right there,’ she said. ‘He was.’ ‘There, look,’ said Jonah. He pointed to the trees. Samson’s hands were filled with pebbles. His pockets bulged. He was smiling. ‘He’s fine.’ Their mother burst into uncontrolled sobs. ‘I can’t do this,’ she said, over and over. ‘I can’t do this.’

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The bees show me the way. I see the beak breaking through the dirt like a chick hatching from an egg. The beak is hard and black and inside I can see through the throat and down into the dirt. I push the dirt around until it is gone and hidden and because it is like a funeral I put flowers where the eyes would be. I wish I knew the sign for Kookaburra so I could say goodbye. The bees tell me Jonah did it, and I feel cold inside my chest and belly. Sorry, sorry, dance the bees, sorry. He did want to eat us. He did. Not any more, I sign and the bees follow me home. I reach the fence and the brown cloud of bees dissipates. I do not tell my granddad, and I do not tell Murray what I found.

The shack appeared from between the trees like a tiny wooden boat coming out from under the crest of a wave. ‘Oi,’ said a voice from behind him. Jonah turned. Murray was zipping up his fly. ‘What’re you doing?’ ‘I have dinner.’ ‘Snags cooking already.’ ‘Clancy told me,’ he said stretching the plate out towards him. ‘I made it.’ Murray took the plate and Jonah followed him around the side of the shack. On the way past the window he saw Murray’s bed. The sheets were disheveled and the pillow still held the dent of his sleeping face. ‘Do you like it here?’ ‘It’s all right,’ said Murray. His voice sounded clenched, almost as if it were fighting to get out from behind his lips.

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The barbeque was built away from the house. Four sausages sizzled on the grill. There were stumps on either side of the barbeque carved through the middle but rooted to the ground. The fat beneath the sausages crackled. ‘Do you ever eat vegetables?’ Jonah asked looking into the pan of sizzling meat. His mother said you shouldn’t eat meat because meat rotted inside you but vegetables break down. She wasn’t a vegetarian but she told the other mums she was. Using a rusty pair of tongs Murray flipped the meat and dumped Jonah’s lamb onto the side of the pan. It frothed and spat flecks of hot oil. ‘Is that hand made?’ Jonah asked. ‘What?’ ‘The barbeque,’ said Jonah. He felt silly for asking. ‘Did you build it?’ ‘My dad.’ Jonah sat down on one of the stumps. The surface was rough. The side cut into his bum. ‘My dad told me about your dad,’ he lied. Murray lifted the sausages out of the oil and onto a blue enamel plate. He flopped the wilted lamb onto another plate and gestured it towards him. Jonah shook his head. ‘It’s for you.’ He skewered a sausage with his knife and took a bite from one end. Jonah had seen pictures of indigenous people in schoolbooks. Pictures of aborigines being rounded up and handed blankets and food by white men with guns slung over their shoulders. Murray took another bite of sausage. ‘You seen my bird?’ ‘No.’ ‘You sure?’ Murray asked. ‘Not seen any sign of him on your walks.’ Jonah felt his cheeks burn. ‘Maybe he flew away.’ Murray shoved the last piece of sausage into his mouth. They sat in silence. Jonah wondered if he knew. ‘My granddad said there are caves near here.’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Will you show me where?’

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‘Your brother already asked me,’ said Murray. He flicked the liquid from his plate onto the fire beneath the barbeque. It hissed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

I lay in bed with my hands by my side and my blankets tight. My mind is very loud and there are no words and it is like being underwater but I cannot come up for air because I am the water. My face is wet because King is dead and my brother has killed him and the sign for kill is the same for killer and it is quick and sharp and only one hand and one finger. Outside my room I hear footsteps and Murray’s voice says, ‘here you are.’ The door opens and closes. My brother walks through the hallway and into his room. I wipe my face.

A tiny pearl of sweat dropped from Murray’s hairline and into the collar of his shirt. Jonah didn’t know how anyone could sweat in this cold, but Murray was. ‘Have you always been here?’ asked Jonah. ‘I went away for a while.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Sydney.’ Murray wiped the sweat away with the palm of his hand. ‘Can you take me to the caves with Samson?’

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‘You can go next. It’s too dangerous with two.’ Jonah snatched a loose branch from a nearby tree and whipped the long grass. ‘Did you go to school with my dad?’ ‘Quit school.’ ‘My father told me about you,’ he lied. Murray didn’t say anything. ‘He’ll own this place someday,’ said Jonah. He wiped the grass again. He couldn’t imagine his dad on the mountain. ‘Reckon he will.’ ‘Will you work for him?’ ‘I like my job.’ ‘My dad said you were like brothers.’ Murray stopped, but Jonah kept walking and almost bumped into the middle of his back. Murray’s skin smelt like damp earth and kitchen spice. Jonah could feel the warmth from his body. Murray spoke without turning around, ‘my dad was my only family, and he’s dead.’ Murray kept walking and Jonah wished he could disappear.

The silence and the darkness inside my brother’s room are like rain falling into rivers, and rivers flowing into lakes, and lakes flowing into oceans. ‘Are you awake?’ I ask and my voice is like a boat bobbing through the waves. Jonah says, ‘yes.’ ‘Do you like Murray?’ I ask with my voice because it is dark in Jonah’s room and he does not know sign. ‘He’s okay,’ says Jonah. ‘King is lost,’ I say. Jonah doesn’t say anything.

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‘You know, the kookaburra?’ I say. I hear Jonah turn over in his bed but he does not say anything. I ask with my hands, did you take King? Silence stretches over everything. Over all the dirt, and all the bush, and all the sky. Trees are silent, and clouds are silent, and stars are silent. The stars have been silent before. Everything waits. Did you? I ask. Jonah does not answer because it is dark and he cannot see me. I hear his breathing. It goes up and down, in and out. Sleep creeps over my toes and up my legs and belly and chest and neck until it reaches my face. I go to my room and my own bed, beneath my blankets, and close my eyes. In the night when my head is hazy and my eyes are still filled up with sleep I feel Jonah under my blankets. He presses his mouth into my neck and his body into my side. This is how we are inside the belly. This is how I almost took his breath. I dream of King flying and because I am asleep I forget that he could never fly. Jonah creeps into my bed. ‘Did you?’ I ask. My voice sounds far away. ‘I hate you,’ says my brother. His mouth is hot and angry against my throat and I wonder if I am a snake and if I formed Jonah into mountains and rivers like the snake in the Dreaming. Jonah, I say. It’s okay, I say. I still love you, I say.

27.

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Clancy washed his face and undressed. His voice was hoarse, he was tired and wanted to sleep. He stepped over Queenie’s blanket and turned on the radio. ‘…marks a historical and sad day in Australia’s history...’ ‘Of course it does,’ said Clancy, ‘when is it not?’ His pajamas were at the end of his bed. They wouldn’t be warm enough. The radio crackled. ‘… and looks as if the announcement will be made early tomorrow that the…’ Clancy pulled a jumper from the top shelf of his wardrobe. Another toppled down with it. He left it on the ground. ‘… officially extinct.’ Clancy stopped. ‘… tomorrow marks fifty years without a single substantiated sighting of the animal…’ The radio crackled again. Clancy ran his finger over the tuning wheel. The woman’s voice tipped in and out of static. ‘…On 7 September 1936, the last Tasmanian tiger died at the Hobart Zoo…’ ‘Come on, come on,’ said Clancy. He found the right spot and the static disappeared. ‘…the day-shift keeper didn’t lock the Thylacine in its hut and it died of exposure in the night.’ Clancy sat down on the edge of his bed. He never knew how Benjamin died. He imagined the frightened tiger balled up in the dark corner of the pen cowering from the icy wind blowing in from the mountains. ‘So unless a tiger is found by tomorrow, the species will officially be declared extinct. This has been -’ Clancy switched the radio off. The room was silent.

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River used to say that she could sing the tigers to her. She would run around the fence, or dance through the grey lavender bushes, howling to the bush. Sometimes she dragged Clancy out with her and together they would waltz across the grass until it got dark. They talked about how to find the tigers, even if they didn’t want to be found. David never joined in. He was always reading, or telling Clancy and Essie about something he was reading. ‘Dad, did you know the big people in Gulliver’s Travels are based on Tasmanians?’ ‘Sounds good,’ Clancy answered. Essie sat next to her son. ‘Where’d you read that, Davy?’ David kept talking but Clancy wasn’t listening. He was listening to the trills and giggles of his little girl playing outside on Essie’s lawn. Every night she would sing out to the trees and the rivers and dams. It always said the same song. ‘Tiger, tiger burning bright,’ River sang into the darkness, ‘in the forests of the night…’

‘So, that’s it,’ said Jack, ‘they’re just gone?’ Clancy’s pajamas were still waiting at the end of the bed. He looked down at his hands. ‘You can prove them wrong. It would only take one.’ Clancy opened the door. ‘Where’re you going?’ shouted Jack. He never worried about waking the boys. Jack knew they couldn’t hear him. The hall was dark but Clancy knew where he was going. The kitchen curtains were open. Moonlight pooled on the floorboards. The room looked like silver honeycomb.

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‘Let it go, mate,’ shouted Jack. ‘It’s over.’ Clancy lifted the pelt down from the wall and put it on. ‘She’s not out there.’ Clancy opened the door and closed it behind him. He exhaled. White mist billowed from his mouth. He left his boots beside the door even though he knew there would be frost on the ground. Clancy stepped out onto the grass. His feet burned. Jack was waiting for him beyond the fence. ‘They’re extinct,’ he said. ‘Give it up, mate.’ It took fifty years of missing before something was officially extinct. Clancy walked out into the darkness. He would be seventy soon.

River wasn’t afraid of the tigers. Clancy told her tigers stole sheep and ripped out throats but River didn’t believe him. She thought it was funny. ‘Daddy, I saw one,’ she said, not long after Essie first told them she was sick. ‘Saw one, did you?’ ‘Fair dinkum,’ she said. ‘Near the waterfall.’ Clancy helped Bill lift a pole down from the Ute tray. ‘Did you hear that, mate?’ Bill nodded. The pole was heavy. ‘I saw it and I yelled,’ said River, ‘and it growled and got up on its bum and then I came forward, like this.’ She mimed her approach for them. ‘He tried to take a bloody bite of me. Little bugger.’ ‘You better not tell this story in front of your mummy,’ said Bill. River hitched her dress up into her underwear and tucked it in around the leg holes. ‘Mum won’t care, hey Dad?’

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Bill said something in sign language. River answered. ‘She wants me to go have a look with her,’ Bill said. ‘I told her, we’ve still got a few more to unload.’ ‘After?’ she asked. ‘I’m gonna catch one and hang it next to dad’s.’ Bill nodded. ‘You come here,’ said Clancy. He hoisted her into the air. ‘You little bugger.’ ‘Lemme down,’ River shrieked. She slipped through his fingers like water. ‘Careful,’ he said, but River was off. ‘See you, Dad,’ she shouted over her shoulder before disappearing back into the bush. ‘Gotta catch me a tiger.’ They left her to her game and went back to work.

It was dark and the air was like ice. His leg throbbed. From inside the scrub Clancy heard the whoop, whoop, whoop of a nocturnal animal. A bird squawked and burst from the canopy. He heard it flying. Leaves bristled. Something darted away as he approached. Something bigger followed. He could hear the sound of roo or wallaby legs jumping away. Clancy’s heart thumped so hard he thought it might burst from his chest and take flight too. He leant against a tree. An animal scurried up the trunk next to him. He launched himself forward. His hands hit mud and he felt skin tear from his knee. He called for River until his voice was gone.

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River came bounding from the bush like a startled wallaby. She was shouting before she was free of the trees. ‘I seen them again. Dad. I seen the tigers.’ ‘Where?’ Clancy thought of Benjamin and the yawning jaws. ‘I touched one,’ said River. Her face was flushed. ‘It scratched me.’ ‘Don’t tell fibs.’ She showed him the scratch on her arm. ‘Where did you see them?’ he asked again. This time more seriously. ‘Up there,’ she said and she gestured her head towards the top of the mountain. ‘Did they attack you?’ asked Clancy. He turned her in a circle looking for more scratches and bites. She laughed. ‘How many were there?’ River shrugged. ‘Lots.’ Clancy pushed the hair away from her face. Her forehead was wet. ‘Are you telling stories again?’ River scowled. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I definitely seen them.’ ‘All right,’ he said, ‘on you get.’ River smiled and climbed onto his back. She wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘We can’t hurt them, Dad,’ she said. ‘They’ve got babies.’

‘You fucking dog,’ shouted Clancy. ‘Come!’ The bush fell silent. Nothing moved. Clancy could feel the air going in and out of his lungs. He could smell the ferns. They reminded him of something from when

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he was young. He pushed his hands into the mud. It was warm. The trees sighed in around him and he thought of his mother, and the years before Jack died. He felt her hands making circles on his back. ‘I lost her, Ma.’ ‘It’s all right,’ she said, gently. ‘It’s not your fault, bairn.’ Clancy pulled the sheets of warm mud up around him and closed his eyes.

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“For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight, If once they gain the shelter of those hills.”

Banjo Paterson

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28.

I hold out my arms and try not to feel scared. It is cold under the ground and the air is coiled around and over my jumper and inside my bones. My clothes feel thin and my skin feels thin. Behind me is the opening of the cave and it is daylight outside but the daylight is getting further and further away. ‘Come on,’ says Murray and he is in front of me inside the darkness. ‘I can’t see you,’ I say with my voice. ‘Your eyes’ll adjust.’ Every sound my body makes is swallowed up and the cave spits back ghost echoes. The sound of my feet is louder and sounds like a thunderstorm. The sounds of my hands reaching for the wall is like scratching rats everywhere and even my breathing is louder and like the surf back at home. There is a drip. It might be somewhere behind me or in front, but when I try to hear it properly the sound goes everywhere and every rock is dripping into every other rock, and every sound can dissolve in every other sound. I hold my hands out in front and with my fingers I find Murray in the darkness. ‘Can we turn the light on now?’ Murray turns on the torch. I see another door further into the cave. ‘In there,’ says Murray. He crouches until his body makes an L and then he shuffles along the side of the cave and down through the second door. ‘Coming?’ My body follows and my mind tries not to feel worried when the ground starts to drop away. The cave is pushing me. I only just squeeze through the door and it is like I am a rat passing through the body of a snake.

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Jonah was hunting. He closed his eyes and tried to pull the threads of sound from beneath the heavy canopy. There was scuttling. He could hear that. A ruffle, followed by a squawk. Wings beating. Falling leaves. Maybe even the faraway call of the waterfall. A branch snapped. Jonah opened his eyes. Footsteps. They were heavy and slow. He slid behind a tree and waited. The tree trunk felt steady in his hands. He closed his eyes, and took a deep slow breath. Everything around him was like a wave of familiar and unfamiliar smells. Jonah took another breath. His nostrils felt cold. He could smell his granddad bobbing over the wave like a tiny boat. Jonah opened his eyes. Clancy shuffled through the trees using low hanging branches and rocks for balance. His granddad was wearing the tiger. The front legs of the skin came to his elbows and the legs hung loose from his lower back. The tail of the skin wilted across his tailbone coming to rest between his buttocks. Jonah wondered if it smelled. His granddad was naked underneath. His penis looked shriveled and grey. Clancy stopped and coughed. Smokers cough, his dad called it. He spat something into the scrub and kept walking, dragging his leg like a stroppy child in a shopping centre. Light trickled from the sparse canopy of trees and shimmered through the ginger fur. It slipped down between the dark, wavering stripes and disappeared into Clancy’s skin. He looked small and grey. The stripes of the tiger skin were the only certain part of him. Almost as if the skin knew it was meant to hold the pieces of his grandfather together.

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Murray is waiting in the cave. I look up and it makes me dizzy and the room disappears. It might go up and up and up forever. Big lumps of grey rock poke from the walls and long, spindly drops hang from the ceiling. Murray says these are called stalactites. I think they are scary because they are not just the stalactites but also shadows dripping down walls and it is like being trapped behind teeth inside a giant mouth. ‘What do you think?’ asks Murray and he holds his arms out like he is showing me something he built. The light from the torch darts sideways and scurries like a gecko. The cave smells damp and musty and like socks. ‘Lay down,’ says Murray and he sits on the ground, which is also just rock and pats the space beside him. ‘It’s the best way to see.’ Murray holds his hand out to me and I take it and he helps me to the middle of the cave. The ground is wet and very cold and when I lay down on the rock it is like I am ice and the floor is boiling water. ‘Ready?’ I nod. There is a click. The light disappears. The black rushes in around me like a wave and it is like I am at the bottom of the ocean and I think of Jonah and how much he would like these caves because he is small and likes the dark. I am scared, I sign because I do not want Murray to know. ‘It’s all right,’ says Murray like he already knows, ‘just blink a few times,’ I open and close my eyes. One, two, three, and each time the black is less like black and there are no edges to me anymore. My legs are rocky floors and my arms are salty walls. My hairs are stalactites and my mouth is the door to the cave. I close my mouth tight.

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His granddad shifted the weight of his body onto his injured leg and both legs buckled beneath him. The tiger skin slipped from his back and tumbled into the dirt. It curled into the leaves and looked immediately at home. Just a wild tiger sleeping. Clancy braced himself. Jonah watched him press his forehead into the tree. He came out of the slump with a roar and punched the tree with his fist. One, two, three. Jonah stopped counting after a while. His granddad’s voice was like fire. It burnt the silence out of everything. He sobbed and called to the river. Jonah wondered if he could reach the skin without his granddad noticing. After a while Clancy stopped. His breathing was heavy and his knuckles were spotted with bloody lumps. The tree looked untouched. Clancy said something to the skin that Jonah couldn’t hear. He nudged the tiger with his foot. It didn’t move. ‘Where the fuck are you?’ he shouted. No answer. His granddad lifted his good leg up over the skin and brought his heel down on the tiger’s head. Everything stopped. The trees stopped. The wind stopped. Even the birds stopped calling. Everything waited, like Jonah. Everything wanted to see if the tiger would fight back. Clancy lifted his foot up and brought it down again, and again, and again. He was stomping and shouting. Dirt whirled up around his legs. He wanted to crush the skin to death. Jonah pushed himself back into the base of his tree. The ground weakened beneath him. ‘Come back you fucking bastard.’ Jonah brushed the leaves and dirt away from the mouth of the unused burrow. He climbed inside.

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When Jonah and I are little we hide behind the Christmas tree in the corner of our lounge room. Mum hangs lights and baubles and snowflakes over the tree and because Jonah and I have never seen snow we make the snowflakes from cardboard and glue and sand. We pretend our mum can’t see us, even though we know she can. Mum wraps the lights around the tree and tangles us up in them too. We fall back into them like kittens. Above us there are silver baubles of light. One by one, by one, the trinkets of light shower over us and we are floating in the sky. The ceiling of the cave is like Christmas. ‘They’re mating.’ ‘Who is?’ I say because I know what mating means. I think of Lucy. ‘The bugs,’ says Murray. ‘Reckon you could catch them?’ says my dad and even though I am still in the cave with Murray I am also with my dad at the jetty. ‘What?’ ‘The fishy lights?’ I feel myself smile like it is real and happening again to me. ‘I would bait them, Dad.’ The jetty is my dad’s place and in the night sometimes he walks and sits on the wood and the ocean tells him a story. Sometimes I follow him and sometimes he knows and lets me sit with him and watch the lights from town flinging themselves across the water. Dad says maybe there is another town under the water and our town is just a reflection. ‘I saw a platypus down here once,’ says Murray. My dad disappears. ‘Where?’ I ask with my voice. ‘In the pond near the wall. I think it came down through the opening on the other side of the mountain. That way leads to the creek.’ We lie in quiet. I think about a brown felty platypus catching the light fish in his bill and gobbling them all up. His belly lights from the inside. He does not like it when he tries to sleep.

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‘This old bloke told me a story about how platypus got started,’ says Murray and I can hear the story in his voice. Just like my dad. ‘He said a water rat fell in love with a duck. He took her back to his burrow and married her.’ I think of a duck and rat curled together in soft warm leaves. I think of Lucy. ‘He brought her food and made her comfortable. He told her if she was ever in trouble, like from snakes or something, she should hit her tail on the surface of the water so he could hear her. They made babies with a duck’s bill and feet, and a rat’s flat tail and fur.’ ‘Did snakes get them?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ says Murray, ‘but that’s why the Platypus always whacks his tail on the surface of the water. It’s when they’re in trouble.’ ‘Tell me another one,’ I say even though my back is so cold my skin is almost stinging. ‘What sort?’ ‘Anything.’ Murray is quiet for a moment and I can hear him breathing in and out beside me. ‘There was a young man once who lost his dad and sister to the bush, and because he was so alone and because he blamed the trees and the mountains and the rivers for taking them, he left and went to the city.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because he didn’t want to miss them and it was easier in the city.’ I think of Sydney and my mum meeting my dad. ‘The man met a girl and fell in love. She had a baby and they died together as the baby was being born.’ My mouth feels dry and my mind feels stiff and slow and I try to put the words and the meaning together as we go but sometimes it is difficult and the meaning slips through the space between the words. ‘So the man left the city and went back to the bush,’ says Murray and his voice feels tight and sore, like it is pushing up from his chest, ‘and on the way he found a bird and the bird was lost too.’ ‘Why?’ I ask but Murray does not answer. His mind pulls away from my mind and his body stiffens. The air is colder.

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‘Do you want to see the platypus pond,’ says Murray. ‘It’s over near the entrance.’ ‘Yes,’ I say. I look at the universe above me pressed into the rocks and drips. There is a stroke of light and I see the torch. I see my arms and legs and hands again, and my breath is thick like smoke. Murray leads me to the pond. He shines the light into the water. The floor of the pond is made from big white waves of rock and it is like it has been built from a huge coil of white snakes. I point to the scaly snake rocks beneath the surface. ‘Why is the rock like that?’ I ask Murray. ‘Because the water funnels one way,’ he says, ‘and the rock responds.’

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29.

Clancy coughed a lump of frothy white phlegm into the kitchen sink and washed it down the drain with a jet of hot water from the tap. His hands were grazed and he felt ragged from sleeping rough. He saw Murray through the window and stepped out onto the verandah. ‘Hey, mate,’ he called. Murray stopped and turned around. ‘You mind hanging around here while I take another look for the dog?’ Murray nodded and walked over to him. ‘Nothing yet?’ ‘Nah, mate. You?’ Clancy shook his head. ‘Bloody rotten luck,’ he said. ‘You reckon,’ said Murray. It didn’t really sound like a question. ‘Seems like a hell of a coincidence.’ ‘Pets go missing all the time in the bush. Remember them pups?’ ‘Yeah, but they were pups, Clancy. Pups go missing. Not Kookaburras. King’s old as the hills and he can’t bloody fly.’ ‘I best get going before the light goes. Jonah’s inside making some damn concoction on the stove. Make sure he doesn’t burn the place down.’ Murray nodded again. ‘Did you listen to the radio last night?’ ‘No,’ he said. Clancy could tell he was lying. Murray knew. He knew the tigers were extinct. It was official. Everyone knew by now.

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Clancy had never seen an aboriginal bloke until the day he saw Bill walking into town wearing new boots and holding a swag over his shoulder. He wanted to introduce himself but he didn’t know how, so he asked him if he wanted some work. Bill nodded. ‘I’ve got a few trees that needs cutting out.’ Bill nodded again. Together they lopped down three huge gums and chopped out the roots. Sometimes Clancy could still smell the tree sap bleeding into the tousled earth. There were still some patches of lawn where the grass refused to grow. ‘Been here a long time,’ Bill said as they loaded the roots into his truck. ‘Long time.’ Clancy wanted to give him some of the wood as payment, but he said no. ‘You can sell it in town.’ Bill just shook his head. ‘Why not?’ ‘Your timber, your money.’ Clancy offered him a beer from the esky and when Bill said no and that he didn’t drink, Clancy offered him a permanent job. ‘You can have the worker’s shack,’ he said. ‘You can do whatever you want with it.’ ‘I’ve got a boy,’ said Bill and he tilted his hat back off his forehead. There was a scar just beneath his hairline. ‘Got to have my boy along.’ ‘How old?’ Clancy asked, thinking of Essie and her swollen belly. ‘Four.’ ‘Well behaved?’ ‘He’s a good boy.’ ‘Righto, bring him. Reckon the Mrs. would be chuffed to have a friend for ours. Specially one that’s well behaved.’ They shook hands. ‘What’s his name?’ asked Clancy as they both got into the Ute. ‘Murray,’ said Bill. ‘His mother named him.’

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Clancy turned the key in the ignition. ‘Reckon mine will too, mate. Says she likes David. Like, King David from the bible.’ ‘I know them stories.’ ‘Stupid name if you ask me,’ said Clancy. ‘Going to call him Davo. Will you need to bring a Mrs. with you?’ ‘Died when the boy was born.’ Clancy imagined Essie’s life caving in under the weight of bringing their son into the world. He wished he knew what to say.

Clancy started at the bee tree. Queenie would often nap in the shade beneath the leaves. He reckoned the dog often thought about the red honey Bill gave her after the snakebite. Samson was already there. His new overalls were covered in streaks of red mud. Clancy was about to sing out when he saw the golden brown mist. The mist was humming. Samson’s hands moved gently through the air and the bees responded. He wasn’t a dancer like Essie. Samson was a conductor and the bees were his music. ‘Hey lad?’ Clancy shouted. Samson turned. ‘Have you seen my dog?’ ‘Shhhhh,’ said Samson, ‘I am asking about her.’

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On their first night out together Clancy asked Essie why she moved her hands when she spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, resting her fingers nervously in her lap. ‘It’s sign. My mother’s deaf.’ He took Essie’s hand and asked her to tell him about her life. She smiled and told him about her mother who always wished she were a pianist, her father who died when she was very young, and what it was like to grow up in silence. ‘Living in the bush sounds so lovely to me,’ she said. ‘There would be so many wonderful noises.’ ‘Most people move to the country for the quiet.’ ‘I suppose they do,’ she said. Essie explained that sign was different to just making gestures when you speak. Sign was its own language but Clancy thought it looked more like a prayer. She said, in using her hands she could pass knowledge back and forth between two bodies. She was a dancer and it was a dance on both sides. ‘Body syntax,’ she called it and she laughed. Clancy never got the joke. Bill did.

Clancy watched as Samson lifted his arms into the air and asked the golden brown cloud where Queenie was. The cloud looped around his arms almost like they were slowly tying his grandson in invisible threads. ‘The bees are confused,’ said Samson. ‘Sometimes they think I am saying Queen and not Queenie. They know where their Queen is.’ ‘Try dog,’ said Clancy. He took a step towards them. Pain shot through his leg and almost knocked him over. The cold must’ve got in. Probably when he was sleeping rough. He concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Clancy imagined the cobbled coil of veins buried deep beneath his flesh. He wanted to peel back the skin and straighten them all out. In. Out.

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‘They do not know, Granddad.’ ‘Big surprise,’ said Clancy. He felt ridiculous. Samson dropped both hands and turned to face him. ‘They want to know if you miss your wife.’ At first Clancy didn’t answer. He was like the mountain. Filled with tunnels and darkness. Pockmarked with caves. He didn’t know where the sadness ended, or where it began. It seemed to sweep in every direction forever like an endless sea. Clancy thought of Essie, and River, and his mother, and Samson’s question punched a hole. He felt himself crumble. ‘You’re all right,’ said Samson and his voice was warm and sweet, and reminded Clancy of feeding molasses to the horses on a hot morning. The boy raised his arms again and Clancy watched. This time he saw Essie and Bill. Four hands casting words over a silent sea. Sailing between them like dozens of little boats.

It was dusk. Clancy and Bill had knocked off for the day and were having a cuppa in the kitchen when they heard Essie run down the hall and out into the yard. ‘Ess?’ There was no reply. ‘Probably can’t hear you,’ said Bill and they both followed her. The sun dipped below the mountain and everything outside was with gold. Essie was facing away from them. Slowly she titled her face upwards and closed her eyes. Then she started to dance. It wasn’t the kind of dance that included steps. This was something different. This was a dance of hands and arms and fingers. Essie signed to the trees and the air, and they answered her. She felt the heartbeat of the bush and wove herself through it, making herself part of everything. ‘What’s she doing?’ asked Clancy.

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‘Signing.’ ‘To who?’ ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Bill. ‘Reckon she’d teach me?’ Clancy didn’t answer.

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30.

Jonah climbed higher and higher. The tight weave of scrub surrounding the house slowly unraveled. The air thinned, and the ground expanded beneath him. Sometimes there was a gap in the bush and Jonah could see Clancy’s house jutting from the side of the mountain like a figurehead on the front of a ship. He took a deep breath. This was the place his father told them about. This was the “Never Mind.” Jonah used to think his father was an amazing storyteller. They would beg him every night to tell them a story before they went to bed. Sometimes he would. Sometimes he would stand up from his chair, and a verse would come tumbling from behind his lips. Sometimes he would swerve as he stood, and sometimes he would be out of breath by the end, but always his voice would rise up from his chest carrying with it a story capable of holding both of them in silence. But they weren’t his father’s stories. He knew that know. The stories of drovers and wild mobs of brumbies and lost children belonged to someone else and were imagined from the safety of the city. When his father told them about the Never Mind, and Clancy of the Overflow, and the town of Come-and-help-yourself, Jonah believed him. In his father’s tiny office, in his brick Queensland shit box, the sound of another man’s poem travelled through the space between them. Jonah had never known the difference between Clancy of the Overflow and Clancy his granddad. There was no difference, until now. Now, in the stillness of the bush the two men were coming apart. Like oil and vinegar they could only blend in chaos. In this new stillness both men released their hold on each other and separated.

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The bees and I sign all the time now. They understand me and I understand them and not just because of the signing. Murray tells me what kind of honey we need, and I sign to the bees what kind of honey we need, and they tell me where they will find it. I do not know the signs for some of the trees or honey and so the bees teach me and I copy them. Murray cut his hand, I sign, because he cut his hand when we were cleaning the honey jars. Honey can heal. It is a big cut, I sign, deep. We need strong honey. Leatherwood. Beyond the ravine. The bees like Murray. Even though they have not made special honey for him. Most of the bees remember his dad even though they were not born when he was alive. Never a goodbye. What does that mean? I ask with my hands because I do not understand the answer. ‘Can you ask them what they remember?’ asks Murray. What is the story of Bill? I ask the bees with my hands. His feet are shod with gold. His labor is a chant. Murray says he is confused. I tell him that I am confused as well and usually the bees are not as weird as that and he says it is okay and he won’t ask them again. I wonder if the bees only make sense to me, and if the story about Bill would make sense if I kept it silent. Sometimes I wave my hands high and the bees circle around me and we bring our bodies close and our language close and it doesn’t matter what we say because we are saying it together.

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Jonah was almost at the top. He could feel it. The air was thinner the further he went. Colder too. He wasn’t wearing any gloves or shoes. He could hear footsteps crunching. They belonged to him and Jonah wondered how cats hunted without making any noise. He liked cats. He liked watching them hunt. His favourite game was hunting. He always made Samson play the part of his prey. ‘You swim and I’ll be the shark.’ Jonah circled the water around his brother. Samson watched him carefully. ‘Sharks can’t kill whales.’ ‘Be a person.’ ‘I don’t want to.’ Jonah bared his teeth. ‘I said no.’ Jonah listened to the trees. They reminded him of wind chimes. He squeezed his toes. Damp earth oozed around feet. The rain made everything softer. The wind sighed past. He’d heard it before. Some place else. There was a gasp. Small at first but it got deeper, louder. Jonah closed his eyes. He didn’t want to go back. Not yet. He didn’t want to see it again. The wind chimes paused. The sighing stopped. Jonah opened the door to his father’s office and everything was still.

There is a humming at the front of my face. I open my eyes. Three bees are floating over me and the sign for float is one hand making a jetty and the other hand floating

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out from underneath. Up and down. I make the sign and it is how the bees look to me but it is also how my mind works coming out from under my sleep. Come with us, dance the bees and they are bobbing around my face. Where? I sign. No time, no time, no time, the bees dance answering together but also in parts. There is a light hanging from the ceiling above my bed and I knock my head on the bulb. The light swings. Pants are first and I wear the same ones as yesterday and the shirt that was my dad’s and still smells like him. My shoes are outside and so I say ‘ready’ with my voice and my hands. I have not used my voice yet today and it crackles in my throat. Come, come, come, say the bees with their dancing and it is like chanting. I have work today, I sign. The bees dance, hurry, hurry, they dance. I am out the door and pulling on my shoes and following. She wants to meet you, they dance and fly forward. Who? I ask and my breath is hollow because I am not used to running. The Queen. Yes all of us, the bumbles and browns and even the bachelors. Why does she want to meet me? It is difficult to sign while I am running. Because of the stories. Yes the stories, the stories of Esther and the stories of Bill. Running across the side of the mountain the bees do not hear my breath catching in my chest or feel the weight of the ground beneath heavy work boots. That is only me. We know the stories. Yes we all know the stories, they dance, backwards and forwards agreeing with each other and overlapping dances. And the story of River. I stop. The bees stop. My chest hurts and I bend down over my knees. Everything spins into everything else. A bit more. Just a bit more.

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Ahead there is a tree covered over in green moss and tiny, springy looking ferns. There are hollows and holes and secret places all over this tree. Small ways in and little ways out, and the tree smells of honey. The bees fly inside.

‘Hello?’ called Jonah. There was no answer. He pushed the front door. It was open. He went inside. It wasn’t like his dad to leave the front door open. He must be stoned, thought Jonah. ‘Dad?’ Jonah could hear Samson and their mother unloading the rest of the shopping. He was carrying a bag of fruit and veg, and his Mustang. He heard something else. A thump. Another thump. Someone was inside his house. Jonah walked down the corridor towards his father’s office. The door to his father’s office was ajar. Jonah could hear grunting. He gripped the body of the Mustang tightly and felt the muscles ripple beneath the bronze skin. ‘Dad?’ ‘Who is it?’ Jonah saw a women’s leg. ‘Dad, we’re back.’ ‘Go help your mother.’ There was a scuffling noise and his father said, ‘here, here.’ Jonah pushed the door open. ‘I said go,’ shouted his father. His voice sounded like thunder. Jonah ran. ‘Joey,’ called his mother but he ran past her and kept running. Over the fence and down the street and if he’d been a car Jonah would have screeched as he turned. The park wasn’t far. No one would see there. He lifted the

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horse to his face and pressed it into his nose. Jonah closed his eyes and imagined them running forever.

I wait at the tree for a long time. I can hear the bees inside and sometimes I see one fly out and spin into the air and disappear. When she comes to meet me, she comes alone. A shining, slow dancing gem but she is also a bee and also a queen. What is your name? she asks me and she dances slowly like she is dancing through honey. Samson. I sign each letter. Sam-snow. I sign hello, even though she has my name wrong. I am The Queen, she dances. I understand you communicate? I nod. How do you come to know our language? Special school. What is this? I think about the Special School, and I think about my friends and my teachers. I think about playing games and playing instruments and making clanging, messy noise. I think about being called “gang” sometimes, and sometimes “pal.” I think about the smell of glue and butcher’s paper with books to make it deeper smell. My dad says short books do not have a smell. They cannot get musty because ‘no one is afraid to pick them up and read them,’ he says. I think about home-time and waiting at the bus stop and being watched. Watched by the other school and watched by the cars and teachers. Watched by everyone who is not in the clanging messy noise gang. Pal. I think about the other school and the faces coming out and I think about them watching us as they pass by our school and our faces. It is the watching that makes us different.

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A place to learn things, I answer.

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31.

One of his grandsons was moving the pelt. Clancy was sure of it. First there was the paw hanging off the wall, and now the head. He hooked the head back on the nails. It could be Samson, but he didn’t really seem to give a shit about anything inside the house, least of all the pelt. Did Downs kids touch things? Clancy wasn’t sure, but he did remember reading something about them liking cuddles and he was yet to see Samson embrace anyone. His brother was always asking questions about tigers and roaming aimlessly around the scrub. There was something strange about Jonah. Feral. Clancy reckoned both boys were tall enough to reach the nails and neither were the full bob. Samson shuffled past him in his pajamas and poured himself a cup of tea from the pot. ‘Did you touch this?’ asked Clancy and he pointed to the pelt. ‘No,’ said Samson and he turned around and shuffled out again holding his hot cup of tea with both hands. Clancy scratched the spine of the tiger pelt. ‘Why’s he taking you down?’ he asked. The tiger nuzzled into him.

Everyone knew what Clancy did with the pelt. Kirra used to joke that he should put buttons in the tiger for easy access. The publican, Wayne, gave Clancy short shrift one night while he was having a counter meal. He reckoned Clancy should be

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ashamed of keeping the skin, let alone wearing it. He said all Tasmanians should be ashamed of what they did to the tigers. It might have bothered him but Wayne once called Murray a boong in earshot. Clancy didn’t give a shit what Wayne had to say about shame. Or him. Everyone knew why he wore the skin and he had long given up caring what anyone thought of it. ‘What you hope of finding?’ Bill asked almost a year after River disappeared. Clancy hung the pelt back on the wall. ‘My boy reckons David’s having some trouble. Boys from town are making out like he killed her. You going up there is keeping it fresh in their minds.’ Bill shook his head. ‘Starting to think, you like it in that skin.’ ‘I need a shower.’ Bill turned the brim of his hat around in his hands. ‘I love the little lady too,’ he said, ‘but it’s not right, what you’re doing. You keeping those spirits restless.’ ‘I can’t talk now,’ said Clancy. His hands trembled like a horse bothered by flies. ‘I need a shower.’ ‘My boy reckons he hears her. He says she calls to him like when they used to play.’ Clancy didn’t remember pushing Bill into the wall but he did remember holding him there. ‘I won’t let her go,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll go missing too,’ said Bill.

Clancy found Jonah sitting on his bed reading a book. ‘The Jungle Book, aye?’ He pointed to the book in Jonah’s lap. ‘Yep.’ Clancy remembered buying the copy at the newsagent in Hobart. It came with a magazine about India and Rudyard Kipling. ‘He loves to read, your dad.’

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Jonah nodded. ‘Do you?’ ‘Obviously,’ said Jonah and he pushed his hands under his thighs like he was trying to tether himself to the bed. Clancy handed him back the book. ‘I know you’re moving the pelt.’ ‘What?’ ‘The tiger skin,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s very old, and very valuable.’ Jonah didn’t say anything. ‘I know how interesting it is,’ said Clancy, ‘but you mustn’t touch or move it.’ ‘Wasn’t me,’ said Jonah. The boy looked just like David when he lied.

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“Lend me thy coat, that I may go back.”

Rudyard Kipling.

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32.

Everyone was looking for Queenie but it was Jonah that found her. She was cowering beneath a spray of fern fronds. The dog saw him. She looked sick. The skin around her mouth curled back. She bared her teeth and growled. ‘Don’t,’ he said. The dog barked. He wanted to cover his ears and run away. She barked again and something inside Jonah shifted. ‘Dog,’ he said and what he meant was that she was just a dog and he was something better. He was something powerful. Jonah tilted his head, bared his teeth and growled. The dog lunged.

I ask my granddad if I can use his phone LUCY. He says he does not care what I use as long as I don’t touch his pelt. My phone numbers are written on a piece of paper and when I ring my Lucy I am still holding the paper. ‘Lucy?’ ‘This is her mother. Who is this?’ ‘Samson.’ Her mum sighs. ‘This is a bad time.’ ‘Can I speak to Lucy,’ I say slowly. I hear Lucy in the background and she is probably in the living room watching a police show.

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‘Eee dat Am?’ I hear. ‘Giv ere, Ma.’ ‘Just for a moment.’ ‘Thank you,’ I say and the ‘ou’ sound in ‘you’ is very long because I am trying to make her understand. ‘Am-on,’ says Lucy. I know this means Samson. ‘Ou aited tah-oo ong to call ee.’ ‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I mah-iss uo Am.’ ‘Don’t cry,’ I say. ‘I miss you. I promise.’ ‘That’s enough,’ says Lucy’s mum. ‘You’re stirring each other up.’ I hear Lucy say ‘no,’ and then she is in the background again. ‘Enjoy your time away, Sam,’ says her mum and the phone hangs up and she is the one who hangs it up and I think about my long ‘ou’ sounds and the hard to make ‘s’ sounds and I think about Lucy and I think about my mum saying Lucy is not high functioning and I think about Lucy frustrated and Lucy crying and my own eyes are crying and my hand hits the table.

Jonah closed his eyes and tried to think. It was dead. The dog was dead. This wasn’t like the kookaburra. He couldn’t hide something this big. Maybe he could drag it to the dam and throw the body on top of the string. Maybe it wasn’t dead yet. Maybe the dog was just sleeping. Jonah crept forward. Blood oozed from the hole in her stomach and down the branch. Her eyes were still open. He tried to look into them. They were bluish white, like drops of ice. He waited for her to blink but she didn’t. Jonah reached for the dog. This time she let him touch her.

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Bees, I sign at the tree but they do not come because they are inside and cannot hear me because I am signing and not using my voice. I knock my fist against the tree and it is still sore and I shout, ‘bees.’ One by one the bees fly out of the tree. Can you help me find my brother? I ask with my hands. No, no, no, they dance. Why? I ask with my hands. He speaks with voice when alone, dance the bees, weaving over and around and back through. I am afraid because I do not want to know who their ‘he’ is. Maybe it is my granddad and maybe it is Murray and maybe it is my brother and maybe it is even me. I want to ask, which ‘he’, because there is only the four of us on the mountain but I know it is my brother. I know my brother is ‘he’. I ask, do you know where he is? We do. We do. I sign, take me. I am running. Running through bushes and trees and ferns and dirt and sometimes the bush tries to grab my legs but I am too fast. The trees cannot catch me and the grass cannot catch me and the ferns cannot catch me. Here, the bees dance, and we stop. My breath is heavy and falls loudly inside my chest like big rocks being thrown into deep water. Look. Through the trees is my brother. He is bent over and I watch his shoulders lift up and drop down like a dog. Something is in front of him, and I try to see but my breath is still heavy and my brother hears me and turns. The bees scatter.

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He does not see me. But I see him. I see his red mouth and I see his red teeth and I do not know what to think and I do not know if I should shout out or be silent. I am quiet as I back away from my brother and when I cannot see him anymore I run. I run to the creek and push my face into the water and it is like needles in my skin but I do not care because I want my brother frozen out of my eyes. Over me the leaves break away from the branches and one by one spiral into the river. Each one is like the letter of another language and I do not understand them. There is a quiet rush of water. A sidling rush, and the current lifts the river up and carries the leaves over rocks and tree roots and hiding platypus dens and down the mountain. I hope the letters find my mum and I hope she can read them.

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33.

Clancy saw the “last tiger” not long before it died. He and Jack were visiting the Hobart Zoo with their aunty Sheila. It was a hot day and she bought them a flavored ice outside the zoo. Jack chose red and Clancy’s was green. ‘Let’s go,’ said Jack, ‘I want to see the tiger.’ Clancy was so excited he couldn’t say anything. ‘Hold your horses,’ said Sheila. She fingered the last of their coloured ice from the bottom of both cups and slipped it between her lips. ‘Never be wasteful,’ she said, and she threw the cups over the side of the fence to the road beyond. ‘Ready?’ she asked. The inside of her mouth was brownish purple. The ice was rapidly turning to water inside his stomach. Clancy needed to piss, but he didn’t want to wait to see the tiger so he nodded. Inside the zoo the cages were all made from chicken wire. The wire was pulled over small wooden frames and standing on cold slabs of cement. The first cage had two angry looking Tasmanian devils. Everyone crowded around pointing at the black furry bundles. ‘What beauties,’ said Jack. They growled again and Clancy felt the pressure in his bladder expand. Each cage was occupied with some new, exhausted looking animal. There were kangaroos and wallabies and a colony of skinny possums. His Aunty Shelia shuddered. ‘I hate possums,’ she said. Neither of them asked why. Then there it was. Benjamin, ‘They say he’s the last one,’ said Aunty Shelia. Benjamin was on his side, his back legs pointing towards them and his front legs curled inward like a dog. There were feathers in the corner of his cage and

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Clancy could see a chicken leg sticking out from the middle of the mess like an orange twig. The tiger’s large face twisted towards them. ‘He looks like a dog,’ said Aunty Sheila, but Clancy thought there was something distinctly un-doglike about the way the tiger kept his mouth clamped shut even in the heat. ‘Reckon we can get him to stand on his back legs?’ asked Jack. ‘Can they do that?’ Clancy didn’t hear the rest of their conversation because Benjamin turned to look at him. He watched the tiger’s unnaturally large jaws open, almost beyond the frame of the creature’s face. Benjamin barked once and Clancy felt the warmth spread over his groin.

Clancy looked down at his lap. It was dry. The lifeless tiger skin was hanging over the table like always. He thought again of the keeper forgetting to lock Benjamin into his hut for the night and the scratchy black and white film. He saw again the way the tiger darted back and forth along the edge of the cave following a chicken in the keeper’s hand. Back and forth, back and forth.

Three weeks after his grandfather died, a box arrived in the mail. Their da took one look at the package and told their ma to chuck it out. ‘Let’s have a peek,’ she said.

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‘Ripper,’ said Jack. It was his new word. All the older boys at school were saying it. Clancy remembered nodding. Inside, there were a few pictures of the family, his granddad’s wedding ring, a rifle with a dark wooden hilt, and the tiger. After she removed the pelt from its brown paper wrapping, his ma held it up to the light. The fur bristled. ‘What a beauty,’ she said. ‘Clancy hates it, don’t you Clance?’ said Jack and he grinned. ‘Makes him want to go to the shitter.’ ‘Jack,’ scolded their ma. Her heart wasn’t in it. She ran her fingers through the fur. Her hands reached the stripes and Clancy thought he saw her fingers disappear. ‘What a beauty,’ she said quietly. His da never liked the pelt. ‘Bloody grotesque, if you ask me.’ ‘Why?’ ‘One thing to kill a cow for shoes or a sheep for your tucker,’ he said, ‘but it’s something else to shoot a wild animal in the wild.’ ‘Just get rid of it,’ said Jack. ‘It’ll be worth something some day,’ said their da and he folded the pelt and put it away on the top shelf of a wardrobe in the spare room. But Clancy knew it was there. Sometimes he could almost feel it watching him. He remembered the first time he opened the door and reached up over the rack of moldy smelling coats to feel the glistening amber pelt. It felt like water and earth at the same time and his hand slipped down into the stripes like water moving over a creek bed. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jack and Clancy pulled back his hand and turned around. He could feel the guilt collecting in the pores of his skin. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Bullshit,’ said Jack and he leant against the doorframe. ‘I’m just looking at it.’ Jack walked over and pulled the pelt down from inside the wardrobe. It tumbled down from the shelf in a cascade of ginger and black. Together they looked at the curled form lying on the floor between them.

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‘Doesn’t look like the real one?’ said Jack. ‘The one from the zoo.’ Clancy shook his head. ‘I didn’t like it much. Was all a bit boring till you pissed yourself.’ Clancy felt his cheeks burn. ‘The devils were all right,’ continued Jack. ‘Reckon it was dangerous?’ ‘Yes,’ said Clancy and he remembered the jaws opening out in front of him and the warm piss spreading out over the front of his trousers. Jack hooked his hand under the head. ‘I’m a terrible tiger beast,’ he said making a puppet. ‘I’m going to eat your heart out.’ Clancy laughed and the pelt growled again.

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34.

The time we have been on the mountains with a wide green field around me and I have lost count of days. Jonah has gone into the mountain again. He does not eat with us anymore. Sometimes, when he is gone into the trees and rocks and rivers and creeks, I sit at my window and wait because I am afraid he will not come back. I try to understand my brother but it is not easy because I have smelt the dead smell in his mouth. I ask the bees to follow my brother. No, no, no, Sam-Snow. Why? I ask with my hands. We are not hunters, No. We do not follow. We find, they dance but I do not understand the difference.

It was late in the afternoon, maybe even evening. Jonah wasn’t sure. Time on the mountain wasn’t like home. In Queensland, time was connected to the parts of the day when something was supposed to happen. It started getting dark at six o’clock, and that was when he was supposed to be home. By the time it was really dark, it was also bedtime. ‘It makes sense that way,’ said his mother during an argument with his father.

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‘How?’ ‘Sir Joh says-’ ‘Oh, well, if Sir Joh says.’ ‘Cows give less milk,’ said his mother. ‘What?’ ‘They don’t get enough sleep,’ she explained, ‘so they give less milk.’ ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said his father and he threw his hands into the air in a gesture of frustration. ‘This fucking state is so fucking stubborn.’ ‘Don’t swear in front of the boys,’ said his mother. Jonah looked around but it was just him. His father was right. Tasmania was different. The mountain was different. Time was slower, less intrusive. It was still daylight at teatime and wasn’t dark until after nine o’clock. The mountain left it up to him to decide when to eat and when to sleep.

I think about Lucy and the way she holds my hand. It is different to mum and dad and that makes it special and makes it belong to me only. Lucy has signing fingers. Lucy’s fingers sign even in her sleep. I have seen Lucy without her clothes on and kissed her almost everywhere. I have seen her sign, ‘I love you’ and it runs through me, water through water and when we sign we are inside the body silence. I love you, Sam. I love you. Do you like this? Yes, I say and my hands tremble. Lucy goes pink on her cheeks and laughs. I am nervous. I smile and am pink in my face too.

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We can keep signing, she says and Lucy walks towards me and my skin shivers and I am like a cicada ready to shed my boy shell. Like this, she signs and she presses the sign for ‘this’ into my skin. Her hands move over my body. She is signing, I love you on my arm and she is signing beautiful on my back. And I am signing with my hands. We laugh sometimes because we are nervous and because Lucy sometime signs funny things like ‘armpit’, but mostly we are soft and we are quiet and we learn the language of each other.

Jonah opened the front door and went inside. The house was dark and most of the windows were closed. ‘Granddad?’ he called. There was no answer. ‘Sam?’ No one was home. Jonah rubbed his hands together. They were cold. He poured himself a glass of water and sat at the table. The tiger hung over him like a kite. ‘Hello, Tiger,’ he said. The tiger didn’t answer. Jonah wanted to touch the skin but the table was in his way. Clancy must have moved it. He climbed into his chair and stepped onto the tabletop. Jonah’s fingers fell into the fur. He touched the skin everywhere. He touched the neck and snout. He grabbed the tail and balanced the paws in his hand. He ran his fingers underneath where the skin was furless. He balanced himself on the wall and looked the tiger in the eyes. They were dark and questioning. ‘Hello, Tiger,’ he said again. There was a sound. Jonah stopped and listened. Down the hall, a shuffling. Jonah pushed himself into the wall and waited. The shuffling stopped. His brother

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was standing in the hallway, half asleep. Jonah darted down the hallway. Silent, like a cat. He faded under his brother’s arm and disappeared into the darkness of his room. ‘Jonah?’

I wake up and Lucy is a dream and it is cold and I hear a door open and close. The tap groans and water rushes through the house. My brother is home and my Granddad does not know he was gone. ‘Jonah?’ I say and I am at my brother’s door. ‘What?’ says Jonah and his voice is muffled because his head is in the pillow and it is dark. ‘I found King.’ Jonah shrugs. ‘I saw.’ ‘Saw what?’ ‘I saw you,’ I say. ‘I saw you eating.’ I hear Jonah sit up slowly. He does not say anything and maybe he is looking at me and maybe he is not. I cannot see his eyes and my teacher says the white spots on the back of a tiger’s ears are for protection because something coming from behind the tiger does not know the difference between white eyes and white ears. ‘Go to bed, Samson,’ he says but I do not recognise his voice.

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35.

The pelt was hanging differently again. ‘Little shit,’ said Clancy quietly and he re- hung both the back legs and the tail. It was late morning but the kookaburras were still hysterical. ‘Fuck off, you lot,’ he said as he refilled Essie’s teapot. Essie loved the kookaburras. She used to feed the birds scraps of uncooked bacon. ‘You shouldn’t feed them, darlin. They’re introduced.’ ‘So are we,’ she said. ‘But they’re bullies.’ Essie laughed. ‘They probably think the same thing about us.’ After Essie died Clancy shot one. He was sitting alone in the kitchen, his tie still hanging on the bedpost because he couldn’t bring himself to put it around his neck. Then the laughing started. They were everywhere. Cackling. Hysterical. They knew when the mist was coming. Clancy unlocked the pine cupboard where he kept his gun, felt the warm wooden hilt in his hand and walked out onto the verandah. One shot and they lifted up from the trees. One more and he shot a single startled looking kookaburra in mid flight. Clancy never told Murray why the kookaburras kept to the safety of the bush, cackling at him from the treetops. A cloud of grey mist folded down the mountain.

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The mist opened, and his daughter ran out. There she was. She came often this way. River, River, River. With her arms outstretched like wings and her body turning she gathered the mist up in her hands like snow. She saw him and waved. ‘River.’ Caught in the window between them Clancy could see both his refection and hers. River looked as if she were moving around inside him. As he’d swallowed her and the boundaries of his body were the limits of River as well. He waved back. The mist closed, and she was gone.

‘He was a fucking bugger,’ said Jack. ‘Wasn’t he?’ ‘Who?’ ‘Granddad Tom,’ said Jack. He was holding a bottle of home brew. ‘Poor dog.’ Clancy nodded. ‘What was the dog’s name?’ ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ said Clancy. ‘That’s right, Queen Elizabeth,’ said Jack and he took a swig from the bottle. Clancy hated Granddad Tom. He used to tie his dog to the Hills Hoist in the back yard without any water or any food. On hot days the flies would bother her so much she would claw her face. One afternoon they found her strangled. Her ears were filled with flies. It was Granddad Tom who shot the tiger through the side. He told them it was still alive when he flicked the knife down the middle of its stomach and started to pull away the skin.

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Clancy remembered looking through the glass at the hospital. He never wanted to be a granddad. ‘He did love a bush ballad though,’ said Jack. ‘How’d that one go?’ ‘Though far and wide they sought him,’ said Clancy and he felt the words of another man, long dead, lift up and push through him like a rising river. ‘They found not where he fell.’

They were playing together outside on the lawn. Murray picked River up and swirled her around like she was made of rags.‘Putmedown, putmedown,’ she shrieked. Essie was standing at the kitchen sink. She’d been drying the same glass for almost five minutes. ‘You all right, love?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you think they’re getting too old to be that… playful with each other,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. ‘Depends what you mean by playful.’ ‘They’re teenagers,’ she said. ‘River’s not,’ said Clancy. He wasn’t ready for his little girl to become a teenager, let alone a woman. He was thankful she still wore baggy shirts. ‘She’s almost thirteen,’ said Essie. ‘That’s a teenager.’ ‘Yeah, but… she’s not like other girls.’ ‘Neither was I,’ said Essie. Outside, River squealed and broke free of Murray’s hands. She ran, and he chased her. She was still faster than him, even though he was a good two feet taller. They didn’t go beyond the fence. ‘Bloody bugger off,’ shouted River. ‘No way,’ said Murray. ‘I’m winning.’

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Essie closed the window. She plunged her hands into the soapy dishwater and pulled out an almost clean plate. ‘You’ve never said it aloud before.’ Essie scrubbed. She reminded Clancy of the tigers he’d seen in the old black and white footage. Trapped, resigned, lonely. The last of her kind. ‘And I won’t,’ she said without looking at him. ‘He’ll have to go away,’ said Clancy. ‘Yes.’ ‘You want me to talk to Bill?’ Essie nodded. She dropped the plate in the drying rack and opened the window. ‘River’s going to be angry.’ ‘He mightn’t want to go,’ said Clancy. ‘You might have to tell him.’ Essie didn’t answer. Together they watched their daughter throw her arms around Murray’s neck and cover his face in kisses. He laughed and tried to shake her off. ‘I love you, Moonie,’ she said. Murray closed his eyes. Essie knocked on the window. Both kids looked up, startled. ‘Time for Murray to go,’ she shouted.

‘Come on,’ said Jack. He was wearing his army uniform. It was dirty and tattered. His hair was damp. He looked sick. ‘Join me?’ ‘You know I don’t drink anymore,’ said Clancy. Jack inspected the bottle, ‘this is your brew.’ Clancy didn’t answer. Jack passed him the bottle. ‘Must have felt pretty fucking good.’ ‘What?’

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‘Sending them horses away. Giving up.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Clancy. Condensation from the bottle ran down the underside of his arm and he could almost taste the amber bitterness of the beer on his tongue. ‘Must have felt like that first mouthful of beer.’ ‘I didn’t give up.’ ‘Didn’t you?’ The beer felt heavy in Clancy’s hand. ‘Remember this one,’ said Jack. ‘I would fain go back to the old grey river, To the old bush days when our hearts were light, But alas those days have fled forever, They are like the swans that have swept from sight.’ Clancy shut his eyes and tried to remember. He tried to remind himself that his brother was dead, his wife was dead, and his daughter was lost. Jack wasn’t talking to him. ‘Have you noticed it’s gone yet,’ said Jack. ‘What?’ ‘If the past could live and the dead could quicken. We then might turn to that life again.’ Clancy turned the words over and over in his head. What was he talking about? What was missing? This wasn’t Jack. This couldn’t be Jack. Jack was lost. ‘Go on mate, be a mighty power with a purpose dread.’ ‘You’re not real.’ ‘Sure I am,’ said Jack. ‘I’m your brother.’ ‘You’re dead.’ ‘She wasn’t yours, Clance,’ said Jack. ‘She was never yours.’ Clancy opened his eyes, lifted the bottle to his lips and drank.

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Essie looked tired. She was lying in their bed with her head propped up by pillows. Her skin was clammy and pale but she was smiling. ‘Where’re the boys?’ ‘Down in the shack,’ said Bill. ‘Didn’t want them hearing nothing and getting scared.’ ‘Not likely,’ said Clancy. ‘My girl’s strong. There was hardly a peep out of her.’ ‘Thank you, Bill,’ said Essie and they smiled at each other. ‘Don’t you think she looks like Clancy?’ ‘Sure do. Good head of hair on them both.’ Clancy carried his little girl to the window and held her in the sunlight. She was beautiful. Green eyes like her mother and thick smoky blond hair like him. Besides the hair though Clancy didn’t think she looked anything like him, and certainly didn’t look anything like David. ‘What will you call her?’ ‘I like Rose. Clancy likes Dusty of all things,’ said Essie and she laughed. ‘Dusty?’ ‘It’s not so bad,’ said Bill. Sunlight shivered across the baby’s forehead. She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘I want to call her River,’ he said. ‘River,’ repeated Essie, as if she were testing the weight of the name. ‘I wanted to name her after you.’ ‘The wild horses racing yet,’ said Clancy remembering the sound of his brother’s voice echoing across the pub walls. ‘With the man from Snowy River at their heels.’ For a single, taut moment he and Essie just looked at each other, neither giving away what they might know. ‘Snowy River it is,’ said Essie.

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Clancy shoved one of the mountain tapes into the VCR. The room was dark and his eyes were blurry. He steadied himself on the T.V cabinet. The tape was already rewound. He pressed play on the machine and sat back his armchair. The screen lit up with iridescent green light. The footage was taken from up near the waterfall. Clancy remembered it was raining for almost a week before James and the other bloke came to set up their cameras. A devil staggered from between two trees. It was the only animal to appear on the tape, besides a possum towards the very end and a few kookaburras at dawn. The footage crackled and Clancy imagined he was perched in a tree, out on his mountain. He imagined the sounds of the bush animals scuffling around in the leaves and the whisp whisp sound of the wind passing through the branches above him. The smell of damp earth and fallen leaves and ghost gums lifted up around him. Clancy was just starting to slip between the folds of sleep and grog when he saw something. He sat up and leant forward. Behind one of the ghost gums, in the deepest part of the footage Clancy saw a shadow he’d never seen before. A head. Then a shoulder. The hunched body. It turned. Two white dots lit up. They were eyes. It blinked once, twice, and the shadow darted away. Clancy felt Jack’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Did you see that?’ ‘Watch it again,’ said Jack. Clancy got up out of his chair and dragged the coffee table in front of the television. ‘Remember what James said?’ Jack nodded. ‘Only white eye glow for tiger.’ Clancy pressed the rewind button and together they watched the footage again. Nothing. The space beneath the tree was empty. ‘Try again,’ said Jack. Clancy rewound and watched the tape over. They didn’t see the eyes again.

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36.

Jonah pulled the skin away from his body. It felt like pulling hair out of flesh. He often wished he could sleep with the tiger skin curled around him like a seed inside a seedpod. He hung the tiger back on the wall and this time he made sure it was hanging right. Quietly, Jonah opened his door and shrugged himself into his pajamas. They were itchy and uncomfortable. His clothes felt threadbare after wearing the fur. Human fabrics seemed to sit too close to his skin. It made him feel almost claustrophobic. He pulled back the unmade blankets and crawled into bed. He dragged the covers over his head and imagined he was sleeping in a tiger’s cave.

Sometimes I go to bed without having a shower. My mum doesn’t like it but she lets me. ‘You better make up for it first thing in he morning,’ she says sometimes. Not in Tasmania though. In Tasmania I have a shower every night because I come home dirty and sticky from honey. After my shower I put on my pajamas. My granddad is in the living room watching a green video. I watch it with him for a little while but I don’t understand the story, or what it is, so I say goodnight. Goodnight, I sign. Then, I remember my granddad does not sign and is not looking at me. ‘Goodnight,’ I say with my voice.

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My granddad does not look away from the television but he does say, ‘sleep well.’ In my room I close the door and get into bed. My room is dark and I open the curtain next to my bed. There is no moon and outside is just as dark as in my room. My throat feels shaky and my chest is sore, like I might cry. To myself in the darkness I say, ‘think of Lucy, think of Lucy, Lucy… Lucy…’ And I think of holding her hand and kissing her mouth and telling her stories and eating our lunch together. My throat stops shaking and the soreness in my chest flows away. I close my eyes, and this is a warmer darkness than outside my window or in my room. I think of Lucy telling me she loves me, and I feel tired.

Jonah woke to Clancy shaking his feet through the blankets. ‘Get up.’ Jonah sat up. ‘What?’ ‘Get up.’ He shook his head as if sleep were water he could flick out of his hair. Clancy was at the end of his bed facing away. ‘I didn’t touch it. I swear,’ said Jonah. ‘Check the wall.’ Clancy turned. Moonlight from Jonah’s window shivered across his face and he saw the old man’s eyes. They were bloodshot, and droopy as if they were hanging too low in his face. This man didn’t look like his granddad. ‘Mum says she’s all right,’ said Clancy, ‘but I don’t reckon she is.’ ‘What?’ ‘I checked,’ said Clancy. ‘He’s gone.’ ‘Who’s gone?’ ‘The tiger man. He was inside. Did you hear the gun? Dad chased him off.’ Clancy launched himself out of the darkness. ‘You hear me. That mare’s bleeding, she’s dying.’

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Jonah pushed himself back against the wall. He could smell alcohol. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ wailed Clancy. ‘Couldn’t you hear her?’ There was an empty bottle dangling from his granddad’s hand. ‘Didn’t you hear her crying out for you? Silence. ‘Jack?’ said Clancy. ‘No. It’s Jonah.’ ‘Jonah,’ said Clancy as if they’d only just met. The old man tried to hold his forehead but his arm was wobbly and he couldn’t keep himself up. ‘Help me to bed, boy.’ Jonah was scared but he pushed himself under his granddad’s arm and tried to walk him forward. He wasn’t strong enough. ‘I’m too small.’ ‘She’ll be right, Jack. She’ll be right.’ Together they shuffled into Clancy’s bedroom and the old man fell backwards into his bed. ‘Got to sell them all,’ mumbled Clancy. ‘If you can’t shoot them when they’re hurt, you can’t do nothing for them.’ Carefully, Jonah pulled the shoe from Clancy’s damaged leg and removed the sock. There were two huge white scars surrounded by purple veins bubbling up from beneath his skin. Jonah touched the wound and wondered how many other scars the old man had. ‘Can’t leave any,’ said Clancy. He was slurring. ‘Not with that tiger man out there.’ Jonah led Clancy into his bedroom and helped him into bed. He closed the curtains and left the room.

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When I first knew Lucy I asked her about being born and she said she didn’t remember it. I know you will not remember, but what is the story? The story? Lucy asked me and she looked worried. Does your Mum tell you the story? Not really. Or your sister? She is older but she never talks to me very much. Did she tell you about what we are? I don’t remember, says Lucy. Our other name is not really my name at all. It is the thing I am, like boy, or blonde, or Jonah’s twin. Lucy is like I am but she is also a girl and also beautiful. It is like Jonah being blue, I sign. How? Jonah was blue because he did not get enough air in his brain when we were in mum’s belly and sometimes he gets confused, sometimes even angry, about being small. What about you? asks Lucy with her hands. What about me? Did you get air to your brain? I do not know. Did you take all the air from Jonah? He fits under my arm still, I sign and it is not really an answer to her question. I smell something different and even though I know I am dreaming, the smell is a different kind of dream. It is a smell like wet fur, and outside and fresh dirt. ‘Queenie,’ I say with my voice, even though it is not really my voice because I am in a dream. A furry body pushes under my hands and nudges me into the wall. Queenie gets into bed with me. Her fur feels different. It is not soft and shaggy. This fur is thin and hard, and almost like spines. ‘Poor girl,’ I say, because she has been lost, and I have found her.

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The tears came so quietly and so slowly that he didn’t really notice he was crying until his chest was heaving and the water was running down his face. Jonah knew what it was. The Jungle Book called it the dewanee. Jonah went into is brother’s room. ‘Sam?’ His brother didn’t move. ‘Samson?’ Jonah lifted back the covers. Samson never slept in a shirt and the muscles in his back looked like tiny fists trapped beneath the skin. He ran his hand over Samson’s back and the other over his own chest. His ribcage came out and Sam’s back fell away in the same places. He felt narrow where Samson felt strong. Even though they came into the world together he looked nothing like Samson. He was the white frog. He had no smell, and no skin, and the Shere Khan was a wild King of a wild country. It was warm beneath the blankets. He missed the days when Samson would read to him. His mother forced them at first. ‘He needs to practice,’ she said ‘Big deal.’ ‘Just let him read to you,’ said his mother. ‘It can be anything you want.’ Later that night Jonah lay awake in bed as Samson read to him from The Jungle Book. ‘Now said Bag…’ ‘Bagheera.’ ‘Now said Bagheera jump on my back little brother and we will go home.’ ‘You’re reading too fast.’ Samson cleared his throat. ‘One of the beauties of the Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nag…’

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‘Nagging.’ ‘There is no nagging afterwards. Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept so deeply that he never waked when we was put down in the home cave.’ Samson stopped. ‘Jonah?’ ‘What.’ ‘Why was Mowgli naughty.’ ‘Because he needed to be punished for the story.’ Samson shook his head. ‘He needs to get in trouble for the story to make sense,’ continued Jonah. ‘It says it in there. Sorrow never stays punishment.’ ‘Jonah?’ ‘What.’ ‘I would like to think like you.’ Jonah didn’t say anything and Samson kept reading.

There is something different in her smell. Queenie nudges in close to me and licks my face. Her arms go all the way around my chest and I do not remember her having arms. ‘Good girl,’ I say and my mouth is dry. I must be waking up. In my sleep I hear a biting and a tearing sound and the dog pulls at my hair. A metal cutting sound and the top of my head is lighter and my arms feel slower and older and less. I feel my hair, my Samson hair, fall away from my face and even in my dream I know that this part is real. I hear it snip, snip, snip and the first part of the sound is long as it cuts through. The second part is angry and short and my neck is cold. ‘I’m sorry,’ whispers the dog and the voice is one I know, but not one I can remember.

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Queenie pushes her face into my neck. I hear her whimper and feel the tears on my skin and I did not know dogs cry. My mind is still very tired and feels like it is floating through thick, warm mud. I try and shake my face because sometimes this wakes me up but I can’t. Maybe I am still sleeping. So I say, ‘good girl,’ and I let her sleep beside me.

Jonah pushed his mouth into the nape of his bother’s neck and tried not to make a sound as he cried. When he ran out of air he lifted his head sideways, took a breath, and pushed his face back down into Samson’s skin. His brother was the ocean and Jonah could swim through him, over him. He could drink Samson down deep into his own belly if he wanted. After the body of the bird went limp, Jonah pushed him deep down into his belly where he could keep the secret safe. ‘Have you seen, King?’ Samson asked him. ‘No,’ said Jonah each time. Tucked in behind his brother Jonah felt himself finally slipping beneath the folds of sleep. This was how he survived. He pressed his chest into Samson’s back. His brother kept him safe. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Samson quietly through the folds of sleep. ‘What’s tomorrow,’ said Jonah. His voice was jumpy and startled sounding, like a fish pulled out of the ocean and thrown into the bottom of a boat. Samson didn’t answer. Jonah lifted his brother’s hair up over his own head and tried to disappear beneath it, the way he did when he was little. But something was different. This hair was not strong enough, or long enough to keep him covered. He remembered hearing his father tell his brother about the story of Samson. He remembered Delilah. First she bound him with bowstrings and he snapped them,

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then with ropes but he snapped them too. Eventually the real Samson told her all the strength was in his hair. His hair. There was a pair of scissors on his brother’s bedside table and some freshly cut flowers in a jar beside them. Jonah reached over and took them. Half a dozen bees spun up out of the flowers, startled and he watched them throw themselves against the glass of the window trying to get out. The scissors felt cool and powerful in his hand, like Mowgli’s tooth. He lifted a handful of Samson’s long blonde hair and in one swift motion he cut it from the scalp. It was difficult at first and Jonah had to make the second and third handfuls smaller so the scissors could cut easier. He watched the hair fall away from his brother’s scalp in long honey streaks. Jonah gathered up the hair and pushed it into the pocket of his pants. It felt warm and heavy inside his pocket. He thought of his own naming story. ‘What’s the story of Jonah, Dad?’ said Samson and they were sitting together on the floor of their dad’s office. His father took a sip of red wine and another red circle appeared beneath his glass. He never swigged or gulped. Always sipped. Nothing like Clancy. ‘His is the story of a man who is swallowed by a whale.’ ‘Why is he swallowed?’ asked Sam. ‘He’s a coward.’ Jonah felt his face burn. ‘Why did you name me after a coward?’ Their father shrugged. ‘We just liked the name,’ he said.

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37.

The air smelt of alcohol and stillness. It must have been a cold night, because even through the shroud of grog Clancy’s skin felt cold. ‘Shit.’ He forgot to light a bloody fire. Slowly, he followed the wall out of the laundry and into the hallway. It was hard enough with his bad leg, but all the grog made his good leg feel unsteady as well. There was a noise and Clancy listened. It was a snuffling, dog-like sound. It was coming from Samson’s room. Was the tiger come back after all this time to take another one? Clancy opened the door to Samson’s room. Jonah was in bed with his brother.

River was singing. She was perched on the edge of the verandah with her arms locked in behind her knees rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. Clancy thought of Benjamin. ‘Eenie meenie miny moe, catch a tiger by the toe.’ Essie sat down next to her and looked out into the darkness beyond the lawn. Her hair was gone and she was wearing a soft green scarf like a turban. ‘Do you know what that song is about?’ she asked her daughter gently. River nodded. Her long hair fell in over her face. She refused to let them brush it and there were dreadlocks forming at the nape of her neck.

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‘What’s it about?’ River stopped rocking. ‘Catching slaves trying to get away.’ Clancy thought about reaching over and tugging hair. Some of the dirt crumbled away and her dreadlocks turned back to curls. ‘Please don’t sing that song, darling,’ said Essie. River nodded. ‘Will you come inside?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘Where’s Moonie?’ she asked again. This time they didn’t answer her.

‘What’re you doing?’ said Clancy. Jonah sat up, startled. ‘Jonah?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Why are you in here?’ ‘No reason.’ ‘Why are you in here?’ he said again and this time he felt the fear and anger and disgust rising in his voice. Jonah didn’t answer. ‘Samson?’ ‘He’s asleep.’ ‘Get up.’ Jonah turned his legs around and lifted himself out from behind Samson’s naked back. There was a bulge in his pants. Then, Clancy saw the hair. Tendrils of golden blonde honey. It was everywhere. He saw Essie’s hair. It was in the rubbish bin. The cancer was real. It was alive and killing her. ‘What have you done?’ he said.

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‘I’m sorry,’ said David quickly. Clancy reached out and grabbed his arm and dragged him out into the hallway. The boy struggled. Clancy threw his son against the kitchen wall. ‘What the fuck were you just doing?’ ‘Sleeping,’ he said quietly and the whites of his eyes were almost glowing. ‘Bullshit.’ ‘I was sleeping.’ Clancy slapped his son across the mouth. David tried to cover his face but Clancy wouldn’t let him. He slapped him again, this time across the eye. ‘Granddad don’t.’ He dug his fingers down into the rubbish. It was the last time he would touch Essie’s hair. He lifted it to his face. It was ruined. Clancy balled up his fist. The weight slipped out of David’s body and he grunted. Clancy hit him again and again and again. Jonah smiled. His lip and his eye were bleeding. ‘Where’s David,’ Clancy heard himself shout and Jonah’s face changed. His eyes darkened like a storm folding in over a mountain. Clancy loosened his grip and Jonah broke free. The boy growled and it rumbled inside his throat like a newborn pup. Clancy closed his eyes. ‘David?’ There was a hiss and Clancy heard Jonah dart from the room and out the back door like an angry fox. When he finally opened his eyes Clancy saw the white scar of the missing pelt on the kitchen wall. Jonah was gone.

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38.

I wake still inside thoughts of Lucy, and she is like the Dreaming snake and I am like her ground. She moves around me and builds me into mountains and gullies and rivers and lakes. I sit up in my bed and try to keep her nearby but the misty traces of her disappear, dissipate, and are gone. I know I have thought of her in the night because my body tells me. In my head my mind sings, Lucy, Lucy. And the ‘u’ sound is long and deep and sounds like her calling to me, and not me calling to her. Inside my pants my thighs feel solid and I know that if I think of something else, something not Lucy, it will go away. It is difficult, but I promised Lucy that sex was for her and kisses were for her and touching was for her and so I close my eyes and think of something else. I think of mad-made dams and this makes me remember Jonah and think of his sadness. ‘Clancy?’ ‘Round the back, mate,’ shouts Clancy. ‘Find anything?’ ‘Nothing,’ says Murray. ‘Shit.’ ‘He’s pretty small, could be hiding anywhere.’ In his nervous voice Murray says ‘something small’ I straight away think of Jonah because he is small and he makes people nervous and so I open my window a little bit and try and listen. The air outside is not cold at first but my skin feels it eventually. ‘Think I scared the shit out of him last night,’ says Clancy and his voice is shaking in his mouth. ‘You right now?’ ‘Bloody hung-over is what I am,’ says Clancy. ‘You back on the grog?’

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‘Just a slip. I’m right now.’ I scratch the back of my head. Something is wrong. My fingers try and reach through my long hair, but my Samson hair is gone. I open the wardrobe door and there is a mirror and I look in to it and my knees are shaky and my Samson hair it gone. I touch the edges of my face. They are jagged and raw and I do not look like me and I do not feel like me. My face feels red and hot and my hands want to reach out and punch the mirror and pull the other Samson out of the rubble but instead I sign into the mirror and the new Samson with short hair and a red face signs back. Do not cry, Samson, we sign. I close the wardrobe door and take a deep, deep, deep breath. ‘Reckon it’s too early to get some blokes from town,’ says Murray. ‘Start a proper search.’ The space inside my chest where I keep the stones for remembering my mum and dad and Lucy and Jonah feels cold and hard. ‘Clance,’ says Murray and his voice sounds strange. ‘The pelt’s gone.’ ‘How did I miss that?’ says Clancy, ‘Shit, reckon he wants to sell it?’ ‘We’ll hear about it if he does.’ ‘Better go call his mother,’ said Clancy. ‘Can you take another look around?’ From the kitchen I can hear the sounds of washing dishes. Both of my shirts are on the chair and they are from yesterday and smell a bit funny but I put them on anyway. I do not need to pull my hair out of the collar of my shirt because it is all gone. I feel my mouth quiver and I sign again, do not cry, Samson. Outside I hear Murray and Clancy. They are moving around the house together talking. It is almost a fight. I can hear it in their voices. ‘It was too long last time.’ ‘I know,’ says my granddad. ‘We’ve got a better chance of finding Jonah in a bigger group.’ Jonah’s gone. My hands feel heavy and my belly hurts. Where? I sign again and this time it is angry and this is sad because the sign for ‘where’ is my favourite and looks like fingers dancing.

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He’s too small to run away, I sign and because no one but me can sign I tell it to myself. The inside of my mind is hurting and I am angry. Waves like the ones from home are crashing into the side of my head and making noise and I can’t hear Jonah or feel him and we are twins and this means we came together, and we leave together. Outside I hear a car and it sounds like my dad’s car and my belly jumps and my heart is faster and I think, ‘dad. Dad is home.’ Then I remember.

Sun dripped through the thin canopy of leaves. Jonah tried to swat it away. It was morning. He opened his eyes. Above him he could see the crest of the mountain. It was very close. He sat up. His clothes and the tiger skin were damp. The ground between the graves was covered in dew. His face was cold and when he opened his mouth he thought he heard his own skin crack. Sleeping in between the graves was like slipping into bed between his parents. ‘Dad?’ said Jonah from the bedroom door. He was small and his parent’s bed seemed quiet and impenetrable like a huge, dark cave. ‘Dad?’ The sheets rustled and he sat up. ‘Yeah?’ ‘I heard something in my room.’ The shadow of Jonah’s dad rubbed at his face and swung his legs over the side of the bed. They didn’t quite touch the floor, and Jonah could see his sleepy penis hanging from the leg of his shorts. ‘What was it?’ he asked as he adjusted himself. ‘Probably bears, or maybe tigers.’ ‘Bears, eh? That’s no good.’ ‘Can I sleep with you?’

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‘You’re too big to sleep with us, mate,’ his father said, ‘You have to stay in your bed.’ Jonah felt the bottom half of his face quiver. Even though it was dark he grabbed hold of his chin so his dad wouldn’t see. ‘Back to bed, mate,’ said his dad. He lifted his legs and turned away.

The bees recognise me, even though my hair is gone and the edge of my face is pulled down because I am sad. They take me all the way up the mountain to a new place. The place where the water comes from. It bursts from the rocks and rushes down into the creek. It is special, they tell me, it is a matter of survival. Up here, Sam-snow. Just up here, they dance and I watch them move around the water and shadow each other into the opening of a cave. The cave looks like an open whale shark mouth behind the rushing water and I can see right down the throat. ‘What is this?’ I say with my voice and my hands. Come, come, come, dance the bees and the sound of them together is like chiming. I step up onto the ledge of the cave and even though the ground is harder it still feels like it will eat me. No one comes here. Not bird or beast. Just bees. Just bees and the River. It is not the same cave from before and I wonder if Murray knows about this cave and I follow the bees into the mouth.

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Jonah could hear something in the bush. It wasn’t an animal. No animal would make that much noise. Not a predator anyway. He pushed his face out from beneath the tiger skin. Thud, thud, thud. Samson broke through the trees. He was out of breath and his hair was stuck to the sides of his face with sweat. Samson stopped. He was too close to the rock to see where Jonah was hiding. He heard something else. There were just a few of them at first. Tiny brown bees bobbing through the air like confetti. Then a huge cloud burst from the trees and swirled around them. Jonah dug himself back into the ledge. He hated bees. They flew up and over, up and over. Whirling this way and that, looping around his brother’s arms and face. Jonah wasn’t sure how, but Samson seemed to understand them.

Slowly the cave brightens. I see my bees again and take a step towards them. There is a crunch beneath my feet and I stop. It is not a normal crunch and I can hear it in the smaller sounds and a bad feeling in my chest blooms. When I look down it is like the ground is made of sharp, amber rocks. But when I bend down I see the brittle bee bodies and they are everywhere. They tumble in over the toe of my boot and some are still whole but most are just in parts. And the heaviness of me means that I am nearly up to my ankles if I move. You do not fly and there is no other way. I take another step and hear the bodies crush beneath my feet. My eyes are crying. In here, Sam-snow.

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Two more steps and I try not to hear them or imagine their tiny skulls tumbling down over my boot. Here. I hear a deep, drone buzz that lifts up and comes back down again like a chant. The Queen Bee is near a long mound of amber wax. This is our grief, dance the bees and together they fly up and weave in and around and make a song that is their sadness. Don't you wait where the trees are, When the lightning plays. Nor don't you hate where Bees are, Or else they'll pine away. All the bees join in together and they dance, Fly away, die away, dwindle down we leave you! But if you never grieve your Bees, Your Bees will never grieve you. Inside the dance and inside the drone I bend down to see her and the bees whirl up around me like a fog of honey gold. Queen? I sign. We must communicate, dance the bees. Why? I ask her with my hands. The Queen shivers and her wings are like water. Our Queen is leaving the dance. The chanting becomes deeper. She has a gift, they dance and chant together, the last of her honey. The Queen lifts herself up and bobs in the air like a harpooned whale. Sam-snow. I nod ‘yes.; Have the last... I nod and I do not use my hands because I do not want to bump her. …my honey cures what makes you different. I think of Lucy and I think of my friends from Special School and I think of high functioning and enlightening like a bead of shining amber deep inside my mind. I think of me, and what makes me different and I am ready.

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Suck from stone. Do not eat. Honey must listen to the sunlight. Turn white to gold. I nod, yes. Bring your hand, Sam-snow. I lift my hand slowly into the air and the Queen alights in my hand, and she is like a tiny bead of gold rain. She shivers once and I feel her wings beat on my palm. Then she is still. I whisper, ‘amen’, because this is the end of a prayer.

Jonah waited behind a rock at the mouth of the cave. He blinked quickly, trying to get his eyes to adjust. He didn’t want to lose Samson in the darkness. Directly in front of him was a large cavernous room. Beyond the room he could see another dark doorway. Samson stepped out of the shadows and went through. After a few moments, Jonah followed.

I look into the wax. It is glowing and this is why I can see inside the cave. There is a whirl of light and I cover my face and the light spins up into the ceiling. I bring my face very close. Two eyes are looking at me. I push myself back and the wax is hard, like rock. I stumble. The wax is not wax all the way through.

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I look again slowly. It is a girl. Do not be scared, dance the bees and they are all around me and I feel the safety of them moving through me like water. A girl, I say with my hands. Yes. The girl’s eyes are open and her lips are pink and smiling. She has tiny hands folded on her chest and is holding a cup like the one from Murray’s house and she is holding it like she wants to keep it with her forever. I put my big hand over her little one. ‘Hello,’ I say with my voice.

Jonah watched his brother suck something from inside a stalactite and spit it into a plate. His stomach leapt. What was it? He wanted a taste.

This is the rock, the bees dance. I see the rock hanging like a heavy drop from the roof of the cave. Suck the honey free. But not to eat. On the ledge behind the girl is a tin dish that matches the cup. I take the dish and rock crumbles away beneath it. Inside is an empty square of honeycomb.

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Go ahead. It is a gift. I press my lips to the rock and suck. I feel the honey bleed into my mouth but it does not taste like honey. The bees drone. This honey tastes like sweet and salt all at one and it is not warm but cold and I think this is why the Queen said to wait and to let the sun in. The bees drone. I spit the honey into the plate and my mouth feels sore like I have been sucking on ice. Inside the dish the honeycomb soaks up all the honey like a kitchen sponge with water. The bees stop and everything is quiet. Jonah looks at me and his face is dark and empty and he is like the bottom of the ocean or the green rip in the sky before it hails. ‘Jonah?’ ‘What did you spit in that dish,’ he asks. His voice sounds like a growl. ‘It was a gift,’ I say. ‘I want some,’ says Jonah and he steps towards me. No, no, no. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Grandad wants you to come home.’ ‘I’m never coming back,’ says Jonah. No and suddenly the bees are everywhere and they are angry and I have never seen them this way before. No. No. No. No, they are saying and this time it is not a dance. This time it is a march and they are pushing. Pushing Jonah away from the mouth of the cave and down into the creek. You must take the gift, hurry, Hurry, yes. I hear the crushing bodies again and this time it is not as bad because I am running out into the sun and not crawling into darkness.

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Jonah lifted his face to the sky. Tears burned his eyes. He tried not to feel angry. Why did Samson get everything? His stomach burned. What was wrong with him? Jonah wiped his hand over his eyes. Something was moving around inside him. He felt like that most days, but today the feeling was so huge Jonah couldn’t shove it back down. He pushed his fists into the base of his stomach and tried to force it out. Jonah unzipped his jumper. The tiger skin was still there, curled into his chest like a newborn kitten. Together they crawled under the fold of the overhang. It smelled dank but it was still warmer than outside. Jonah rolled his face into the rocks. He didn’t need the caves anymore. Samson had ruined them just by being there. Besides, Jonah already had his own burrow by the creek, and he would find more. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

‘Samson,’ shouts my granddad when he sees me. ‘Come and meet Jack.’ I leave the dish of the Queen’s honey on the ledge of my window. ‘Who is Jack?’ I ask with my voice. ‘What?’ asks granddad and his eyes look strange and he is swirling back and forth on his legs like the top half of him is in water. ‘Any luck?’ I think of the girl beneath the wax and I say, ‘no’, and I wonder if I should tell my granddad about her. ‘Want a beer, mate?’ ‘I am not allowed.’ ‘Never too young to start,’ he says. My granddad looks at me. His face is like driftwood caught in a storm. Old and rotten, but still hard and still above water.

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‘I am tired, Granddad,’ I say. ‘Right-o son, sleep well.’ I take the honey inside with me and a small cloud of bees are waiting in my room on. Sleep Sam-snow, they dance. Yes, sleep. I put my dish of honey onto the top of my wardrobe. We watch it. I get into bed and sink deep into my pillow. The bees murmur me to sleep.

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“He was not a boy, but an unowned and willful animal. He had claws and teeth and a territory he must defend.”

Sonya Hartnett

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39.

They looked like blowflies on a hot day. Half the bloody town was there. Stomping all over Essie’s lawn. Leaning up against the fence. Clancy watched from the verandah as a new white Ute curled itself into the space behind the car port. One bloke after another piled out. ‘Elias,’ said Clancy by way of a greeting. ‘I’m just going by Eli these days,’ said Elias as he put a new Akubra on his head. Clancy tipped his hat back from his face. Elias looked like a kid on his first day of school. Clancy recognised one of the boys near the Ute as the son of a bloke he used to log with. ‘Jem,’ he shouted. ‘How’s your old man?’ ‘Fine thanks,’ said Jem. ‘Still cutting poles.’ ‘And your ma?’ ‘She’s good too.’ ‘Still bashing bibles?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jem slowly. Another Ute came up the drive, and another. He’d not seen some of the people nervously waiting at the fence line for years. Elias scrunched up his nose and pointed to Clancy’s piss corner near the steps. ‘Have you smelt this?’ he asked. ‘Yeah.’ ‘What’s been marking your house?’ ‘Me,’ said Clancy.

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Essie wanted the lawn, even though Clancy thought it was a waste of time and money. He preferred dirt and rocks, and the rough little plants that sprouted up between them. She wanted something softer. ‘The edges won’t hold, darlin, not with all that behind them.’ He pointed to the bush just beyond the house. ‘I want somewhere for our babies to play,’ she said and she casually touched her swollen belly. ‘Just one place where I don’t have to worry about something getting them.’ ‘It’ll be a lot of work.’ ‘So will this,’ she said pointing to their growing baby. He smiled. ‘I’ll get one of lads up here next week. Reckon we can have it ready before he is.’ Clancy pressed his face in against his wife’s belly and she wove her long fingers into his hair. ‘We can plant flowers, can’t we?’

Bill was dividing everyone into groups and pointing them in different directions. ‘You two take the wood piles and the old stables down that way.’ Bill pointed down the mountain. Bruce nodded. ‘How long’s he been gone for?’ asked Len. ‘About a day.’ Len cleared his throat. ‘Did anything, you know, happen before he shot through?’

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‘Nothing,’ said Clancy quickly. He knew what some of them were after. Same thing they were after last time. ‘He’s missing, not shot through,’ said Bill. ‘He’s just a kid.’ ‘Anywhere he likes to go?’ asked Don. One of his sons was with him. He had four, if Clancy remembered right, and a daughter. She was born the same year as River. Clancy couldn’t remember any of their names. ‘He likes the dam.’ ‘What about the caves?’ asked Don. ‘I’m searching the caves.’ ‘Does he know anything about living rough? Bill shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t think so.’ ‘Check burrows,’ said Clancy. Wayne sneered. ‘We aren’t here for some fucking tiger chase, Clancy. Did that already, remember?’ The herd was quiet. Clancy could almost hear them chewing their cuds. His forehead ached and there was spit in the side of his mouth again. He took a handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and dapped at his lips. ‘Check all the burrows,’ said Bill. ‘Everyone has their walking partner?’ There was lots of nodding. ‘And everyone knows what direction their heading in?’ More nodding. ‘Good,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s get going.’ The herd dispersed, walking away in different directions. Eli and his friend went towards the tanks. Len, Wayne and two other blokes Clancy didn’t know followed the driveway. Two broke off, and went down the path to Bill’s house while the other two kept going. Don and his son walked towards the graves. ‘Where’s Samson?’ asked Clancy. Bill put his hand on Clancy’s shoulder. ‘He’s safe. He’s with the bees.’ ‘Don’t forget to look under things,’ aided Clancy. ‘Queenie likes to get under things.’ There was a long silence. ‘Bill?’

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‘Ah, yeah?’ said Bill slowly. He sounded strange. ‘I should’ve said something,’ said Clancy. ‘About the skin.’ His da was going to be angry when he found out. ‘Jack took it down. He played with it. Not me though.’ Bill was quiet. Maybe he knew Clancy was lying. ‘Da reckons it’s because of me.’ Clancy felt the tears coming. ‘Mum can’t sleep. I see her walking at night.’ ‘Clancy,’ said Bill. ‘It’s okay.’ ‘Tiger Man said it was the best he’d ever seen,’ he said. Clancy looked at his friend. Something was different. Wrong. The shapes in Bill’s face shifted. It wasn’t Bill. Murray squeezed his arm. ‘I’ll find him, Clance,’ he said.

Clancy was waiting on the edge of the verandah. His leg was in a cast. ‘We’ll find her,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll keep looking.’ Clancy swallowed. There was a ball in his throat he couldn’t shift. ‘I have to come,’ he said. ‘You have to let yourself heal,’ he said. ‘I’ve called some blokes from town.’ ‘They’ll find Essie,’ said Clancy. He could hear the panic in his voice. ‘It’s not legal.’ ‘Her grave’s unmarked.’ ‘They’ll make me move her.’ ‘I won’t let any of them go up that far,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll search the top.’ Clancy threw his walking stick into the railing. It rebounded and scared Queenie out from under the front step. He wanted to rip the cast off his leg and follow Bill into the bush. Clancy wanted to be the father to rescue her.

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Murray followed the track up the mountain towards the top, just like Bill did twenty years ago. Clancy wondered what Bill would think of his son following so closely in his footprints. ‘Clancy?’ It was Kirra. She was standing behind him, dressed in hiking gear. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘What if your kid went missing?’ Kirra shook her head. ‘I would look as worried as you.’ Clancy wished he were in bed with Essie beside him. ‘My dog’s missing.’ ‘Murray told me,’ said Kirra. Her cheeks turned pink. Clancy remembered when he had the power to turn her skin pink. ‘He tell you about his bird?’ She nodded. ‘Reckons my grandson did something to it.’ Kirra nodded. ‘Have you ever thought about leaving, Clance?’ For just a moment Clancy felt like maybe he could walk away down the mountain and follow the road to the ocean. Maybe he could even swim to the mainland, and just step out of the water like he was newly made. Maybe he could leave everything behind and have a different life, a better life. Kirra liked him. She hadn’t changed much. There was a scar on her lip from her son’s father, and her hair was darker, but she was still the prettiest girl for miles. He could marry Kirra and look after her little boy. ‘She liked to sing,’ he said. ‘Who?’ ‘I better give their mum another try,’ said Clancy and he gestured inside. ‘Sure,’ said Kirra. ‘I’ll keep on. Anything we should look for? Places he likes to go?’

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‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Clancy and he let the door swing shut behind him.

River ran her hands over the wooden bars of the fence. Clancy thought of the animals in the Hobart zoo. Her face was damp with sweat and her hair was pulled back in a knot. The outline of her skinny little body was just visible beneath the white nightie her mother made her wear. She was singing. ‘River?’ The front of her dress was tucked up into her underpants and her thighs and knees were covered in dirt. ‘What’re you doing, love?’ ‘If he squeals let him go, eenie meenie, miney moe.’ Clancy picked her up and as he did it was like the life fell out of her body. She smelt like fresh kangaroo shit. He carried her inside and called for Essie. She removed the three large kangaroo scats from River’s underwear and ran her a bath. They lay her down in her bath. Outside the bathroom door Clancy held his wife’s bare head to his chest and she cried. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Essie. Clancy touched the back of her head. Her skin felt cold, and exposed. She pulled away. ‘I can’t fix this,’ said Essie. The whites of her eyes were red. ‘She’ll be better soon,’ said Clancy. He didn’t know what else to say. His wife was dying. ‘Mum?’ David was in the hallway. He was wearing his pajamas and carrying a book. ‘You all right?’ Essie took a step towards Clancy and pressed her head into his chest. She rubbed her face into his shirt and dried her eyes. He breathed in. Her skin smelt like honey. She turned back to face their son and smiled. ‘Come on, Davy,’ she said and she took David’s hand. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

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‘Why were you crying?’ ‘Your dad told me a funny story.’ David looked at Clancy. ‘What about?’ ‘Come to bed and I’ll tell you,’ she said and together they walked down the hall to his room. Essie closed the door. There was a long silence broken only occasionally by the sounds of splashing bath water. Clancy leant against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘Dad?’ ‘Yes, darlin?’ ‘Go away from the door.’

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40.

I wonder where my brother is hiding. Sometimes I touch my scalp because I want to feel my long hair, but my hair is lost too. Maybe it will keep Jonah warm. I ask the bees to find Jonah but they sign that something has changed him. What has changed him? I ask. Tiger swallowed. Clancy and Murray phone men from town and the next day they all come to the mountain and search for my brother. The boys from before come back and they bring other boys with them. The man from the pub comes in his truck along and two other men I don’t know. ‘Pity Bill isn’t still alive,’ says one of the men I don’t know. ‘Didn’t help them much the last time,’ says the other one. ‘You’d think after that he’d move into town.’ ‘Not Clance. He’ll die up here for sure.’ Clancy searches for the longest and everywhere I go I see the dirt streak of his bad leg. ‘We won’t find him this way,’ I say with my voice. ‘Why not?’ I think of playing hide and seek with Jonah and no matter how much I would seek, he could never be found. ‘He’s too small,’ I say, ‘he could be anywhere.’ A boy from town who is older than me but not by much, comes to talk to me and his face looks sorry for itself. ‘Hey.’ ‘Hi,’ I say.

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‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he says. His voice is slow and loud, and sometimes people talk to me like I am deaf. Lucy says it is because they don’t understand our Down syndrome. ‘He’s my twin,’ I say. The boy nods, he is not really listening, and I am not really sorry.

Jonah ate a dead possum. He left the head until last. The bones crunched like corn chips. Later that night he vomited most of it up. The burrow wasn’t as nice as it had been the day he found it. The creek was full to bursting, and his burrow was dank and wet. ‘The other Jonah was scared,’ explained his father. ‘Why?’ ‘Because he was asked to do something he didn’t want to do, something dangerous.’ ‘Then what?’ ‘God sent a storm and the sailors he was with were scared.’ ‘Did they know it was Jonah’s fault?’ ‘They did, and they threw him overboard.’ His father liked telling the middle, when Jonah was swallowed and lived inside the dark, wet belly of the whale for three days, but Jonah didn’t like hearing it. It felt like a promise of something to come, or a trap. He heard people shouting his name and pushed himself down into the darkness of his burrow until the shouting went away.

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People from town come to the mountain everyday and everyday they look for my brother in the same place. ‘Jonah,’ they call. ‘Jonah.’ ‘Jonah. Jonah.’ My brother’s name is like music coming from the mountain. It trumpets through burrows, and one, two, three it is a drum. There is a clash of symbols and even the birds are calling. There is a piano rush of keys down the river. I recognise my brother’s name better through water. It is the way I learnt it and so I close my eyes and try and feel the sand and ocean but all I feel is ground. The grass is sharp, or maybe my skin is soft. ‘Hi,’ says a lady. ‘It’s Samson, isn’t it?’ I nod and this is still the sign for ‘yes’. ‘My name’s Kirra,’ she says and she reaches out towards me and does not speak loudly. We shake hands. ‘Do you know my brother?’ I ask. Kirra shakes her head and this is the kind of sign language everyone knows. ‘I don’t.’ ‘Do you have kids?’ ‘I have a little boy,’ says Kirra. ‘He’s a fair bit younger than you.’ ‘My brother is lost,’ I say with my voice. Kirra nods. ‘We’ll find him,’ she says and he voice makes me feel less sad, and less all by myself. ‘Murray is my friend,’ I say and I mean that she should be careful with Murray because he has no King anymore, and no mum and no dad and no wife and no children and he wishes he had all of them. She smiles. ‘Mine too,’ she says.

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Jonah woke to the sounds of his stomach groaning. He had no idea what the time was or how long he’d been sleeping. His stomach growled again. ‘Oh fuck off,’ he said but the hollow, desperate feeling deep inside him wouldn’t listen. He pushed his face out of the burrow and listened. Nothing. He sniffed the air. Nothing. He crawled out of the ground, stretched his arms and legs, took a shit and washed his bum in the creek. The water rushed over his arsehole and he laughed. It tickled. He pissed into the water and watched the bright yellow liquid swirl into the eddy and disappear. The tail on the skin was wet. Everything around him was still. There were no wallabies or birdcalls. The animals were still in hiding. Jonah joined them.

The sun comes down in the sky and everyone goes back down the mountain one by one. Murray and Clancy search until it is dark. I wait for them on the back step. The bees are sleeping and I wait alone. For company I make the sign for search. Two fingers, bent and far apart, circle once, twice, and once more. I make lots of circles while I am waiting. I think about my brother sleeping in the darkness, or running. Maybe he is happy he is lost. Maybe my brother does not feel lost. There is a light and it weaves through the darkness. I hear my granddad and Murray and they are talking and coming out of the night holding a torch like it is a sword.

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‘We’ll try a bit further north tomorrow,’ says Murray. My granddad does not say anything. He is holding the torch and the light shakes like it is nervous. ‘There are lots of caves and burrows. I reckon he’ll be safe for the night.’ My granddad opens the gate and turns off the torch. ‘Samson?’ ‘Here, Granddad.’ He sniffs the air. ‘You didn’t cook, did you?’ ‘Cheese on toast,’ I say. Together they walk up the steps and Murray touches my shoulder and my body shudders like I am going to cry. I take a stone from the driveway to remember. We have my toast and cheese for tea but my granddad calls it tucker. It is cold because it has been sitting on the table since I made it. No one says much except Murray who says his feet ‘fucking hurt.; After we eat our tea I take the honey down from the wardrobe. The silver honey has turned gold. When it is red gold I will eat it and my fissure will close and my hands will stretch out and my eyes will grow big and fat and round. Without my Down syndrome I will be allowed to find my brother.

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41.

Clancy could see the blokes from town out by the water tanks. One of them looked under the stilts. Clancy smiled, he couldn’t help it. Fuckin idiots. He picked up the phone and dialed the number Alice left him. There was a high-pitched squeal and the electronic voice on the other end of the line said, ‘this number is disconnected. Please try again.’ Clancy banged the phone down. ‘That was me trying again,’ he said. ‘You better do it,’ said Jack. He was standing with his back pressed into the curtain so no one but Clancy could see him. Clancy shook his head. ‘It’s his son,’ said Jack. He closed his eyes. The corner of his mouth was damp again. He wiped his sleeve across his lips. ‘Do you remember the holiday?’ he asked. ‘Sure I do,’ said Jack. Clancy felt the sun from the beach on his skin. He and Jack were running over rocks and laughing. Jack threw a clump of seaweed. Clancy reached towards the sky. The water was like blue glass. ‘Do you remember the pod of dolphins?’ ‘They were black.’ ‘You dove off the rocks,’ said Clancy. ‘There were sharks.’ ‘I didn’t see them,’ said Jack. ‘No,’ said Clancy. ‘They didn’t bite you.’ He opened his eyes and fished out a postcard the side of his armchair. There was no return address, but the number on the back was an 07. His son was still in Queensland. Clancy picked up the phone again, and dialed. A woman answered. ‘Is David there?’ The woman’s voice sounded light, and young. ‘He isn’t, I’m sorry.’

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‘Where is he?’ ‘Can I take a message?’ asked the woman. She sounded distracted. Clancy thought he could hear the television in the background, or maybe it was other people. Friends. ‘When will he be back?’ ‘I’m not sure. Who is this?’ Clancy looked at Jack. His brother shrugged. ‘This is his father.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t realise.’ ‘He gave me this number.’ ‘David doesn’t live here,’ she said. ‘He just stayed with me for a while.’ ‘You’re not the woman teacher from his school?’ ‘I work at the surf club,’ she said. ‘Are you likely to hear from him?’ ‘Don’t think so. You can leave a message if-’ He hung up the phone. ‘No David?’ asked Jack. Clancy shut his eyes. Everything was closing in. He felt the air inside his house shiver. Outside, it started to rain. It was all happening again. He smelt kangaroo shit and soap. It didn’t have to be the same. This time, Clancy could make it different. He opened his eyes. ‘Get your coat,’ he said.

River’s wanderings were getting longer and longer, and she seemed less happy when she was home. Sometimes Clancy caught her pacing the circumference of her room. She looked like Benjamin.

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‘River,’ he called, and it didn’t sound like a question because he was sure he would find her. She was probably with Essie. These days she was generally with Essie. The mountain was still for that time in the morning. The trees sagged, not yet awake enough to shake their leaves free of the night. Clancy called for River. There was no answer. He followed the path up the mountain. When they were younger the path was overgrown, but now it looked like a new cut in old flesh. They all walked the path at least once a day. Sometimes Bill even slept up there, next to Essie. Clancy stepped up the incline and into the daisies surrounding Essie’s grave. He grunted. The last step wasn’t easy. He stopped. River stared at him. Her eyes were milky, as if her pupils had drowned in the whites of her eyes. She was naked and covered in mud. Her nipples protruded from her chest as if eager for her womanhood to begin. He looked away. ‘River?’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Are you ready to come home?’ River walked towards him, slowly at first and catlike, but the closer she got to him the more like herself she became. ‘Daddy?’ she asked, almost like she didn’t recognise him. ‘Yes, my girl,’ said Clancy. His voice trembled. She reached out towards him and Clancy lifted her into his arms. She nestled her face into his chest. Clancy smelt kangaroo shit, and human shit too. She wasn’t covered in dirt. The smell was terrible. ‘I was hiding,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘From who?’ he asked, but River never answered him.

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‘Jack!’ shouted Clancy. He could hardly hear his own voice over the falls. ‘What?’ Clancy stood up. ‘Come look at this.’ Jack shook his head. He still couldn’t hear him. Clancy’s bare feet were heavy with mud, and his leg was aching. He grabbed his brother by the arm. Jack took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped the butt into the dirt. Together they walked back to where Clancy saw the footprint. ‘There,’ said Clancy and he pointed. Jack crouched in front of him. He shrugged. ‘Can’t see nothing.’ Clancy pushed him out of the way and looked again. The footprint was gone. ‘It was here,’ said Clancy. ‘Nothing there now,’ said Jack. ‘Ground’s too soggy.’ Clancy plunged his hands into the mud like maybe he could dig the footprint out. ‘It was here,’ he said again but Jack didn’t answer him. He turned around but Jack was gone. ‘You fucking shit head,’ he shouted and for a moment they were children again, and Jack was just hiding from him in the bushes. ‘She never wanted you to find her,’ shouted Jack. His voiced echoed around the bush like wind chimes made of copper pipe. ‘Fuck you.’ ‘She covered herself in shit just to get away from you.’ Clancy opened his mouth and screamed. His scream was a flood and everything disappeared beneath it. Kookaburras burst from the trees, laughing. His scream turned to words. ‘Fucking kooka bastards,’ he shouted and he couldn’t tell what was screaming and what was laughing. He flung his face back and forth like a dog trying to tear a body apart. Afterwards the bush was still. Every animal was turning to see what this new predator was. Even the trees seemed to be watching him. Jack didn’t answer. He was gone. Clancy walked back up to the water tanks. He turned the tap jutting out of the side of the house and held his hands under the clean water. The mud was oily, and

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difficult to wash away. He watched the shit dissolve into the bathwater. Thawing away from River’s skin. ‘I can do it,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’ Clancy left her in the bath.

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42.

I want to find my brother, but everyone says it is not safe for me to help and no one wants to look after me. Even Murray says he needs to concentrate and I should wait at home. I tell him I can be the bait, but he doesn’t understand. Murray is walking down the front steps and so I say with my voice, ‘Jonah saw the caves.’ Murray stops and turns around. ‘When?’ ‘He followed me.’ ‘How did you find them?’ he says and the ‘you’ is louder and this must mean it is important that it was me. ‘The bees,’ I say with my voice. Murray’s eyes are narrow and his lips are tight. ‘What else did they show you?’ ‘Nothing,’ I say but I don’t think he believes me. The sign for home is a hand making a wave. Not a wave of hello, but the wave of an ocean, and my home is not the ocean anymore and the wave might be the top of a mountain, but the mountain is not my home yet either. I think about the place in Sydney where I am meant to be living. I know my granddad’s house is not assisted care because there is no one left to assist me. I watch the people from the step of the verandah and think about my brother, and how to find him. Once, before we came to the mountain, I ask my dad about why Jonah is blue and he tells me a story of hospitals and medicines. ‘Jonah was wrapped up in your umbilical chord, Sam.’ ‘What is umbilical,’ I ask and this word is difficult and I stumble, ‘chord.’

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‘The tube your mother fed you with when you were inside her,’ says my dad and he points to my stomach and I don’t think there is anything in there except my tucker. ‘Is he the Jonah inside the whale?’ ‘He was alone, and he wasn’t growing inside the whale so there was no umbilical cord,’ said my Dad and he looks at me with that same face that he used sometimes. ‘He wasn’t born from the whale, you understand that right, Sam?’ ‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘I understand.’ He is my twin and I am his twin, and they are not always the same thing because I am bigger and stronger, and I take all the air, and I am the one who chased him away because I am the one who put all the fight inside of him and now he is gone. From the steps I hear people talking. No one worries about what I hear, because people think my Down syndrome makes me deaf. Sometimes I don’t understand, but it is not because of my Down syndrome. It is because no one explains things to me like I can understand and so I am left to do my understanding on my own. One man from the town says, ‘no use, kids always go missing up here.’ And another one says, ‘what was Clance thinking?’ The lady I saw holding Murray’s hand, says, ‘not in front of Samson.’ The men look at me. Neither of them worry that I am listening. Neither of them care that Jonah is my brother. I hear Clancy come inside with Murray and shut the door. ‘Mind making me a cup?’ he says. ‘We can look again tomorrow, mate,’ says Murray and I hear him filling the kettle with water from the tap. ‘It’s like he just vanished. Those lads better find something.’ After Murray is gone and Clancy is asleep I leave my bed. I am going to find my brother. I will find my brother and tell him to spit them out.

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Jonah’s father never took them camping. His mother said he took her once, before they were born. She said it was a trip of necessity and Jonah didn’t know what that meant. He and Samson often asked their father to take them but he never did. He didn’t even say yes when their mother asked for them. ‘Just take them,’ she said. Jonah and Samson were crouched on either side of their father’s office door. ‘Did they ask you to do this?’ he said. ‘Come on,’ Jonah added from outside in the hallway. ‘I don’t want to get stuck with Samson for the holidays.’ Their father laughed. ‘Neither do I.’ Samson knew how much Jonah wanted to go camping, and to sleep out under the stars so the day after Christmas he stole one of their mother’s antique bed sheets, hung it over a tree branch and told Jonah it could be anywhere he wanted. ‘Could be a tent or a cave,’ said Samson. ‘A burrow?’ The corners of the sheet trembled. ‘Anything.’ ‘We need to hold the edges down,’ said Jonah. Samson ran into the house and came back carrying a jar of his rocks. He smiled. ‘We can use these,’ he said. Jonah held the edges of the sheet out over the grass and Samson weighed them down with his rocks. ‘Do you remember what all these are for?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Samson. ‘This is the Jonah jar.’ ‘Really?’ Samson smiled. ‘Do you want me to tell you the stories?’ ‘Are they all about me?’ Samson nodded.

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‘Okay.’ They crawled into their new tent and Samson told Jonah the stories of the jar. When their mother came home later that day she made them take the tent down, angry they used her sheet. ‘Honestly boys, can’t I have anything that doesn’t get ruined.’ ‘We just wanted to go camping.’ ‘Did you ask your dad?’ ‘He wouldn’t take us.’ His mother looked tired and annoyed. ‘So, ask him to take you fishing or something.’ ‘Fishing?’ Jonah often wondered why his dad tried so hard to belong to the sand and sea when he was already a part of Clancy’s mountain.

I look everywhere. I look under trees, I lift rocks and call my voice down burrows and holes but I do not find him. Sometimes I get confused and I call Lucy’s name instead. Lucy, and her name is a song that sings through my bones and under my skin. I miss. There are tears on my face and my hands shake. I think of my mum and dad and they are together at our old house. There has been a party and glasses and bottles have grown like mushrooms everywhere. I am little and with Jonah and we are watching from the kitchen window. We are up on the bench and I lift Jonah up because he is too small to reach. My knee is in the sink because I am already too big to fit. There is no music but my mum and dad are still dancing. ‘That’s gross,’ says Jonah.

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I’m going to get married, I say with my hands. I look at mum and dad again now and they are dancing but this time it is not our back yard, it is in the bush and Clancy cannot ask them to leave. My mum smiles and my dad holds her close. Around they turn and then again. Twirling and they are flowers falling from high above. ‘Mum?’ My mum does not see me. ‘Dad?’ They cannot see me and together they twirl away and disappear into the bush. I wait alone for a long time, thinking of Lucy and King, and Queenie, and thinking of mum and of dad and all of them swirl in together and I can hear the roar dangling above me and it feels like the air just before it rains. ‘Queenie?’ I shout and her name is a question I will answer. Sam-snow, says the shiver of bees. You know were she is. You know she is gone. I need to find my brother, I say with my hands. I need to find him. Then I am running and it is dark and I trip. I can hear the bees behind me and around me and sometimes in front of me. ‘Jonah?’ I run for a long time. I run through trees and over rocks and I fall and the bees are behind me but I cannot see them and so I do not know what they want me to do. ‘Sam?’ Jonah comes to me out of the darkness. It is cold but he is not wearing a shirt. The tiger skin is wrapped around him but underneath his boy skin looks like a ghost. ‘Samson?’ says Jonah and he never says my name this way. I hear his voice and so I say, ‘Jonah,’ and there is so much to tell him that I cannot say any of it and my body starts to cry and my face follows. ‘What are you doing up here,’ says Jonah and he is gentle and he puts his arms around me. No, no, no, dance the bees and it is nighttime and so they should not be here but they are and they are behind Jonah and he cannot see them. Trying to find her, I say.

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‘What happened?’ ‘You are lost,’ I shout with my voice and it hurts my throat because I never shout. ‘I’m not lost,’ he says. ‘Yes you are. Everyone is looking for you.’ ‘I’m here,’ says Jonah. ‘Did you kill her?’ I ask my brother. ‘No.’ He did. He ate her. ‘Did you eat her?’ ‘No,’ says Jonah and even though it I dark I can still see his eyes and so I know he is lying. ‘I’m cold,’ I say because I want to believe his lie. ‘It’s too dark to walk back to the house,’ says Jonah. ‘We can sleep here.’ No. Don’t stay. Together my brother and I lay down on the ground. It is cold but dry and Jonah tucks me under his arm and under my granddad’s tiger skin. ‘You should not take the skin,’ I say. ‘I didn’t.’ ‘It belongs to granddad.’ ‘It came on its own,’ says Jonah and I want to believe him but even in my sleep I know my grey brother is lying.

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Samson’s hair was in his face. Jonah tried to turn over. His brother’s breath smelled terrible. Like boiled Brussels sprouts. The tiger skin was too small and when he tried to move, he pulled Samson’s sleeping body even closer. Jonah closed his eyes and tried to sleep. A branch broke. He sat up. The darkness melted and everything around him suddenly felt like it was on fire. The tiger stared at him. It pushed its nose forward and sniffed the air. ‘Hello tiger,’ he said quietly and he wrapped it around his shoulders.

The sunlight tickles my face and I am awake and it is sudden and my hair is in my face and my breath is smelly. I am outside and even though the sun is out it is still very cold and my cheeks feel burnt. My mum says I am not a morning person but Murray is teaching me how to start my brain working early and it does not take as long as usual. My eyes are sore and I touch them and I remember that I was crying. I was crying because my brother was missing and I remember he was beside me. I sit up. He is not with me. I turn myself around. He is not in the trees. I call with my voice, ‘Jonah, Jonah.; He does not answer. ‘Jonah…’ The tiger skin is gone. I hope it did not take my brother. I sit for a long time but I do not make the sign for search. I wait, but I do not wait for Jonah. There is a soft humming and my bees slip out from inside the sunshine. I sign, I will tell you a story. Story, yes.

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There was a man named Samson and he was very strong, I sign. He defeated an army with only the jawbone of a donkey and killed a lion with his bare hands. We know this story, the bees dance. Who told you? I ask with my hands. She, danced the bees all together and the hum of their bodies becomes a drone. Who is she? Shall we? Yes. Bring him, bring him, bring… And then I am following them and I am running, but I think I feel larger eyes watching me. We run through trees, and over sticks. Along the creek, and the creek runs too, and I keep up. Around caves I run, and larger rocks than I can carry, or collect. And the grass is deeper and the ground is softer, like it is trying to eat me. From the corner of my running eye I see white flakes of insects dancing over water, and through the light, and they are not bees. They are something different. Tomorrow, dance the bees, you become one of us. I understand, because now I understand everything like the bees. I think like the bees. I am the bees.

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43.

Clancy stood in the doorway. Samson’s bed was empty. They used to sleep rough all the time when they were his age, him and Jack. Murray too when he was younger. But Samson was different, wasn’t he? And his brother was missing. Clancy thought of the first night River missed sleeping in her bed. She was only young, seven or eight maybe. Clancy didn’t know she was missing until she came in for breakfast and told them she’d slept under the stars. After that she would often sneak out, especially on school days. Sometimes she was gone for two nights. Clancy never panicked because River always walked back into the house like nothing happened, even though she was dirty and wild-eyed. ‘Where were you?’ he would ask. Sometimes River would shrug. Other times she would just look away. ‘Hunting,’ she said sometimes. ‘Hunting what?’ Sometimes she wouldn’t answer him, but mostly she would say, ‘tigers.’ Sometimes there was blood on her clothes. Now, Samson’s bed was empty and Clancy wished he’d followed his daughter, or tied her up. He wished he’d found a way to stop her from disappearing. He slumped into the doorframe and tried to breathe. He was tired. Even his skin felt heavy. The kind of tired that seeped down into your bones and tangled through your organs. ‘Weary’, his ma used to call it. Clancy didn’t know what to do about Sam. Could his grandson look after himself out there? He seemed capable enough, but maybe there were hidden snags with Downs. Maybe it would rear up and give Samson a fit. Clancy wasn’t even really sure what the fuck Downs was. He certainly didn’t know how to figure out where it might take his grandson. Did Downs kids wander? Did they panic easy?

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‘You lost another one?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh well,’ said Jack. ‘That one was bound to go missing.’ Clancy’s leg ached and his head felt sluggish. He knew he should try to find Samson, but he didn’t have it in him to start all over again. There were no more climbs up that mountain left in him. He wanted a beer.

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44.

I ring Lucy on my granddad’s phone again. My fingers are nervous. Her mum answers and I clear my throat. ‘Hello?’ I say with my voice. ‘Who is this?’ ‘This is Samson.’ ‘Samson, you shouldn’t be calling,’ says Lucy’s mum and her voice is tight and pinched. ‘Lucy can’t talk right now anyway.’ ‘When can she?’ I ask and I am starting to feel angry at Lucy’s mum and angry at my own mum and angry at my dad for disappearing, and angry at my brother for disappearing. ‘Listen Samson, I am not going to allow this to go any further.’ ‘No you listen,’ I say with my voice and it is a man’s voice and I am a man now and it is almost a roar. ‘I want to talk to Lucy.’ ‘I will thank you not to use that tone with me young man.’ ‘I want to talk to Lucy.’ ‘I’m hanging up now, Samson,’ says Lucy’s mum and I hear a click. I hold the empty phone to my ear and I start to cry and it is like when a baby cries, up and down and heaving, and it is worse because I am almost a man. My tears go everywhere and my breath catches and I am loud because I have had enough and I do not care who can hear me, and I roll in over the phone and I hug my knees into my chest and I want to be smaller and to disappear. I hear another click. ‘Am?’ My voice is jumping and I take a deep breath to push it back down again. ‘Lucy?’ ‘I am ere Am.’

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‘Lucy,’ I say and her voice is like singing and I start to cry again but this time it is quiet crying. ‘I am ere.’ ‘I have a gift,’ I say with my voice. ‘From ou Am?’ ‘That doesn’t matter. But it can cure us.’ ‘What ha mah-ean?’ ‘We can be normal, Lucy.’ She doesn’t say anything. ‘Lucy?’ ‘No Down syndrome?’ she says and this is a difficult word with a hard ‘s’ sound but we both learnt to say that word a long time ago. Before we could say many others. ‘None.’ Lucy thinks for a while, She is quiet but I know she is there because I can hear her breathing. ‘No, Am,’ she says. ‘We can live in the same house.’ I hear another click and a voice says, ‘Lucy.’ ‘Ats my mum, Am.’ ‘Lucy. Get off the phone.’ ‘Don’t, Am.’ I hear two clicks. ‘Lucy?’ I say with my voice but everything is empty and quiet again. I put the phone down and walk into the kitchen. Outside most of the trucks and cars from the people who come to help us find my brother are gone. ‘Did you talk to her?’ asks my granddad. I nod my head, but then I shake my head because I don’t know how to answer.

45.

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‘Come on, mate,’ said Clancy as he lifted Samson’s sleeping body out of the armchair. He was heavy. ‘Let’s get you into bed.’ Samson nodded and stood up on his own. Clancy followed him into his room. Samson looked like a tree about to topple. He got into bed. ‘Will you tell a story?’ ‘I don’t know any.’ ‘Codswallap,’ said Samson and he smiled. ‘Get it? Like you?’ Clancy smiled. ‘Sam?’ Samson yawned. ‘Where did you sleep last night?’ ‘In the bush.’ ‘You’re lucky you didn’t freeze, you silly boy,’ said Clancy before he could stop himself. Was it all right to call Samson silly? ‘I was with Jonah.’ ‘You saw him? Is he all right?’ asked Clancy. ‘Do you know if he found anything?’ ‘Goodnight,’ said Samson firmly and he rolled into the wall. They were both silent for a while. Eventually Clancy said, ‘why don’t you tell me a story.’ Samson pushed himself out from the wall. ‘Anything?’ ‘Anything,’ said Clancy and he shoved his grandson’s foot to make room on the end of his bed. He sat down. ‘The other Samson didn’t choose. Did you know that?’ ‘I didn’t.’ ‘He was born the way he is.’ ‘Strong, right?’ said Clancy and he tried to remember something from Sunday school but all he could remember was skylarking with Jack at the back of the hall.

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‘God tells him where to go. He goes, and what to do. He does it all. He doesn’t know his wife when they get married.’ Clancy wondered if he knew Essie on the day they tied themselves together for life. He wondered if he knew her even after she was in the ground. ‘On the way to his wedding the other Samson sees the dead body of the lion again but this time the bees have made a nest inside its body.’ That reminded him of something. Samson kept taking but his voice sounded far away, as if it were being carried down a rain filled river. That’s right. He remembered now. ‘A busy scene, indeed, he sees, but not a sign or sound of bees. Through putrid offal, while above, the hissing blowfly seeks his love,’ said Clancy. ‘What?’ How did he know that verse? Was it one of Jack’s, or something his mother read to him? He tried to not to imagine the worms and flies inside the other Samson’s lion but he couldn’t and the honey turned to worms and the bees turned to flies. ‘Are you listening, Granddad?’ Clancy nodded. ‘The lion is full of honey and the other Samson takes some with him.’ Clancy saw Bill’s hands glistening with honey. Essie was watching too. ‘Then he turns it into a riddle,’ says Samson. ‘And the riddle proves that Samson is intelligent as well as strong.’ Clancy shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. You’ve lost me. I reckon it’s time to turn in.’ He stood up and turned off the light. ‘Granddad?’ ‘Yes…’ ‘He has your tiger.’ ‘I know,’ said Clancy. ‘Goodnight.’

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Clancy walked out onto the verandah. It was a cold night, maybe five degrees. He wondered if Jonah was warm. The skin was thick, but the boy would be getting hungry by now and hunger made the cold worse. More dangerous. Clancy wondered what he was eating. He switched on the verandah light and Essie’s lawn surfaced from the darkness. A wallaby opened its eyes and darted into the darkness. How did it get in? One of the blokes from town must have left the gate open. Clancy walked down the front steps and checked beneath the verandah. Queenie was still gone. He straightened up. The leg was definitely getting worse. ‘He’s still alive?’ asked Jack. ‘That’s what Samson said.’ ‘Good for some.’ Clancy turned around. His brother was wearing his army uniform. It was wet. This was the other Jack. The drowned Jack. ‘You said you wouldn’t anymore.’ ‘It’s who I am.’ ‘You said you weren’t.’ Jack smiled. His teeth were grey. ‘I lied.’ ‘She doesn’t want to come back.’ ‘No one does,’ said Jack. Water was dripping from beneath his clothes. ‘It’s my fault, isn’t it?’ ‘No, not that first time.’ ‘What do I do?’ asked Clancy. His hands were shaking. ‘Start again,’ said Jack gently. Clancy nodded. ‘I have thought about it.’ ‘Of course you have.’ ‘I could start again. Somewhere else. Away. I thought about Kirra once. She has a son. I could, couldn’t I?’ ‘You could,’ said Jack. ‘Just walk away.’ ‘All right,’ said Clancy. He was nodding. ‘Just walk, Clance.’ He wouldn’t get it wrong this time.

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Clancy took Jack’s lighter from inside his pocket and flicked the wheel. Flame sprung out of the top. He pressed the flame into the base of the fence post and waited. Fire rippled upwards from the ground like hair in water. It cracked loudly and spat ember into the night air. Everything smelt like Jack’s cigarettes. He heard his da again. ‘Why didn’t you help her?’ ‘I’m sorry.’ His da picked him up by the collar and shook him. Clancy closed his eyes and wished Jack would come home from school. ‘Where is she?’ ‘She ran out.’ ‘Where?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Jack told him it wasn’t his fault but Clancy didn’t understand. ‘What happened to ma?’ he asked. ‘Never mind,’ said Jack. Clancy walked back up the stairs. Jack didn’t follow. He went inside. ‘Just walk away,’ he said quietly as he folded back the covers on his bed. ‘Just let it all go.’ He got into bed and fell asleep.

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“Only an idiot has no grief, only a fool would forget it.”

William Faulkner.

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46.

Clancy sat on the sidelines and waited for the race to start. He and Essie were out together for the second time. It was a warm day and he wanted to take off his Sunday jacket but he didn’t want Essie to see that he was already sweating. ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ she said. Clancy spread his arms across the back of the bench the way his da used to do before a race. He wondered if he had been trying to dry his armpits as well. Essie misunderstood and moved in closer to him. ‘Is this his last race?’ asked Essie. She was wearing a new straw hat and a navy dress covered in pink flowers. ‘Last before he ships out.’ The word ‘last’ hung in the air between them. Her face fell. ‘Oh I’m sorry Clancy, that isn’t what I meant.’ ‘There he is,’ said Clancy and he pointed to his brother. Jack was wearing his jockey gear and waving to the girls in the crowd. Some of the lads cheered and waved back. Jack followed the fence around the racetrack on his blonde mare. The fence stood out against the dark green turf like bared teeth. ‘What’s his horse called?’ ‘Nevermind.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ ‘No, no,’ Clancy said and he smiled. ‘The horse is called the Nevermind.’ Essie laughed. Jack saw him and waved. Clancy waved back. ‘He doesn’t look like you,’ said Essie. ‘Ma reckons I’m a ring in.’

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Essie snuggled in beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. She smelt like lavender. ‘I’m glad.’ ‘Why’s that?’ ‘I like you the way you are,’ she said and she kissed his ear. ‘Can you smell smoke?’ ‘No.’ ‘I can,’ he said. Essie’s breath was warm. ‘I can smell smoke.’ ‘Clancy,’ she said and her hand reached into his lap and she pressed her fingers into his groin, and even though the race took place long before his accident Clancy could feel the pain in his leg. ‘Can you smell it now?’ He lifted his trouser cuff. Three long scars. Essie’s tongue slipped into his ear and his entire body shuddered. This wasn’t how it happened. He didn’t have the scars yet. ‘Clancy,’ Jack shouted from the racetrack and he pointed over his own shoulder. Clancy couldn’t hear him. ‘What?’ he shouted and the racing ground was suddenly silent. ‘Behind you,’ shouted Jack again. He sat up.

Clancy could smell smoke. He leaned over the side of his bed and looked out his bedroom window. The fence surrounding the lawn was in flames. ‘Shit,’ he shouted and he swung his legs out of bed. Samson’s room was down the hall. ‘Sam.’ Clancy threw the door open. ‘Samson.’ The boy sat up and looked around him. ‘Granddad?’ ‘Get up, son. There’s a fire.’

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Together they ran outside. The house was surrounded. ‘Clancy,’ Murray shouted. He was coming full pelt up the mountain wearing a dark green blanket over his shoulders. The fire was already too high. Samson ran down the stairs. They were shouting to each other but Clancy couldn’t make out what they were saying. ‘Stay back.’ Murray stopped just beyond the gate and the fence near him was already black. He took a pair of gardening gloves from his back pocket and put them on. ‘You stay back,’ shouted Clancy. ‘You hear me.’ ‘Not fucking likely, mate,’ shouted Murray and his body and face disappeared beneath the blanket. He hunched over and charged towards the fence. The gate splintered around him and he stumbled. ‘Murray?’ The flaming blanket moved. Murray’s boots were visible beneath. He threw it away and kept running. The blanket was in flames. ‘You’re supposed to wet it first.’ said Clancy. He grabbed Murray’s forearm and tried to stop shaking. ‘What bloody good was that, now were all stuck in here.’ ‘I’m not leaving.’ ‘How we going put this out?’ ‘Hook the tanks up to the hoses?’ ‘They’re in the far paddock. Was feeding water up from the dam.’ ‘Shit.’ ‘I called the firemen,’ said Samson. ‘Fat lot of use they will be.’ ‘Nicely done, Sam,’ said Murray. ‘Come with me, we got to get the water out of these tanks.’ Samson and Murray ran around to the back of the house. Clancy was about to follow them, when he saw something in the flames. It was Queenie’s eldest pup. ‘Shadow?’ The dog turned to look at him. Yellow eyes. ‘Come here, boy.’

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Then there she was, still wearing her nightie. It was mottled grey from sleeping rough. Her hair was longer and flowing through the fire like running water. She was here to put out the fire. She was here to save him. River took Shadow by the neck and turned like they were going to walk away. ‘River?’ She didn’t hear him. Clancy followed, running. His leg pulled behind him but he ran. Her wavering white body started to disappear. He did not stop when he felt the fire burning his skin. The heat turned to mist and it was everywhere and he couldn’t see for a moment. He heard Jack. ‘But on lonely nights we would hear them calling, We should hear their steps on the pathways falling.’ ‘Jack?’ Clancy reached out into the flames. He couldn’t see River or Jack or Shadow and when he looked down he couldn’t even see his own skin. The mist turned to fire and the fire turned towards him and his skin and he felt himself melting and burning and he screamed, and screamed and as he screamed, Clancy heard himself and knew that he was dying because he felt the wail of a dying horse inside his mouth. He thought of his mother and the wail was inside her mouth too. ‘Why didn’t you help her?’ ‘I’m sorry.’ The kookaburras stopped laughing. Something grabbed his collar and pulled him through the flames.

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47.

I see my granddad and Murray near the fire and the phone is still in my hand from where I call the fire station. Sam-snow. There is one single bee and it hovers around my face trying to dance all on its own but this is not really how their language works and it is hard to understand her. Back, she dances and I can see that it is hard for her and then she is gone. ‘I called the fireman,’ I say and my breath jumps around in my mouth like a frightened fish. ‘Fat lot of use they will be,’ says Clancy and his eyes are wild and he has a cut down the side of his foot from dragging it. ‘Good work, Sam,’ says Murray. He is spotted with black smudges from the fire. ‘Come with me.’ Murray runs and I follow him to the water tanks and they are at the side of the house and are built on a ledge made from wood. ‘Shit,’ says Murray when he gets there. ‘Any ideas?’ I remember the other Samson and I remember his last bit of strength and I remember him pushing down the pillars of the city and crushing the people inside. ‘Push them,’ I say with my voice. ‘Push them all the way over.’ Murray’s eyes are darting. ‘We’re not strong enough.’ ‘I can push them.’ Murray is looking at me and at the tanks. ‘Might work if I can cut the side legs out in time.’ ‘I can push them,’ I say again and I am already climbing up in between the tanks.

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Murray disappears and when he comes back he has an axe. My eyes are hurting from the smoke and the fire is everywhere and I can hear it crackling. ‘Sam,’ says Murray and I can hear the second thoughts in his voice, ‘we only get one chance. One tank has to go this way and one has to go the other.’ ‘I can push them,’ I say again. ‘You can’t push them.’ ‘I can,’ I say with my voice and I know Murray doesn’t want me to push the tanks but we have no choice and so he nods. I put my hands both on one tank and I think of the other Samson and I close my eyes against the smoke and I hear the axe beneath me. Chop. Chop. Chop. ‘You ready mate,’ shouts Murray and it is not a question and I am ready and then I am pushing and pushing and I am not the other Samson, I am this Samson and I am saving the people and not killing them and I am water and I am inside the water and I am pushing. Chop. I feel the tank shift and I push and my entire body and the tank moves away and I step back and I hear the crash and the water is a wave and it covers the lawn and the fence and swallows the fire whole. Murray is yelling and I am staring at my hands and they are shaking and red. ‘One more,’ shouts Murray and he is already on the other side and the axe is raised high. I hear screaming and I know it is my Granddad and I know it is the sound of burning and Murray is shouting too and hacking and chopping at the base beneath the water tank and I look into the fire and I see it. I am shaking and the water in my eyes is keeping my face wet and so my face is safe. I look into the flames and I see two heads and two bodies and one is a man body and one is a dog. It is a dog, and also not a dog. ‘Queenie?’ It is not Queenie.

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The dog is red and stands high on long hind legs. This dog has arms like a man and stripes and drags a body through the fire but not in its teeth because this dog has hands. It drops the body and runs back into the fire and into the forest and the body is Clancy. ‘Granddad!’ I press my hands into the tank and I hear the axe and Murray stumbles back and there is a splash and I fall with the tank and fall with the water and I am the other Samson and the city crumbles in over me.

‘Granddad?’ said a voice. He didn’t answer. ‘Granddad?’ said the voice again.

My granddad is burned and red and broken into creeks and rivers of darker red. He takes a breath and tries to lift his head. The ground is wet and maybe this is from his open mouth, or maybe it is from crying. I have to help, I say to my swarm. It is already started. You cannot stop what is already started. Clancy tries to say something but it is all mixed up and reminds me of some kids from my old school. I can always understand them and so I say, ‘lucky I can understand you Granddad.’

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He says again, ‘Queenie.’ With my voice I tell him Queenie is fine. I lie to him that Queenie is safe. I say to him, ‘I know what to do.; He opens up his mouth again and this time it is just a rattle and I can hear his bones trying to find a way out. ‘Granddad,’ I say firm, ‘never mind those bones, you keep those bones in.’ I run inside and my plate of honey is still on top of the wardrobe. We said we would guard. I take the special honeycomb and hold it gently. This is not ordinary honey. This is special honey. It can take me back to before my cells split and made me different.

Clancy smelled the medicine and chemicals before he opened his eyes. Bill was sitting beside him, like always, this time in an uncomfortable looking armchair. His Akubra was in his lap. ‘Hello, mate,’ was all he said. Then Clancy remembered everything. The storm, the tree, Bill’s hat, David’s hands, and River’s tiny sparrow-like footprints disappearing beneath the rain. Clancy felt like a goldfish caught in a vast tumbling wave. ‘You find her?’ he asked. Bill shook his head. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Ten or so blokes still out there looking for her.’ Clancy shifted beneath the thin white hospital sheets. The weight from the cast felt like an anchor, drawing him down into the bed. ‘But you know where she hides.’ ‘Murray’s been looking every day.’ ‘And David?’

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Bill scratched the back of his neck. ‘Not seen much of him. Stays inside mostly.’ ‘How long have I been here?’ ‘About three days,’ said Bill gently. Three days. He tried to remember how many hours that was, but his head was throbbing. It was three days since River disappeared. ‘She can make it,’ Clancy said and his voice crackled like an old tin roof in the sun. ‘You and I, we both taught her enough to survive. Right?’ Three entire days without food or shelter or a bed to sleep in. ‘Right,’ agreed Bill but he didn’t sound convinced. ‘No fucking tiger’s going to get the best of my girl.’ ‘What tiger?’ ‘It tried to bite her.’ Clancy gripped the metal handle hanging over the bed and hoisted himself up and off the hard hospital pillows. He felt the edge of the cast push up into his groin as he turned both legs out into the space beyond the bed. ‘You can’t be doing that, mate.’ ‘Fucking oath I can,’ said Clancy and he tried to put the weight of his body onto his good leg. Bill reached out towards him but Clancy pushed him away and tried to stand. He heard the shallow shriek of the linoleum and felt the floor slip out from under him. There was a crack, and Clancy couldn’t tell if it was his head or the white wooden plaster covering his leg. He stared up and felt the water from his eyes run down his cheeks and pool in the space behind his ears. Clancy felt Bill lace his arms in behind his head and lift him up by the neck. ‘She’s alone.’ ‘You have to give this leg time to mend, Clance. We won’t stop looking.’ ‘Bill,’ said Clancy and he heard his voice quiver inside him like a newborn foal. ‘It’s my River.’ ‘I know,’ said Bill quietly. ‘I know, mate.’

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Clancy pressed his face into Bill’s neck and filling himself with the bitter, acrid scent of his friend’s skin.

‘Granddad?’ Clancy opened his eyes. He was face down in the dirt. He could taste it. He’d tasted the island this way before. There was fire, he could smell that too but he couldn’t feel it yet, even though he knew he would. He knew he was burning already. His spine shuddered and the pain returned. He smelt honey and heard laughing. Fingertips. The fingers were under. He wanted to scream. ‘No, no,’ he wanted to shout, ‘don’t.’ The fucking kookaburras were laughing. Fucking bastards. Clancy laughed too. His chest expanded and he felt streaks of pain through his back and legs. He laughed louder and so did they. Clancy laughed until his throat was sore. There was a pool of spit beneath his nose and mouth. It turned to mud.

‘What did you think you were doing,’ said Bill. He looked ahead. It was still raining. ‘She ran away,’ said Clancy. He felt the sob break from his mouth before he heard it. ‘Madness,’ said Bill, ‘going out in this.’

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Clancy felt small and skeletal. He was embarrassed. Bill was his mate and Clancy’s legs were bent over the crook of his arm, like a woman. Bill grunted. At least he was too heavy to be a woman. ‘Out of the way,’ said Bill and David darted out of the way. Clancy could see Murray waiting in the kitchen, his hands were in his pockets and his long curly hair was tied back in a lose twist behind each ear. ‘Run out the back,’ said Bill. His voice sounded stretched and hollow. ‘I need one of the red jars. Murray disappeared into the rain. ‘David?’ David’s face appeared around the edge of the door. ‘Call the ambulance.’ He nodded. Bill stumbled down the hall. The walls throbbed and Clancy felt the warm bile burbling between his ribs. He was going to vomit. ‘Don’t let her get far,’ said Clancy. He could taste the acidic vapors rising from his stomach. Bill grunted. Maybe he wanted to say more. Maybe he wanted to say that he would find their daughter and bring her home safe, but a grunt was all he could manage. Bill nudged the bedroom door and it swung open. He took two more steps and dropped Clancy into the middle of his bed. Clancy heard the door to the honey room slam shut. ‘Those hinges need oiling,’ said Clancy.

No, the bees dance. It is for you. I take the special honeycomb in my hand. I think about putting it in my mouth and sucking the wax clean. I think about feeling it dissolve on my tongue. I can be like everyone. Not a ‘gang’ or a ‘mate.; Not different or special or disabled. My

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functioning will be the same as all the other functioning. Not high and not low and I can say ‘who cares if we are different’ because I won’t be and Lucy can come with me. Lucy can be my wife and her tongue will not be fissured and her hair will go curly and she will have babies inside her belly and we will have newspapers delivered to our own house and we will share a dog like Queenie together. My granddad makes a wet rattle sound and it is his lungs trying to breathe. I squeeze the comb into my hands and the honey is warm and runs all through my fingers. The special honey is warm and tingles all over my skin like when Lucy holds my hand and that is when I know what I will do. ‘We do not need it, Sam,’ says Lucy in my mind and I have put her there. We do not need it and so I will not keep the special honey for myself and instead I say, ‘I will touch you now Clancy.’ His bones rattle when I press my special honey into the broken skin. My honey. My special honey. It will heal my granddad but will not heal me and will not heal Lucy.

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48.

Jonah was running. He could hear the flames. His burrow. It would be safe. The fire would die in the creek. He stopped and sniffed the air. There was a crashing sound. He crouched. Dozens of terrified wallabies hurtled past him. He’d never seen so many together. They didn’t even notice him. The wallabies were coming from the creek. Did that mean it was on fire? What about his burrow? Everything was scared. Jonah yowled and shook his head. What should he do, what could he do? He thought of the horses, bloated and dead, but safe from the fire at the bottom of the dam. The fire felt like it was catching up. Jonah ran. He ran faster when the skin wrapped around his throat and when he felt the fur tendrils creep up his face. He ran faster when he felt the skin’s teeth pierced through his lips and settled over his own. Jonah tried to shake himself free but the tiger was too strong.

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49.

Clancy opened his mouth to call but vomited instead. He could taste bile and burning. ‘Granddad?’ This wasn’t like the last time. This time Bill was dead and the debris was inside him. ‘Granddad,’ says Samson. His voice is so loud and so wide that he could be anywhere. He could almost be anything. ‘No foxes,’ Clancy heard himself say. ‘Everything will be fine.’ ‘No foxes,’ he said again but his voice was shallow and wet. ‘Keep those bones in, Granddad,’ says Samson. Clancy heard footsteps. Running. A door slam. Silence.

‘River?’ There was no answer. ‘David?’ Inside, pressed up against a corner of his bedroom he found his son, sheepish and sweating. There was a scratch down the left side of his face and River was gone. ‘Where is she?’ ‘She ran away.’

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‘What do you mean she ran away?’ Clancy said his heart starting to pound. ‘She hates storms.’ ‘She ran out,’ said David and his eyes darted to the door. ‘Did you try and stop her.’ ‘She said she was gonna sick the tigers on me.’ David’s voice trembled and he tried to run but Clancy held him. He held his son by the throat and tried to shake the life from inside him. When he finally let David go he didn’t know it would be the last time he would ever touch him, ever hold him. He didn’t know how deep the tear could go. From beneath the soil Clancy thought he heard his wife cry out at the recognition of David’s half–truth. Clancy heard her call to him and he dropped his son, his cloth boneless son. David fell to the floor. Outside Clancy found a trail of small bare footprints leading into the bush and up into the mountain. He followed them. Hail broke from the sky with a crack and Clancy heard the ice tear a hole in the canopy of the sky. The mountain started to break apart. Clancy reached out to steady himself. As he fell, he became the mountain. He was a falling rock, a new wound in the mountain’s side. He was the severed tree roots and the mudslide. He was the buried footprint of his little girl. He was the mouth that devoured her. When the tree hit him he didn’t struggle. He thought of River and his body wrapped around the tree, embracing it as it fell.

The thick, sluggish water of the dam wrapped around him and Jonah felt himself sink. He opened his eyes. There they were. The bloated corpses of his string, churned up by the water into a mess of legs and flanks and heads and open eyes. Jonah saw the foal crushed beneath its mother.

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He tried to kick up, but he couldn’t. He reached out with his arms but the thick water held him down. His lungs tightened. He opened his mouth and the water rushed in. Jonah felt the skin on his back and knew he had to let something go. The skin lifted from around his shoulders and spun into darkness. He kicked up.

It was dark. There were no streetlights. The road changed. Clancy heard it chop from gravel to dirt beneath the wheels of the car. Around the base of the mountain the bush thinned and he could see the sky. The darkness swallowed everything and he was driving through stars. Each tiny light joined every other. Gently, he turned the car onto the mountain road. He wanted to put as much distance between the pub and Kirra and himself as he could. He was never going back. The headlights darted through the darkness and it was almost like he was inside a submarine trawling along the bottom of the ocean. Trees moved past his car one by one. They looked like bars. Clancy pushed his foot down on the brakes. The car groaned and the startled fox looked into the headlights. ‘I see you,’ he said quietly. The fox turned and like a streak of fire darted into the bush on the other side of the road. Another flash and then another, and two smaller foxes followed. Neither cub looked at the car and in just a few seconds the entire family was gone.

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I am angry and I am running and I do not run fast so it is more like climbing and the mountain is in front of me and so I am climbing. The ground beneath me falls away and in clumps of hard dirt and bits of tree and leaves but I do not stop. I know where the top is and this time I will reach it. This time they can’t stop me or tell me I can’t. This time I can choose. Go. There is water in my eyes and on the top of my head and in my hair. I am not sure what this water is but maybe at the top I will melt and disappear. Not far. Not far now. I know what I am, even though sometimes I do not let the truth in. I know about the tambourines and the smell of hospitals. I know about my school. I know my eyes and hands. I know my face. I know. Sometimes I think about my extra chromosome and it is like a toad. My dad and I are working in the garden at home and it is hot and we are pulling out the wooden sides of the garden outside my window because the wood is rotten and we have new garden beds made of metal. My dad says, ‘rip that one out, Sam,’ and I dig my hands down in the dirt and I pull the wood out of the ground. The wood is dead and there are no roots and so it is not too difficult. In the corner of the garden bed there is a toad and it is getting fatter and fatter and it is looking at me and it looks like all the rest of the dirt except for its eyes. The toad is not meant to be there and my mum is scared of toads and Jonah thinks it is gross and my dad wants to kill it. This is my extra chromosome. The air changes and it is thick and bitey, and feels like rain even though the sky is clear. I see the edge. I know. A sharp cut and this is not like climbing trees or jumping off boats. Sam. I know, I sign. We are all here.

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He is gone, I sign with my hands. No, not gone. Look... I see the long spinning coil of bees stretching out over the ledge and I follow them and watch them fling off into the sky and the coil seems to go on forever and through the trees they go and down the road they go and across the river. We can find him. We will find him, they dance and this time the dance stretches down the mountain and travels through the bees like an animal inside a snake. My feet walk to the edge and I am not afraid and my eyes are dry and the light from the sky catches on the bees and all the wings change colour together. Purple is first, and then blue, pink and gold and this is the magic of my mountain. This is my rainbow snake.

.

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50.

The lip of the dam is cold but the tiger doesn’t care. His fur insulates him against the wet and the cold. To him, the temperature of the dam is no different to his native bush. Only his burrow is warm. The tiger shakes himself off and as he does, the fur on his back stands straight up. He sniffs the air. One, two, three, four paws and he is running. He should find the others, but his burrow isn’t far.

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51.

I do not call for him. I do not shout ‘Jonah Jonah’ with my voice. I do not look for him where the others looked. They do not know my brother and will not be able to find him. Instead I think of when we were little and not like other twins because I could not feel pain in his body through mine and I could not find him like other twins. I close my eyes because maybe the seeing was how I lost him and instead I try to hear. I close my eyes and his secret mountain melts and is gone and I do not see the mountain-trees bend and I do not see the roots winding up around me. Crumble ground and sharp rocks, and even with my eyes closed I can still feel everything beneath me. Everything he is hiding inside. I will find you, brother. We can find him. I close my eyes and suddenly I am out past the bent trees and the crumbling rocks. Out past the mountain, and my granddad’s house. Out past the streams and the rivers, and I am everywhere rushing and the hole down the side of me that is my twin shape shrinks against the river. Burnt and lip-puckered and it fills with water and gets swollen fat. Jonah, Jonah and this space is not his anymore. Back inside me and I feel the shape of him take one last single breath. We can find him. Stop. I stop. My breath is heavy. I sniff the air. I do not know his new name and so I say, ‘Jonah.’ Under the leaves, tangled up in dry beetle hull skeletons, there are two hands beneath a tiger skin.

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‘Jonah?’ The tiger blinks. I make the sign for brother. Two fists pointing inwards, rubbing together like the hands are nervous. The tiger growls. I remember the sign for tiger and it is almost the same as brother except the claws are pointing out. With my hands I say, I see you there, Tiger.

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“A swarm of bees has taken over a dozing old shed and no one has the means or guts to move them.”

Dorothy Porter

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52.

The afternoon is still early and the air smells like new trees and it has been a long time since the fire and almost everything has grown back except for my mum and my dad. They are still missing. A dark red truck drives slowly up the driveway and the wheels and windscreen are very dirty and there is a woman and a boy in the front seats. They are here. They are, they are. We will hide. The bees scatter and I take off my gloves and wave. The woman is first out of the car and it is the lady Kirra from the pub in town and she waves to me. She goes around to the other side of the car and helps the boy out of the front seat and together they walk up to the house and I meet them. The boy is thin and small and his lips are blue and he has a knitted hat pulled down low over his ears. ‘Samson?’ says Kirra and she looks nervous. ‘Good morning,’ I say with my voice and my hands and this is my professional way of saying hello. ‘Morning,’ says Kirra and she smiles. ‘This is my son Ned.’ I put my hand out to shake his hand but the boy looks scared and moves closer to his mum. ‘Do you know the story of Samson?’ I ask. The boy shakes his head. ‘It is a story about lions and strong men and learning to keep secrets safe. Do you know where my honey comes from?’ He shakes his head again and this time the boy looks a bit more interested. ‘From inside a lion.’ The boy smiles and I know this means that my honey is already working.

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‘Is Clancy here?’ asks Kirra. ‘He’s resting,’ I say and she nods. ‘Murray said something about honey for nausea,’ says Kirra and her son moves in closer and it is like he is trying to push himself back under her skin and I know what this looks like because I have seen it before. ‘Do you have pain?’ I ask the boy. He pushes his hand into the space just beneath his belly and nods. ‘What kind of pain?’ I ask with my hands and my voice because I know the bees are watching me. ‘The doctor says it is nothing to worry too much about,’ says Kirra. ‘Just nausea from his other medicine. But Ned says it is like a burning in his stomach and he can’t hold any food down,’ she says and I think about the fire again and sometimes I can still taste the burning on the back of my throat and it is not real and so the honey will not help me. ‘I have something to help,’ I say to them and then just to the boy I say, ‘you want some Lion honey?’ Ned doesn’t answer. ‘You can ask him,’ says his mum but Ned shakes his head. ‘Ask me what?’ I say and sometimes I forget that people are sometimes scared of me. ‘Ned wanted to know why you call your honey lion honey.’ ‘Because,’ I say and I open my mouth wide, ‘I am the lion and the honey belongs to me.’ Ned smiles and turns his face into his mum’s legs. ‘Wait here,’ I say and I walk back into the house. Clancy’s house is very changed and the honey pots and honey jars are everywhere. I walk down the hall and into Jonah’s room, which is not Jonah’s room anymore because he is gone. His books are gone. I still have them. They are under my bed. Sometimes when we take lots of honey to sell and the shelves are almost empty I think of my mum and dad but not often. They are smaller as I get bigger.

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The shelf near the window is where I keep the honey for helping stomach upsets. ‘Reflux,’ Murray calls it. The bees call it thunder. I take down a jar and smooth the label back on. Murray helped me make them and together we called it Lion Honey like the honey inside Samson’s lion, and underneath it says ‘from inside the lion’ and people come almost every day for our honey and it heals them. On the label there is also a picture and it is the face of a lion and inside the lion are the bees. Some are bursting out of his mouth and some are trying to get further down into the hive inside his belly. Beneath the face of the lion the real honey is thick and bright like amber and I think it looks like real amber where insects once fell and disappeared, and hardened into rock. Do you know about amber? I ask the bees with my hands. The rock. Our honey is not a prison, they dance. I think about the girl in the wax who is also my aunty and I know the bees are telling the truth. The bees are all around me now. Some of them live in vases of flowers I pick fresh every morning and leave everywhere around the house. Others live down in the bee shack because after the fire the trees were burned and they had nowhere to live, I asked Murray what we should do. ‘They can live here.’ ‘Where,’ I say using my voice and my hands even though Murray doesn’t understand them yet. ‘In my old place. It’s not much good for people anyway.’ ‘Where will you live?’ I ask and my face feels ready for crying because I don’t want Murray to go away. ‘With you, mate. How about I give you a hand up there.’

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My face is smiling and my arms are around Murray and he feels warm but stiff like he is embarrassed and he says, ‘all right, mate, take it easy.’ Murray moves into the other room and together we look after Clancy. I bring the honey out and close the door to the honey room and Clancy is in the kitchen staring at the wall. He is in his chair with wheels and his skin is still puckered and pink from the bandages. ‘We have some people here, Granddad.’ Clancy nods and looks at me. One of his eyes is closed shut and the doctor says the eye underneath cannot see. One side of his mouth dangles open and sometimes Murray or I dab a bit of tissue on his lips to keep them dry. ‘Okay,’ he says and his voice slurs. ‘Murray went to town to get the pup.’ ‘Good, good,’ says Clancy and his eyes look very far away. ‘I’m going up to the cave in a bit,’ I say. ‘Take your honey.’ ‘I will,’ he says. Outside Kirra and her son are waiting and I hand him the jar of honey because sometimes it is nice to know that you can still be seen and not so sick that people forget to look at you. The boy takes the honey and his arm is thin and white and it reminds me. ‘Two spoons in the morning before your brekkie and one at night before you eat your tea.’ ‘Thank you, Samson,’ says Kirra and her son Ned is looking at the jar. His finger traces around the label with the lion and the bees. He looks at me and his eyes smile. ‘Give my best to your granddad,’ says Kirra and she takes her son’s arm and turns them both around like they are going to leave. The boy stops and turns around. ‘What’s wrong Neddy?’ He walks over to me and with his hand he asks me to bend down. ‘Is it true you can talk to them?’ says Ned and his voice his husky and warm on my face. ‘Who?’ I say and I use my cheeky voice because I know what he is asking me. ‘The bees.’

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‘It is,’ I say and he smiles and his smile is so big I think it will break free of his face and fly away like a colourful bird. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ says Kirra and she takes his arm again. ‘Can I see you do it?’ asks Ned. I nod. ‘Maybe next time.’ Kirra helps Ned into the car and together they drive back down the mountain. She waves to me and I can see Ned is holding my honey tightly in his hands.

There are the young bees now, and they are pushy and don’t know about the fire or the Queen Bee because most of the old bees died and these are the new bees. I gave them the bee hut and now the inside is dripping with honey and you can hear the humming of the new bees all over the mountain. I imagine the other Samson seeing the lion after he killed it. I imagine the lion filled with honey and moving inside with the humming bodies of bees. Filled up with new life and the skin stretching out to be filled. From the front step I take the stone I found earlier in the day to remember the first morning of winter. When I pick it up I see a leech on my hand and I pinch it away and suck the blood until it stops. Come on. Come on. Come on, the bees dance and their voices come together in a drone and the bees do not have a new Queen yet. She will take some time to come about, they dance. They fly and there is no fence anymore and nothing to keep the bush back or me in. In the story of the other Samson there is fire and there is also foxes. This is the story I used to listen to the most and hear the least, because I am a fox too. ‘Tell the one about the other Samson and the foxes,’ I say to my mum. My mum sighs, because she is usually tired when I am going to bed and asking for a story. ‘I’m sleepy too, darling.’

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I run because the young bees are quick but I don’t look in the bush anymore. I run without searching and I find without needing anything to be there. It has been a long time since the fire and almost all the signs of it are gone. The trees are smaller around the house and some of the older trees still have scars they will carry forever. But everything is alive and everything is growing. Even Lucy and I are still growing because we have found a way to be in love and still to be secret, and not to use our voices or our writing. We send each other a letter every week and there is no actual letter. It is something better. Memories. Memories in leaves and pebbles and chocolate wrappers and dental floss. ‘And’ is the pebble I pick up and keep. It is the part that is hidden. Even though Lucy is far away the pebble of ‘and’ is between us and so we send each other parts of the day and we hold them close and we love each other through them. Someday, Lucy will have so much of the mountain that it will be with her and I can find her again. ‘Please. Tell it,’ I say with my voice and it is not exactly my voice because it is caught inside my head like a fly trapped in a spider web. ‘Oh all right,’ says my mum. ‘The other Samson was angry at the Philistines because of what was happening to the people of god so he decided to teach them a lesson.’ ‘What was it?’ ‘You know what it was.’ ‘Mum,’ I say and the word mum is sharp because she isn’t telling it right. ‘Pretend.’ ‘Oh okay,’ she says. ‘Well, the other Samson caught 300 foxes. Then he took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and lit them on fire. He released the foxes into the grain fields and vineyards and olive groves that the Philistines owned. Afterwards the Philistines had no food, and nothing to eat.’ ‘Why did he do that?’ I ask, because Samson is a hero and turning the foxes into fire is not like a hero. ‘He was fighting a war,’ says my mum.

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I think about the other Samson tying the foxes together and lighting their fur and I am a fox and I am not the other Samson and I am tied to my brother and we are burning alive in the fields together and I wonder who tied us together. ‘He was just trying to set his people free,’ says my mum. ‘Samson was saving them.’ At the cave we all stop and I step up onto the ledge. The ground feels safe to me now and I am strong enough to keep it down. Inside the bees bodies are all gone and they were burned away by the fire. The wax is melted and gone and my Aunty is an ashy imprint on the stone. But she was here and she will always be here. The bees explain what they know about my Aunty and I try and remember up the rest. She asked us to cover her, Protect her. She asked. We did. Spread out over the imprint of her body are the stones of me. The mum stones, and the dad stones, and the Murray stones, and the Lucy stones and all of the Samson stones. I give them to River after her body melts away and disappears. The new bees are already starting to forget her and without the body the stories cannot last to them. Like my grandma and Bill, she will slowly disappear from them. I put the stone for the first morning of winter where her hand would have been, and I say what I always say. ‘That is for remembering.’

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“…and the little ones chewed on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o, and the little ones chewed on the bones.”

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Epilogue.

Sometimes the tiger watches the man. He watches him help the cripple up and down the stairs. He watches him wave his hands to the brown shiver of bees. He watches the man stare into the darkness every night before he goes to sleep. The door to the house is always left open. The tiger sees that too.

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Investigating the Borders Around Down syndrome in Both the Down Syndrome and Gothic Novel

Why are characters with Down syndrome built into the scaffolding of the Down Syndrome novel rather than being represented as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view? And, how might the Australian Gothic novel open up new possibilities for practitioners of modern disability fiction?

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INTRODUCTION

Folks don’t like to look at a loony. Tain’t no luck in it (Faulkner [1929] 1995, 17).

Ought we not to remind ourselves- we who believe ourselves bound to a finitude which belongs only to us, and which opens up the truth of the world to us by means of our cognition- ought we not to remind ourselves that we are bound to the back of a tiger? (Foucault 1979, 322)

This qualitative, practice-led research discusses the representational use of Down syndrome within narrative fiction, specifically within what I have defined and termed the Down Syndrome novel. The term “Down Syndrome novel” is used throughout this exegesis and refers to those works of narrative fiction that rely on the character with Down syndrome to hold the plot of the novel together. These novels cannot exist without the character or disability as it is central to the story and built into the narrative scaffolding. At first, this may suggest that the character with Down syndrome has some agency or an important role, but this is rarely the case because what is shown in these texts is that the social construct of Down syndrome is central to the story, and not the character. This exegesis focuses on novels where the plot revolves around the inclusion of Down syndrome.

A study of characters like Brenda Kay in Jewel by Brett Lott (1991), Phoebe

in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (2005), George from Foal’s

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Bread by Gillian Mears (2011), Tom Campion from Water Under Water by Peter Rix

(2011) and Benjamin Compson from William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury

([1929] 1995) reveals the character with Down syndrome as central to the story, but nonetheless limited within the narrative. Looking at the work of Michel Foucault through a lens of disability theory allows for an innovative examination into the ways in which the character with Down syndrome has been classified and restricted through the power dynamics of a parental or non-disabled narrative voice: “A Foucauldian approach to disability would hold that the government practices into which the subject is inducted and divided from others produces the illusion that they have a prediscursive, or natural, impairment” (Tremain 2005, 11). This statement highlights some of the ways in which disability has been used, and depicted, by those in power as a form of categorisation or bordering. The parental figure as narrator is a power struggle in itself and the proliferation of the mother as narrator in the Down

Syndrome novel has often survived scrutiny because it is seen as prediscursive, or natural. The reality is often that lived experiences of Down syndrome do not match these representations, but are nonetheless taken as “true” representations by the reader: “A truth that is power and a power that exhibits itself as truth” (Adorno in

Bennett and Chaloupka 1993, 17).

A first person narrative shifts those power structures that have kept certain characters silent and stories untold. The connection between narrative voice and point of view, and the subsequent consequences of including Down syndrome in the world of the narrative are investigated throughout this exegesis in order to understand how voice and point of view have been presented in previous works: “It is hard to overstate how resistant and pervasive is the cultural assumption that people with

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disabilities cannot speak for themselves” (Hirsch in Gothard 2010, 24). The gap

between how characters with Down syndrome have been used in framing the meaning of the novel and why, is the terrain of change central to this practice-led research.

The second chapter of this exegesis discusses the Australian Gothic novel and arguments surrounding the Australian landscape, particularly the bush. By positioning the Australian landscape as disabled this chapter uncovers how the character with

Down syndrome has been colonised by narrative voice and social expectation. This

exegesis further suggests that the Gothic genre provides spaces, both physical and

metaphorical, where characters with Down syndrome can be active agents telling their

own stories. Like the early Australian writers moving from colonial to Gothic, the

Gothic often provides narrative freedoms, uncommon in other genres of fiction, that

work against predetermined social power structures. I suggest that because of this

resistance, the Gothic novel creates a space where intellectual difference can move

beyond the common boundaries found within the Down Syndrome novel. The Gothic

landscape also has the capacity to dismantle boundaries and produce the possibility

for narrative change: “Postcolonial authors adopt Gothic formal qualities in their work

to question binaries and destabilise dominant ideological assumptions” (O’Reilly

2010, 207). A Foucauldian approach to this narrative world suggests that the Gothic

genre’s capacity for destabilising dominant ideological assumptions in relation to

natural identity and worth is, in itself, an act of inclusion: “The most effective

exercise of power, according to Foucault, consists in guiding the possibilities of

conduct… limits of possible conduct, allows the discursive information in which they

circulate to be naturalised and legitimised” (Tremain 2005, 9). However, this is not

always the case, because irrespective of the representation of the character with Down

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syndrome some narrative environments destabilise ideologies while others support

them. This research argues that Australia’s “weird melancholy”, specifically the

Gothic weird melancholy, shares a similar place with intellectual disability. Australia

is “Other” because many novels by Australian and non-Australian authors represent

the Gothic bush, in particular, as weird, different, and perhaps even disabled. Because

of this depiction, I argue that the Gothic provides more freedoms and possibilities, particularly for the character with Down syndrome, than the Down Syndrome novel.

As stated earlier, my novel Sing Fox to Me is discussed throughout this

exegesis as a primary text. It is an Australian Gothic text which includes a character

with Down syndrome. In beginning to incorporate intellectual disability into my own

practice I use the above modes of literary interrogation as a vehicle to move my

research beyond its foundation in pure analysis and into applied outcomes intended

for use in Sing Fox to Me. My novel releases several boundaries, common in the

Down Syndrome novel, by moving the narrative away from parental trauma,

discussed later in this thesis, and towards inclusion using language and narration.

Samson Fox has the freedom to become an active participant in his own story and

therefore avoids being solely defined, and restricted, by his disability.

In the following chapter I will discuss select narratives including characters

with Down syndrome, using both primary and secondary texts in order to negotiate

the canon of fiction writing about disability. This thesis will not attempt to create an

index of work regarding intellectual disability, nor to advocate for those issues

discussed within works including characters with Down syndrome. Rather, it will

attempt to provide an analysis of those texts which contain, or attempt to navigate

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fully situate this research within the current gap of writing about, and novels using,

the intellectually disabled narrator, a variety of texts must be addressed. This thesis is

primarily concerned with novels, but will also discuss plays, poetry and film as they

relate to the research question. However, secondary texts will also include music

videos, artworks, films and film adaptions, radio plays, and television programs.

These forms will be references as evidence to support my claim that the character with Down syndrome often exists outside their own interior landscape and seldom has their own autonomous voice and point of view.

In discussing these texts I seek to illuminate the current gap in fiction writing about Down syndrome thereby discovering new possibilities for myself as a practitioner within the Gothic mode. Possibilities for modern writers are exposed throughout this research, tested in the writing of my novel, and further contextualised in this exegesis. Looking at the Looney presents characters with Down syndrome as highly contained, or “boundaried”, spoken for, and generally used for narrative conflict, rather than included as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view. The Gothic novel, however, provides the space for a character with differences to have their voice heard.

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CHAPTER ONE –

Taking Down the Fence: Down syndrome as Boundary.

So the idiot was born and then I became interested in the relationship of the idiot to the world that he was in but would never be able to cope with (Faulkner 1980, 22).

If you have Down’s syndrome, you probably have very little power of any kind. (Haddon in Rampton, 2007).

A character with Down syndrome is rarely given comparable purchase in the world to a character without an intellectual disability. Stories built around characters with

Down syndrome generally present as an unexpected, and generally unwanted, child in the parental narrative, the forced friendship/sibling relationship, or a persistent threat.

These narratives rely on archetypes of Down syndrome to form the spine of the narrative and these archetypes almost always exist somewhere on the polarised spectrum between monstrous and angelic. These binaries are formed, often, from the amorphous and often undefined fear surrounding the character with Down syndrome.

The inclusion of these blunt binaries is often used as a catalyst for narrative action

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and, by extension, to reach some social extremity. This way of using intellectual disability is not uncommon.

The discipline of disability studies is often traced back to the 1970s when the focus on literary texts was closely aligned with the political aims of the disability rights movement. In this period, notions of the effect of literary representations of disability were polarised; literature was viewed either as a source of liberation or as directly colluding with structures of oppression by using disability as ‘a deterministic vehicle of characterisation’ (Hall 2012, 7).

The Down Syndrome novel almost universally presents the character with Down syndrome as a problem within the narrative that the narrator must learn to overcome.

This movement towards acceptance is the character arch, narrative problem and eventually, the plot. In creating, and thus remaining, within these character definitions the author builds clear and impenetrable boundaries around the disabled character, and the novel including a character with Down syndrome becomes a novel almost exclusively about Down syndrome. In seeking to become a dynamic force in social change, the Down Syndrome novel often traps its hero beneath an avalanche of narrative expectation.

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1.1 – What is the Down Syndrome novel?

In the Down Syndrome novel the character with Down syndrome is built into the narrative scaffolding and therefore cannot navigate the action beneath it: they cannot move within it. The inclusion of a character with Down syndrome within the narrative always has the same result. When a character with Down syndrome arrives in the novel (often at birth) the narrative must halt in order to inspect them, generally to diagnose their intellectual disability, then to discuss the difficulties that have arisen from their inclusion, and finally to overcome their presence within the fictional world.

This extended character focus means the narrative becomes about Down syndrome and the fear that comes socially packaged with intellectual disability. They are a catalyst for the action and is therefore responsible for the story. It cannot exist without them. Irrespective of the themes of the novel, the premise of the novel including

Down syndrome will always revolve around acceptance. Despite this theme of acceptance, the Down Syndrome novel will generally have a didactic ending (often invalidating the theme of acceptance) where the character with Down syndrome is either institutionalised, infantilised, or killed. In this thesis I refer to these character destinations as: care, eternal child or death.

Examples of these didactic endings can be found in both the Down Syndrome novel and novels where Down syndrome and undiagnosed intellectual disability are included. In Bret Lott’s Jewel (1991), Brenda-Kay stays living with her mother mindlessly watching the trains hurtle past her house. Despite a somewhat ambiguous ending in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (2005), Phoebe remains living with her

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adoptive parents. In Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher (2001) Duddits would have been left with his mother, but dies instead from Leukaemia. Uncle Punky from The Man

Who Loved Clowns and Tom from Water Under Water by Peter Rix both die at the end of their narratives, although Tom dies a hero saving his friend from a snakebite.

In Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet ([1991] 2007) Fish (who is intellectually disabled, but does not have Down syndrome) must reunite himself with the man in the river by drowning himself. The death ending in the Down Syndrome novel is often difficult to unpack because the death ending, in particular, has several layers to its meaning. The first is often purely mechanical; the most beloved or vulnerable character is generally the most poignant to kill off. The character with Down syndrome are, particularly when female, represented as angelic in their vulnerability, thus making them generally universally sympathised with by the reader. The reader responds to this death but, when this vulnerable death is a character with Down syndrome, it also makes the reader feel safe because the character with Down syndrome remains a contained character. They are trapped by the care, eternal child or death ending and remain within the confines of the novel. The world within the novel does not need to understand how to include a character, like Tom in Water Under Water, past his teenage years: “If Tom could tell us about that day, Jim said finally, looking to the notes again, he would say, Take my advice, Mum… and Dad… I’m nineteen going on twenty. I can do anything” (Rix 2011, 253). But, of course, Tom cannot do anything because at the precipice of his teens, “nineteen going on twenty”, he drowns in a flood saving his friend Amit. Often the care, death or eternal child endings seem natural, even preordained, because the character with Down syndrome is often already locked into one of these ways of being viewed.

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There are some exceptions to the care, eternal child or death ending, such as

Boss of the Pool by Robin Klein (1986) where the conclusion of the novel moves Ben

from student to teacher, or “Boss”, or Mark Haddon’s radio play Coming Down the

Mountain (2007) where David learns not just to accept his brother Ben but also love

and appreciate him after pushing him off a mountain. Of Coming Down the Mountain

Haddon said he intended the film to be a truthful portrait of a multifaceted family, and

he says he hoped to portray Ben as more than just a character with Down Syndrome:

“Making Ben’s character realistic was just like making any other character realistic:

does it feel real? Does it feel like a human being?” (Haddon in Rampton 2007). This

suggests that there are ways for the author to disengage with restrictive depictions of

Down syndrome within the traditional Down Syndrome novel but the fear of releasing

the character with Down syndrome often appears to be both too difficult, and too

complex, for the Down Syndrome novel to manage. This is the space where my novel

contributes and also why I have avoided the care, eternal child or death ending. These

endings are common because, as the character grows, the boundary of the novel

becomes too restrictive. They often pull against this boundary as Phoebe does in The

Memory Keeper’s Daughter or Tom in Water Under Water, but the boundary is

inflexible and does not grow with them or stretch when pushed against. Within the

Down Syndrome novel the character with Down syndrome is not real; they are a

device used to reach narrative extremity. This is not uncommon in fiction writing

where intellectual or physical disability is included.

The disabled character is often used to illustrate and embody a theme that

exists outside their interior world. In her paper Depictions of Intellectual Disability in

Fiction (2007) Anupama Iyer, consultant psychiatrist in adolescent developmental

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disabilities for St Andrew’s Healthcare, discussed this connection. She wrote: “A

character with an intellectual disability [is] a silent Rorschach ink blot onto which

society projects its devices and desires” (Iyer 2007, 2). In an interview regarding his

particular interest in intellectual disability Mark Haddon supported this statement

when he said: “For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of

very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people” (Haddon in

Rampton, 2007). Here Haddon identifies that disability is the key he uses to create

conflict. However this connection between disability and broader social issues should

not be considered a negative one. In Aesthetic Nervousness author Ato Quayson

discusses Snyder and Mitchell’s Narrative Prosthesis and discusses this idea of broader social uses for disability: “The ultimate test of the salience of a disability representation is the various social and cultural contexts within which they might be thought to have a broader effect” (Quayson 2007, 25).

At the heart of my research is a discussion of why characters with Down syndrome are seldom used as the narrative voice. While this research focuses on literary fictional depictions, it is important to mention again that representation of characters with Down syndrome, particularly in television as discussed earlier with

Glee, are slowly beginning to change. In her book, Gothard cites several television programs featuring positive depictions of characters with Down syndrome: “People with disabilities such as Down syndrome are starting to become more visible as pleasant, even popular incidental characters in mainstream productions” (Gothard

2010, 30). Despite appearing more and more in television, incidental characters with

Down syndrome are largely yet to appear in narrative fiction but, representing characters with Down syndrome as incidental to the plot will not be discussed in this

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exegesis. The focus for this research reaches beyond “incidental” to narrator and active agent.

Often in novels including Down syndrome the character with Down syndrome is the only disabled character. There are occasionally novels like Water Under Water by Peter Rix where the character, in this case Tom Campion, has friends and peers who are also disabled and therefore also included in the novel. But it is rare for a novel to bring together characters with disabilities as an author might bring together characters of differing ethnicities or ages. In my novel Sing Fox to Me there are no

characters without some kind of damage but the three narrative voices all have an

intellectual disability; Samson has Down syndrome, Clancy is suffering from dementia, and Jonah has significant issues to do with social development. My reason

for including multiple disabilities across all three voices was to move narrative focus

from Down syndrome specifically: “Difference - diverging physical states and characters - paradoxically becomes the point of similarity” (Hall 2011, 8). The hierarchy of characters, those with and without disabilities, can only stretch the inclusivity of the narrative once all characters within are experiencing something similar in relation to the themes: in the case of my novel, these themes are disability and voice. Built into the mechanics of Samson’s voice are stylistic choices connected to freedom beyond form, such as flexible tense, choices in language that move beyond traditional narrative voice, no boundaries between the real and imaginary, past and present, and an active traversing of physical boundaries such as fences and property borders. These choices have been made to support the character with Down syndrome’s movement beyond safe or restricted spaces. This is often to protect the

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character from the scrutiny of the reader, but also protects the reader from having

their worldview destabilised by the character with Down syndrome.

In discovering and analysing Down syndrome within narrative fiction it

becomes important to discuss why fear is a central theme within virtually all writing

where Down syndrome is included. Fear is an ongoing concern in novels including

Down syndrome particularly in relation to the point-of-view, level of participation,

and voice of the parent. If the character with Down syndrome is not required to play an active role in the arch of the narrative (this can often mean they are less visible within the text, perhaps even peripheral to the story) they are generally let free to move within the novel and may often be able to unsettle stereotypes about Down syndrome. As mentioned earlier, stereotypes relating to Down syndrome are rapidly changing, due in most part to people with Down syndrome becoming active agents in integrating themselves further into society. However, narratives including characters with Down syndrome still largely rely on fear as a driving motivator for the narrator as is shown in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards.

In The Memory Keeper’s Daughter Phoebe is delivered by her father (a

Doctor) who immediately identifies that she has Down syndrome, and is horrified by the child’s imperfections. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the child to a local institution. This is not uncommon in both lived experiences with Down syndrome and stories about Down syndrome: “In not so distant days, the diagnosis of Down syndrome was so awful that parents were told to abandon all hope for a normal life with or for the child and to pass their Mongol [sic] baby straight into the hands of an institution” (Gothard 2010, 31).

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In The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Caroline does take Phoebe, but after

seeing the disturbing facilities and monstrous patients she decides to keep the baby.

This is the most important moment in the Down Syndrome novel for two reasons.

Firstly because it is the moment when the baby is kept, but also because it is the

turning point in the novel when both archetypes come together. In Jewel, this moment

comes when Brenda Kay is referred to as a mongoloid by the doctor and later Jewel

holds her daughter saying no one with ever call Brenda Kay that word again: “Don’t

you say those words in front of me,” I said. I’d stopped the rocker without knowing I

had, felt myself holding Brenda Kay even tighter to me. I whispered, “Don’t you dare” (Lott 1991, 109). The monstrous word is imposed over the angelic child and the narrative grinds to a halt. Jewel must choose a binary in order for the narrative arch to emerge. If she chooses monster she becomes a “failed” mother like Noah Nancarrow in Foal’s Bread, but Jewel ultimately chooses angel and joins mothers like Caroline in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. In her novel, Kim Edwards also creates a literal

turning point where the crude polarisations of Down syndrome come together as

Caroline chooses to surrender Phoebe or become her mother. Caroline describes the

institution and the people living there:

The air was thick with cleaning fluid, steamed vegetables, and the faint yellow scent of urine… she passed several doors, glimpsing moments of people’s lives, the images suspended like photographs: a man staring out a window, his face cast in shadows, his age indeterminate (Edwards 2005, 30).

After being appalled at the conditions and monstrous patients in the institution (who

she views from the outside) Caroline has a very different reaction to the baby girl she

is about to institutionalise. But she does not necessarily keep the child because of who

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Phoebe is. Phoebe isn’t anyone yet; she is just a baby. Caroline doesn’t keep Phoebe the child: she keeps an imperfect female rejected from Dr Henry’s life, just like she has been. In so doing, she “saves” Phoebe from becoming like the woman with Down syndrome having her head casually shorn by the nurses in the institution: “This is why she had come to love him, for his goodness. Yet he had sent her to this place with his infant daughter, this place where a woman had sat on the edge of a bed her hair drifting into soft piles on the harsh cold light floor” (Edwards 2005, 30). Here The

Memory Keeper’s Daughter articulates how the child and adult with Down syndrome often function within the Down Syndrome novel. The monstrous adults living in the institution are clearly juxtaposed to the angelic baby. However, the baby also represents the narrative transition from novel to Down Syndrome novel. In becoming

Phoebe’s mother the view of Down syndrome, specific to Phoebe, changes and therefore also changes within the story. It moves from the fear exhibited by the baby’s biological father Dr David Henry to the love and focus of her adoptive mother.

Caroline is all that stands between Phoebe and her becoming one of the monstrous inmates of the institution. This fear of how a child will grow and what they will eventually become is built beneath the foundation of all fiction writing about Down syndrome and this fear limits the movements and agency of the character.

In Sing Fox to Me I respond to this fear on multiple occasions, often shifting the fear of being strange purposely from Samson to Jonah, or from Samson to Clancy.

An example of this fear can be found in several memories belonging to Clancy. The first is when he recalls travelling to the hospital to see his infant grandsons:

It took a few minutes to find his grandsons. He saw Jonah first because his pod was hooked up to a machine helping him breathe. Jonah’s skin was marbled blue and grey. His mouth was open like he was trying to scream 354

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but there was no sound. Clancy tapped the glass gently and started another baby crying. He pressed his hands against the glass between them and tried to steady himself. Samson was in a crib next to his brother. He was a large, ruddy baby with blue eyes. But there was something not right about him either. His eyes were glassy, and pulled taut at the sides. His face was too fat and round. He looked like a blonde piglet (Kanake 2013, 75).

This section reads like a very typical first sighting of the “stigmata” of Down

syndrome within the Down Syndrome novel. However, immediately after this typical

viewing of the babies, Jack makes a bold connection between himself and Clancy.

[Jack] “was looking at the babies almost like he was wishing he could throw himself

into one and be reborn again” (Kanake 2013, 76). This section of Sing Fox to Me

engages with ideas surrounding infancy and disability, and the common type of

introduction of Down syndrome found within the Down Syndrome novel. When Jack

says, “What do you reckon Dad thought of us?” (Kanake 2013, 76) while looking at

the newborn twins, he is suggesting that all infants are terrifyingly unknowable. They

all need protecting and this is where the Down Syndrome novel often becomes insidious because when the character with Down syndrome is introduced as an infant,

they often remain that way. Alternatively, if a character is damaged in youth, such as

(Fish Lamb in Cloudstreet) or born with an intellectual disability, there is often a

thought (though not always necessarily expressed) that the child should die in order to

resettle the status quo. In Cloudstreet this is connected to Fish being out of place and

reminding his family of how he came to be that way: “It’s like Fish is stuck

somewhere. Not the way all the living are stuck in time and space: he’s in another

stuckness all together. Like he’s half in and half out” (Winton 2007, 69). Fish Lamb

lives in confusion and pain until he throws himself back into the river and rejoins The

Man in the River; his non-intellectually disabled adult self. In Sing Fox to Me, when

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Jack looks at the twins like he wishes he could be reborn into either disabled body, I am making a narrative declaration (discussed later in this exegesis) about the often silent undercurrent that because a person with Down syndrome is “wrong”, they are represented as being better off dead or disappearing. Unlike Fish Lamb, Jack would rather be living in a disabled body than trapped in death.

Few authors expand the narrative beyond this initial physical boundary, needed at first to contain the character and their disability, to envelope the entire world of the narrative. Just as a dividing line marks a boundary, the boundaried space within the novel including a character with Down syndrome creates a line of divide around both the expectations and limits of the character. There are several reasons for the coupling of Down syndrome and boundary in narrative fiction. One is certainly the almost universal lack of first person voices of the character with Down syndrome within the Down Syndrome novel. The second can be found in the construction of the first person voice of a character with Down syndrome and, by extension, the story devices around this inclusion. The perceived distance between the lived experience of the disabled and the lived experience of the non-disabled is still so great that it provides an almost insuperable barrier between partitioner and character:

It should be the story-teller’s first care to choose his reflecting mind deliberately, as one would choose a building site… and when this is done, to live inside the mind chosen, trying to feel, see and react exactly as the later would… Only this can the writer avoid attributing incongruities of thought and metaphor to his chosen interpreter (Wharton cited in Friedman 1955, 1166).

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One of the few modern novels to include a first person voice of a character with

diagnosed and identified Down syndrome is Australian novel Water Under Water by

Peter Rix.

Water Under Water is told through two primary narrative voices: those of

Tom Campion, a nineteen-year-old man with Down syndrome, and his father Jim who struggles throughout Tom’s life to connect to his son because of his intellectual

disability. While Rix has lived experiences with Down syndrome and a foreword in

his novel identifying this, Rix does not apologise for his experiences nor does he

assert a universal intellectually disabled “them.” He identifies and thanks specific

people with disabilities and an identified group of his daughter’s peers. His author bio

with Random House reads: “Peter lives in Sydney's inner west with his photographer

wife, Jenny, and their adult daughter with Down Syndrome. Water Under Water was

inspired by his daughter and her friends with intellectual disabilities, their love of life,

their humour and courage” (Rix 2011). In his dedication he acknowledges the real

Amit and several of his daughter’s friends. Rix also, in many ways, acknowledges the

literary influences and canon surrounding this novel. The name Ben Campion

conjures a thread to Benjamin Compson, and the drowning of Tom has strong

similarities with the drowning of Fish Lamb in Cloudstreet, but is also very different.

Tom’s voice in Water Under Water is mature, insightful and sharp. He voice reads

like any teenage voice; this is what also makes his voice problematic. What is an

intellectually disabled voice, and what should it sound/read like? In Greater

Expectations, Gothard unknowingly begins to answer these questions when

discussing the subject of recording lived stories of people with Down syndrome.

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Instead of taking the informant’s words directly, as one would usually do after an interview, as a researcher I have tried to take the meaning gleaned from each ‘yes,’ ‘no’ or silence, in conjunction with material from other sources such as parent interviews to create an indirect but meaningful narrative about individual lives… The alternative, for less articulate people with intellectual disabilities, may well be silence (Gothard 2010, 25).

Tom Campion’s voice in Water Under Water presents an interesting difficulty when placed alongside the voice of Benjamin Compson in The Sound and the Fury. In the foreward of the 2013 Vintage edition of The Sound and the Fury Richard Hughes identifies how Benjamin Compson’s narrative voice works.

The first sixty pages are told by a congenital imbecile, a man of thirty- three whose development has not advanced beyond babyhood. Benjy has no sense of time: his only thought-process is associative… the whole of his thirty-three years are present to him in one uninterrupted and streamless flood. This enables the author to begin by giving a general and confused picture of his whole subject. He [Faulkner] offers a certain amount of help to the understanding… but even then I deft an ordinary reader to disentangle the people and events… but the beauty is this: there is no need to disentangle anything. If one ceases to make the effort, one soon finds that this strange rigmarole holds one’s attention on it’s own merits. Vague forms of people and events, apparently unrelated, loom out of the fog and disappear again. One is seeing the world through the eyes of an idiot: but so clever is Mr Faulkner that, for the time being at least, one is content to do so (Hughes in Faulkner 2013, 7). Benjamin’s voice is virtually incomprehensible; disjointed, emotionally overwrought, and at times nonsensical. This is how the reader knows he is intellectually disabled.

Tom Campion reads like any young man. He says what he means and expresses himself clearly. Tom is articulate and in such a small cannon of literature, this can prove problematic:

One of the dilemmas I faced in undertaking this research project was balancing my desire to interview the most articulate people with Down syndrome I could find, with the recognition that other people’s stories, less clearly verbalised and sometimes harder to render meaningful for an audience, were just as valid and perhaps more ‘typical’ (Gothard 2020, 25). 358

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In discovering and defining how Samson Fox would sound in Sing Fox to Me I made an attempt to sit my voice somewhere between the often nonsensical but nonetheless poetic Benjamin Compson, and the individualised and articulate Tom Campion. The result was something closer to poetry with stark, and often sweeping statements about

Samson’s experiences both past and present. I wanted Samson to communicate with the reader, but I did not necessarily want him to speak the same language as the reader. Like Faulkner, I wanted my reader to be forced to see the world through the eyes of intellectual disability, but did not want Samson to become a Gothic “idiot.” I wanted the reader to be forced to speak, or in this case ‘see’, Samson’s language and not for Samson to be trapped by the reader’s expectations of how his language should function: “It becomes more evident that subjects are produced who “have” impairments because this identity meets certain requirements of contemporary social and political arrangements” (Tremain 2005, 10) In finding ways to include Samson’s experimental voice, and in order for him to have someone to communicate with, I created a colony of native Australian bees, discussed later in this exegesis. The bees give Samson a sense of place, they share information with him and, by the end of the novel, contribute to him forming a business selling jars of healing honey: Lion Honey.

Speaking to the bees is a not a gift from god or representative of Samson’s “natural” connection to the bush but a connection between the freedoms of the Gothic novel and the voicelessness found in the Down Syndrome novel. Samson is only capable of communicating with them because of the sign language he learnt in Special School.

Without his experiences in Special School he would not know how to sign and he would not be able to communicate with the bees. This relationship helps Samson find his place without having to change who he is or how he speaks. 359

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Whatever the outcome, these experiments with voice and point of view are

crucial, particularly within regards to the broader social issues (touched on briefly earlier) effecting inclusion. On the subject of dissatisfying and inaccurate cultural representations of Down syndrome Gothard writes: “The continuing currency of these sorts of images and this type of extraordinary misinformation makes a family’s immediate response to the news that their child has Down syndrome and an intellectual disability at best ambivalent” (Gothard 2010, 31). The novel is often a powerful tool in social change and historically, diversity in fiction writing participates in, and sometimes even creates, a dialogue for changes in viewpoint. The Down

Syndrome novel is aware of this social element as is evidenced by the presence of the discussion questions for book clubs and social groups.

Much of the reader feedback from the online book clubs that read The Memory

Keeper’s Daughter relates to representation and social exposure to Down syndrome.

In fact, many Down Syndrome novels include focus questions or discussion points

after the conclusion of the story. In The Memory Keeper’s Daughter these questions

for discussion were included specifically for use in book clubs and have questions

like, “Do you understand David’s motivations” and, Phoebe’s “story calls into

question how we determine what kind of life is worth living. How would you define

such a life?” (Edwards 2005, 11). Some of the discussion points included in Water

Under Water are, “A central issue in the story is what makes us different and what

makes us the same. Did you feel the characters of Jim and Tom help to develop this

idea?” and later, “Social policy today is to ‘normalise’ the relationships between

people with intellectual disabilities and others in the community. Tom and his friends

enjoyed each other’s company, and were perhaps more content within their own

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environment. Is it possible that current policies are a form of social engineering that

might not, in fact, be ideal for the very people they are designed to benefit? (Rix

2011, 259).

Down Syndrome novels like Water Under Water and The Memory Keeper’s

Daughter include these focus questions because they are often pitched towards Book clubs but also because the assumption is made that stories like these will probe discussion and disagreement. They are created and published with a social dialogue in

mind. As a Gothic novel, Sing Fox to Me is no less focused on prompting social

discourse, but only the Down Syndrome novel promotes the “issues” within the story

by including these questions. All fiction allows for foreign experience to be

demystified using the tool of character point of view, particularly first person, and in

many ways fiction has the ability to push social limits. However, the experience of

having Down syndrome is not normalised by including questions, or prompts about

the “issues” within the novel. If anything, it reinforces that there is something

“abnormal” to discuss beyond the limits of the novel. However, what these novels

often do is to prompt the reader, while keeping them “safe”, to connect the boundary

around the character with Down syndrome with the boundary around their own

experience. While this boundary is largely metaphorical, it does sometimes manifest

physically as in The Sound and the Fury with the property fence.

An example of the physical boundary can be found in William Faulkner’s The

Sound and The Fury ([1929] 1995) where the fence, almost a character itself, is used

to keep Benjamin Compson contained, apart from the world, and therefore “safe.”

Safe for Benjamin, certainly, but also safe for the reader because these boundaries

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world. The boundary marks the limits of the character’s movement and these boundaries are not limited to the fence. In The Sound and The Fury Benjamin articulates this interplay between the physical and metaphoric boundary. He says,

“The windows went black, and the dark tall place on the wall came and I went and touched it. It was like a door, only it wasn’t a door” (Faulkner [1929] 1995, 58). The mirror on the wall represents the layers of Benjamin’s imprisonment. He searches for a door when the sky outside the window darkens but instead of a door he finds a mirror, which reflects his prison back at him. It re-establishes his boundary. There are no doors and there is no escape. Earlier in the work, Luster says Benjamin belongs in a stronger prison, a prison beyond the domestic space. He says, “You know what they going to do to you when Miss Cahline die. They going to send you to Jackson, where you belong. Mr. Jason say so. Where you can hold the bars all day long with the rest of the looneys and slobber” (Faulkner [1929] 1995, 52). Although Faulkner’s work was published in 1929 these ideas of boundaries are still occurring. A similar boundary can be found in the form of the fence and train tracks in Bret Lott’s Jewel.

This boundary manifests as a physical boundary through the demarcation of place, such as a fence or domestic space, and this physical boundary becomes the unacknowledged or metaphorical boundary within the narrative itself. In Reading

Post Colonial Australia Bill Ashcroft discusses the physical boundary in relation to the binaries of ownership or imprisonment: “Do [fences] enclose and domesticate, confirm ownership? Or do they imprison?” (Ashcroft in O’Reilly 2010, 35). In The

Sound and the Fury Benjamin is kept separate from the world and the fear, throughout his chapter, of what might happen if he goes beyond the fence is all pervading.

Benjamin is innocuous and baby-like within the domestic space (but he is also

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infantilised by his family, particularly Caddy and his mother) and it is only when he

moves beyond the border that he becomes a danger. He lumbers to the fence and

touches a girl beyond who reminds him of his sister Caddy. “I opened the gate and

they stopped, turning. I was trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say, and she

screamed and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes began to stop and I

tried to get out” (Faulkner [1929] 1995, 51). In Sing Fox to Me I answer, at least in

part, some of these questions about the fence and imprisonment in relation to the

character with Down syndrome.

In the first section of Sing Fox to Me, I shift Samson Fox from suburb to

Gothic bush in order to dismantle normative boundaries around him. This purposeful

movement from suburb to Gothic bush inverts the traditional normality of these

landscapes; the suburb is made unusual and the Gothic bush is normalised. Part of this

normalising can be found in the symbol of the fence, however, in the bush the

boundaries, specifically property boundaries and fences common in both Down

Syndrome novels and colonial writing, are dissolved by Samson and Jonah almost

immediately and the physical fence is finally destroyed by Clancy. Samson recalls

fences and boundaries in earlier chapters but they are always shown as sitting between him and his brother, not between him and the outside world. The first is of these boundaries is the partition in the twin’s joint room, which locks Jonah out of

Samson’s life rather than the other way around: “Jonah could hear Samson and Lucy clapping and clicking their mouths through the partition… Jonah heard Samson laugh” (Kanake 2013, 26). Another boundary appears when Samson remembers meeting his brother at the fence between the mainstream and Special schools: “Jonah shouts over the fence between regular school and special school. I cannot hear him

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and I walk closer and closer until we are facing each other and the fence melts like water” (Kanake 2013, 113). Fences are irrelevant to Samson because he rarely accepts that they are there. This is seen later in the novel when Clancy sees Samson, and remarks on his relationship with the fence:

Samson nodded and walked outside holding the pan carefully. Clancy thought of River. She held a bird’s nest like that once. Samson almost dropped the pan twice and went nowhere near the fence like he didn’t know it was there (Kanake 2013, 91).

And again later:

Clancy looked down the length of the fence. There were dozens of piles of rocks and stones dotted around the edge of the lawn. Not following the fence but almost in spite of it. The rocks were too large to be from the driveway. Each pile looked fragile, as if it could topple at any minute and break apart forever (Kanake 2013, 126).

Unlike Jonah, who at first craves acceptance into the double fenced horse training paddocks, Samson never acknowledges the fence on the mountain. He is not trapped as Benjamin Compson was once trapped because whatever predator is out in the bush is far more terrifying and capable of violence than Samson. By his comparison to the bush and creatures living there, Samson is safe. His comparison to Clancy’s dwindling grip over reality makes Samson that much more sane. And in his juxtaposition to Jonah, Samson becomes that much more likable. Fences do not trap or protect Samson on Clancy’s mountain. They are recognised as human made structures that can be crossed, dissolved or destroyed. Just like seeing the fences as human made, penetrable structures, disability can also be “normalised” by how it is shown and what is revealed about it.

Down syndrome can be “normalised” by showing it within relation to other disabilities. This is not necessarily a new idea and, in fact, is a particularly

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heartwarming element in the narrative construction of Grace Williams Says it Loud.

But creating a world within the narrative where everyone has an identifiable disability outside the institution, care facility, hospital or Special School, is very new within writing about Down syndrome. My second reason was to better understand the function of disability with relation to building a character with intellectual difference.

Not all characters with disabilities know or accept that they are disabled. Some actively resist their disability, like Clancy, while others embrace it, like Samson’s girlfriend Lucy. Samson accepts his intellectual disability because it is normalised through his schooling and socialising. He and Lucy are the same, not because they both have Down syndrome, but because they both accept their disability while actively resisting their “limitations.” The language passed between them through sign, largely ignored by everyone else, is complex and tender and often very emotionally advanced. Lucy and Samson are not complicit in the boundary; instead they find secret ways to live within and stretch the expectations of their lives, sending letters

with no words back and forth between them, because Lucy’s mother won’t know

what they mean or why they are important. There are occasions in Sing Fox to Me

when the boundary, or lack of boundary, between Jonah and Samson could be read as

a boundary between “normal” and “different”, and occasions when Jonah even seems

to be in charge of this boundary:

My brother closes his door and it is not like the partition at home. I press my ear to the wood but I cannot hear him and I cannot move the wall and I cannot look behind or take it down. I am not crying because I do not make any noise, but water spills from my eyes anyway. I catch it in my hands and hide it in my pockets (Kanake 2013, 82).

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also. This connection becomes clear in The Sound and the Fury, when Benjamin is punished with castration for penetrating the fence. In Sing Fox to Me, Jonah is trapped through his physical proximity and relationship to Samson as his twin brother. This proximity makes him capable of calling his brother a “retard” (Kanake 2013, 113) and occasionally resisting his brother’s inclusion into the world, not because Samson is disabled but because he is his brother. Samson’s mother and father are not allowed the same liberties because of their roles as parents, and nor was their sister Sylvia who will be discussed later in this chapter. Jonah could help create a less didactic view of

Down syndrome because brothers are allowed to hate and resist their siblings, in a way that parents cannot, and remain likable to the reader. This is seen in Haddon’s

Coming Down the Mountain when David articulates how his brother is “wrong”:

“Sometimes they change the recipe and you get a brother who is a big potato with eye tentacles. And then you might as well talk to the dog – if you have one” (Haddon

2007). In allowing Jonah to include himself in the narrative Samson was normalised, like Ben after he gets pushed off the mountain in Coming Down the Mountain, through Jonah’s lack of fear towards him. This poses a stark contrast to someone like

Brenda Kay in Jewel whose siblings continue to infantilise her, even into adulthood.

Brenda Kay can watch the trains moving past her filled with people living their lives but she is rarely allowed (by her mother) to leave herself. The fence and train track assert metaphorical ownership over the character with Down syndrome, making the owner the parental/familial caregiver; in other words, the closest

“rational” or intellectually sound character. In Reading Post Colonial Australia Bill

Ashcroft discusses the boundaries required between binaries to achieve “rational” thinking: “It is by creating the boundary between inside and outside, self and other,

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rational and irrational than “rational” knowing can be accomplished” (Ashcroft in

O’Reilly 2010, 19).

Like Benjamin and Brenda Kay most characters with Down syndrome cannot extend beyond the physical boundary because it exists to make the reader feel safe; safe from the complexities of the character with Down syndrome, but also safe from

Down syndrome itself. The character with Down syndrome struggles for the author to accept his/her version of events because, with the fence in place, Benjamin cannot reach out and pull himself into the world and while Brenda Kay is watching the train tracks the reader need not worry that she will be on their train. Therefore, in erecting these boundaries the author effectively extends the limits of them around the entire story, trapping the character with Down syndrome and forcing them back into the narrative scaffolding. The story has little choice but to revolve around the character’s inclusion thus making the novel about and dependent on intellectual disability. The character with Down syndrome has all the responsibility of carrying the story but none of the agency.

In Sing Fox to Me I engage with these binaries as a narrative structural device

– Clancy is both himself and his brother Jack, the twins are “two halves” (Kanake

2013, 34), and the tiger skin is both alive and dead at the same time – but do not build these juxtapositions into the spine of plot. The narrative could exist without them.

Additionally, “inside” becomes a highly contested space in Sing Fox to Me where the boys often feel trapped. This is further shown in the choice of Australian animals in

Sing Fox to Me and their meaning in relation to disability. The symbols of freedom and difference (the tiger, fox and kookaburra) cannot cross the threshold. Even the bees must sneak in and out, one or two at a time, and bring Samson outside in order to 367

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communicate with him. But “outside”, the mountain welcomes the twins: Samson

discovers a place where his language can be “heard” and accepted, and therefore

moves beyond the boundaries of expectation. The representation of Samson’s body

also shifts these expectations. Samson is neither angelic nor monstrous in his

appearance because he has elements of both. He is large, tall and physically imposing,

but also has long blonde “Samson” hair and blue eyes. Even though Samson’s body

carried the “stigmata” of his disability, he is also manly and attractive and this

stretches the expectations of how a character or person with Down syndrome should

look:

There is an idea that all people with Down syndrome look alike, but this generally stems from stereotypical characteristics such as clothing, as much as chromosomes. The image, often associated with institutions, of shuffling people with Down syndrome with pudding-basin haircuts and worn-out ill-fitting clothes was one that stuck (Gothard 2010, 58).

1.2 - Revealing Down syndrome

Where Down syndrome becomes dissimilar to many other intellectual disabilities is in

its visibility. It is clear that a person has Down syndrome because of the “stigmata” of

the disability. This visibility is often connected to the polarisation of the character within the story because the character with Down syndrome is never given the chance to introduce their own difference with any sense of ownership or place. How the

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author handles the immediacy of recognition defines what kind of story it will be.

Will the character be born, and therefore have their Down syndrome revealed quickly

and traumatically like Phoebe in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, gently as the angelic Brenda-Kay of Bret Lott’s Jewel, or will they lumber out of nowhere like the

monstrous Benjamin Compson in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury? In

splitting the point-of-view in her novel Edwards addresses three traumas, the trauma

of giving away your child, the trauma of losing your child, and the trauma of keeping

a child with Down syndrome. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter gives “readers the

opportunity to ponder the question ‘what if.; This ‘what if’ is further clarified in

Trauma Narratives and Herstory,as Andermahr and Pellicer-Ortin write: ‘What if I

had a baby with Down syndrome? What if I had a test and could abort? If I kept the

baby, how would it affect other members of my family… women’s trauma fiction

operates in a public sphere, working to focus discussion, highlighting issues, and

facilitating a shared listening to the trauma of others” (2013, 2002). A trauma narrative where Down syndrome is central to the trauma cannot exist without the disability, and the character with Down syndrome is again forced into the scaffolding of the novel. A slow reveal of Down syndrome in narrative fiction has a similar effect.

Much of the discourse surrounding the aspects of disability presented in

William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is preoccupied with diagnosis. The question of whether Benjamin Compson has Down syndrome, or whether it is autism is a common one, even amongst Faulkner scholars. However many practitioners working in the style of the Gothic have avoided diagnosing their intellectually disabled characters including Flannery O’Connor with Bishop in The Violent Bear it

Away (1960), Tim Winton with Fish in Cloudstreet and John Steinbeck in Of Mice

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and Men ([1937] 2009). Instead of a diagnosis, Gothic writers often represented their intellectually disabled characters as having indeterminable disabilities. Diagnosis is ignored because it brings with it a set of medical information and social expectations; it brings the “known” to the unknowable. This connection between diagnosis and the power of naming or not naming a disability, and the social expectations this brings with it, is what makes the disabled character such a changeable element in the Gothic text. The character with an intellectual disability in these novels do not have a medical diagnosis and can therefore extend or demolish the reader’s expectations of how they should behave. Often the expectations of “normal” behaviour, while still present in some way, can be stretched in the Gothic novel to accommodate transgressive behaviour. While “wrong”, a term discussed at length in the next paragraph, is used by the Gothic writer throughout the Gothic text and can often be a point of similarity, rather than difference.

In Jewel the transition from “normal” to “wrong” happens over three chapters.

In chapter eight, Jewel notices Brenda Kay is “a different child” (Lott 1991, 74), and later, “something was wrong… Brenda Kay was wrong somehow” (Lott 1991, 79). In chapter nine, Jewel begins to notice specific things “wrong” [sic] with her child. She prays that her “baby would smile up at me… roll over…laugh… Nothing came. Now she was five months old” (Lott 1991, 80). Jewel lists the “stigmata” and symptoms of

Down syndrome without realising what they mean. There are several visits to doctors before finally, at the end of chapter ten, one of these doctors tells the family Brenda

Kay has Down syndrome. The transition from “normal” to “wrong” is slower and less threatening because Brenda Kay is a baby. The trauma of Brenda-Kay’s birth is something that Jewel must overcome. It is the driving force behind the narrative and

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shares an interestingly similar structure to women’s trauma narratives as outlined by

Andermahr and Pellicer-Ortin in Trauma Narratives and Herstory. They write:

“Women’s trauma fiction presents women’s grief as a complex response to loss and

women’s attempts to overcome it as significant and meaningful” (2013, 2003). The

introduction of Brenda Kay’s Down syndrome is very different to the introduction of

Benjamin Compson’s disability in The Sound and the Fury because it is shown to be both significant and meaningful as opposed to the introduction of Benjamin, which is confused and often bordering on meaningless.

Benjamin is the first voice in Faulkner’s novel and, unlike many novels including disability, Benjamin’s story is told to the reader using a first person voice.

The novel opens, “Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting” ([1929]1995, 1). Immediately the reader is thrown into a voice where words are missing, the tone is both pared back and overwrought and important details are concealed from us because Ben does not understand them. As the chapter progresses, the absences and structure of Benjamin’s voice becomes progressively harder to follow and is punctuated with frequent hysterical crying, strangeness and cruelty. Because the reader is thrown into Ben’s intensely confused first person voice they have no choice but to react immediately with fear and confusion, unlike Brenda

Kay. Her “Otherness” is learned slowly over chapters and she grows in affection throughout the novel. Therefore, how a character with Down syndrome is diagnosed in the novel, sets the tone for the narrative. A slow diagnosis often leads to an angelic representation, while a violent diagnosis or no diagnosis leads to a monstrous or confused representation. Neither introduction allows for autonomy in voice because the baby is still just a baby, the monster is still just an object of fear first, and neither

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character is given the chance to say, “I have Down syndrome.” However, both

introductions provide almost built-in moral boundaries that, because of the narrator’s

biological connection to the character with Down syndrome, must be quickly

accepted. This is why, in Sing Fox to Me, Samson introduces his own disability

(although the reader is already aware that one exists) when he is introducing himself

to his grandfather for the first time.

‘But you’re doing all that,’ said Clancy and he waved his hands around in front of the boy, mimicking Essie. ‘Sign language,’ said the boy and then, because it must explain something, he said, ‘I have Down syndrome.’ Clancy nodded slowly. ‘I did hear something about that.’ (2013, 68).

Clancy’s fear of Samson and his intellectual difficulties immediately dissolves

because Down syndrome is normalised by Samson’s nonchalant introduction. Samson

might as well be saying, ‘I’m a boy’ or, ‘My name is Samson.’ This is very different

to when non-disabled narrators introduce the disability of a relative. These

introductions found in novels like Jewel and Dreamcatcher are often less honest

about the fear manifesting within their own stories. The narrator wants to be a good

parent, or sibling, or friend, and so they do not always directly and honestly reflect on

their own fear of Down syndrome. But this fear is nonetheless there. Introducing

Down syndrome or a character with Down syndrome from outside the family unit can often mean a more honest articulation of the fear of Down syndrome.

Unlike the transition of Caroline from outsider to mother in The Memory

Keeper’s Daughter there are novels where the narrative voice maintains a view from

the outside. Fay Weldon’s novel Darcy’s Utopia (1990) is one of the first

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of view character observes both mother and child from “outside” the family unit. This style of introduction is generally found in novels where the character is built into the periphery of the story and can be included because these narrative characters have no investment in the outcome of the character with Down syndrome’s life. This lack of personal investment allows the “outside” narrative voice to freely describe the character with Down syndrome, not more realistically, but with a more realistic opinion about the inclusion of Down syndrome into the world of the narrative. In

Darcy’s Utopia point of view character Eleanor Darcy introduces unpleasant, but very common opinions regarding the right of someone with Down syndrome to life:

We saw she was the only one of her family unit who couldn’t bear not to see the fruit of her womb, however sour, ripen, drop and live. And that’s how it turned out: the child, now twelve, is badly retarded. Erin is no more then its nurse… Left to us, friends and family, we would have said no, sorry Erin, sorry, not for you. This baby you insist on having keeps other babies out, ones, which won’t cause this distress to you and yours. Just not this one; Erin, try again (Weldon 1990, 140).

The view of the mother shifts with a change in narrative voice and is herself viewed

from the outside by Eleanor, who dreams of a Utopia where the “mindless child” has

no place, and the mother is not heroic but pathetic. In her own narrative, the mother cannot be viewed this way (beyond occasionally doubting herself). She fights, protects, and demands acceptance from society for her child, thus making an argument for the space where Down syndrome can be included, even embraced in society. However, this fight is almost exclusively made by the mother and rarely, if

ever, made by the person with Down syndrome (unless it is directly resisting the

parental figure). Often the character with Down syndrome is depicted as passively

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accepting these limitations and therefore supporting societal expectations of real

people with Down syndrome.

The Down Syndrome novel (almost exclusively told through the narration of

the mother) is not about Down syndrome at all, but about mothers. Down syndrome is

simply a tool to reach some extremity in the depiction of mothers and women. It is a

societal projection, a forcing backwards to women as primary caregivers with little in

their lives beyond home, children and husbands. Authors are often willing to sacrifice these mothers to their motherhood because the fear of their children moving freely in society is so great.

1.3 - Down syndrome and the Mother Narrative

The Down Syndrome novel has been termed by me in order to discuss a particular

type of narrative where Down syndrome is included. As stated earlier, the Down

Syndrome novel refers to a novel that builds the scaffolding of plot and story around

the inclusion of a character with Down syndrome making this character and their

disability necessary for the plot. The story cannot exist without the character with

Down syndrome (or their disability). This is not to criticise these novels but rather to

comment on why the canon is not more varied in relation to how the character with

Down syndrome functions within the story. Often these novels are stories told through

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the first person voice of a parent of a child with Down syndrome, thereby infantilising the child into adulthood.

In both Jewel and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter the primary narrative voice is the mother, and she brings certain imbalances inherent to her relationship to the

Down Syndrome novel. Because of the nature of the parental voice, the child with

Down syndrome cannot age beyond the narrative scaffolding sufficient to take their place in the world of the narrative. The mother and child relationship heavily populates novels regarding Down syndrome and the parental narrative is clearly the most popular genre to include Down syndrome with novels such as The Memory

Keeper’s Daughter becoming a bestseller and Oprah’s book club nominating Jewel by

Bret Lott in January 1999.

The mother/Down Syndrome novel commonly follows the parenting ordeals of a mother from the birth of her child (with Down syndrome) through to the placing of her adult offspring into a group home or facility. The narrative focuses on the difficulties of raising the child with Down syndrome, difficulties subject to the time in which the narrative is set (mainstream schooling, medical care, forced institutionalising etc). When viewed through the first person narration of the mother, the narrative develops rigid and arguably inescapable boundaries in how the character with Down syndrome is viewed. Despite stereotypes relating to Down syndrome rapidly changing within society, the concept of parental ownership (and subsequently a permanent childhood, or childlike state), still exists. Again, this is not to criticise these novels but rather to suggest that the focus remains on the parent because of the narrative voice. The mother novel is not without benefits for depictions of Down syndrome. 375

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One of the benefits of the mother/parental narrative in representing Down syndrome is that the character with Down syndrome never becomes part of this faceless community, unlike stories where the narrator is viewing the character with

Down syndrome from outside the family unit. In Anne Sexton’s December 12th

Sexton (like Weldon) describes the intellectually disabled residents of a local institution. Sexton tells the story of her day spent at an institutionalised “State School

where the retarded are locked up with hospital techniques” (Sexton [1969] 1999,

214). She categorises the “invalids” she meets. There is the “five-year-old who sits all

day and never speaks”, “the two-headed baby”, and Bobby her “favourite Mongoloid”

(Sexton [1969] 1999, 215). Sexton positions Bobby and the other residents as both

mindless and monstrous. For Sexton there is no difference. To be “mindless” or

intellectually disabled is to become “monstrous.” In the mother narrative the character

with Down syndrome never becomes part of this faceless horde because they are

translated into existence by a parental voice that sees them as individual. This does

not necessarily mean that the mother is capable of accepting the child’s disabled

community. In fact, often, it is the opposite.

In Tuesday’s Child writer Kathy Evans recognises her daughter’s broader

connection to her “community”, but also articulates her distaste for this community

when she says, “it served only as a reminder that my child was not just a member of

my family, built from the atoms of generations of Celtic ancestors, but part of a

distinctly recognisable breed like poodles or Siamese cats” (Evans 2007, 83). In

attempting to make her daughter distinct within and perhaps even from “her

community”, Evans is both insider and outsider. She views her daughter from inside

her family unit but must also acknowledge that her daughter is viewed, and will

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eventually belong, outside. This is the strange dichotomy of the mother Down

syndrome narrative. The mother struggles through the novel to include the child with

Down syndrome in both her family life and society. She is represented as hero,

saviour, martyr, and all that stands between her child with Down syndrome and a

faceless peer group. However, once the mother has reached acceptance the child is

often no longer a child but an adult and ready to leave home. This is the arch of the

story. Her child is an eternal child and so the mother holds on tighter because, like the

narrative itself, she has built her life around her child: “The measure of a mother [in

mother narratives] is her child” (Austin and Carpenter 2008, 379). The mother of a

character with Down syndrome often has very little beyond her role as a mother, and

in some ways she is as trapped being the “child’s” mother as the character with Down

syndrome is trapped by being translated through her. In discussing the ownership over

the intellectually disabled voice in the parental narrative it becomes important to

discuss how the interpretation of the parent is expressed beginning with the ownership of body.

An interesting representation of a common form of ownership over the bodies of characters with Down syndrome can be found in Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet when

Oriel, the mother of Fish Lamb (whose mind and body have been split – using magic realist devices – in a fishing accident), is described as dressing “Fish like an idiot, the way people clothe big sadfaced mongoloids [sic]. She hoiks his trousers up under his arms with a belt so long it flaps. She combs his hair straight down on his brow and shines his shoes till they mock him” (Winton 2007, 70). Oriel is almost unaware of

how she is translating Fish’s disability into the world because Quick makes an effort

to normalise him. Quick helps Fish blend in by making him look more like each

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other: “Quick gets to him early after breakfast and drags the clobber round on him, messes him up like a boy, normal and slouchy” (Winton 2007, 70). Looking at this scene through a Foucauldian lens it is clear that in making Fish look less like a

“sadfaced mongoloid” (Winton 2007, 70), and more like a boy like Quick, he is attempting to translate the body of Fish into the outside world and, by extension, so is

Winton:

My position is that it is not up to us to propose. As soon as one “proposes” - one proposes a vocabulary, an ideology, which can only have effects of domination. What we have to present are instruments and tools that people might find useful. By forming groups specifically to make these analyses, to wage these struggles, by using these instruments or others: this is how, in the end, possibilities open up. But if the intellectual starts playing once again the role that he has played for a hundred and fifty years - that of prophet in relation to what “must be”, to what “must take place” - these effects of domination will return and we shall have other ideologies, functioning in the same way (Foucault 1988, 197).

Viewed through the lens of Foucauldian power, this translation of Fish by Quick and

Winton, however affectionate, is still control over another, arguably more vulnerable, human: “If you have Down’s syndrome, you probably have very little power of any kind. However much people take your feelings into account, they’ll be taking the big decisions in your life” (Haddon in Rampton, 2007).

It is common in parental narratives and in the lived experiences of parenting a child with Down syndrome to first view the inclusion of the child as a negative change to the parent’s life. However, generally after the infant has achieved something “normal”, the lens shifts again and the child becomes, as Dales Evans wrote in Angel Unaware, viewed as “a gift from God, given only to special parents

‘chosen’ for their capacity to cope” (Evans and Roger 200411, 43). In Greater

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Expectations Jan Gothard comments on the shift from grief to acceptance experienced

by many parents of babies with Down syndrome:

The birth of a baby with Down syndrome is too often experienced as a tragedy… very quickly however, the outmoded idea of the baby with Down syndrome as a burden to be borne begins to disappear as families realise that the baby is, after all, just a baby, and that the arrival of any new baby brings ‘difference’ to the household (Gothard 2010, 32).

Forming a parental narrative around the acceptance of the arrival of a child with

Down syndrome is easily legitimised by lived experiences. However the question of

why these stories are often built around infants rather than older children or young adults, and why these characters with Down syndrome need to be “accepted” at all

(rather than simply included) finds its answer in the fear that is foundationally built beneath these representations and, connected to this fear, the role of the father.

The father in the parental narrative is often presented as another difficulty the mother must overcome to prove that her child is worthy of a place within the family home as shown by Dr David Henry of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, or to a much lesser degree, Michael from In One Skin. The father is often the first of many characters the mother must teach new tolerances. In A Solitary Grief by Bernice

Reubans (1991) this fear, embodied by the father, has one of its most profound depictions. The point of view character Dr Alistair Crow and his wife Virginia give birth to a baby girl with Down syndrome. Crow is so appalled by his baby Doris

(particularly her face) that he cannot even bring himself to look at her. At times going so far as to refuse to look at photos of Doris or locking himself inside his office to avoid her. So profound is Crow’s disgust that even Doris’ mother Virginia cannot bring them together. Crow cannot confront his daughter because of how she makes

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him feel in relation to his own failings: “Any notion of the child with a disability as a

gift from God is completely replaced by the view that the child with a disability as a burden verging (for some) on unbearable” (Gothard 2010, 71).

However, unlike Michael (who his sister-in-law suggests may have thought about killing his son) Crow does kill his daughter, strangling her from behind so he doesn’t have to look at her, after kidnapping her from school. The first time he is forced to actually look at her face is when he is asked by the police to identify her body at the morgue. Unlike Elena in In One Skin Virginia cannot facilitate the familial bonds between father and child and so cannot, later on, protect her child from the father’s violence or lack of love. Crow has a strong negative reaction to the birth of their daughter, which is not uncommon in lived experiences of a child being born with

Down syndrome. Often because the parent views the existence of the child itself as a failure:

Implicitly, a child is often seen as an extension of one’s family, a link with both past and future. Most parents, particularly during their first experience of parenthood, marvel at the perfection which is their new child, and there can be few who have not harboured secret dreams and expectations (Gothard 2010, 31).

The father becomes an object that cannot be overcome by the mother’s love and the child with Down syndrome must disappear in order for the father’s world to return to some normalcy. In my novel David is described by Samson as having “fingers are hard like fence posts” (Kanake 2013, 38) becoming a kind of fence himself. When

David abandons the family home he releases the boundaries around the story and allows it to move from Down Syndrome novel to Gothic fiction. Faulkner comments on similar, although metaphorically, in The Sound and The Fury when he writes,

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“Father said it used to be a gentlemen was known by his books; nowadays he is

known by the ones he has not returned” (Faulkner [1929] 1995, 79). Likewise, a good

father is known by the children he keeps and those he sends away. Thus, Jason

Compson III positions himself as a good father simply because he keeps Benjy.

In the Memory Keeper’s Daughter Dr David Henry gives his newborn baby

Phoebe (who has Down syndrome) to a nurse (Caroline) and asks that she be

committed to a local institution. Instead of committing her, Caroline removes Phoebe from the institution and raises her herself. At several points throughout the narrative

David reiterates a comment made by his still pregnant wife that their “world will

never be the same” (Edwards 2005, 11). Initially his wife Norah intends this comment

to have a positive tone and isn’t until later when David is in the process of diagnosing

his newborn daughter that her statement begins to take on a sinister context. David’s

choice (as a father and also as a doctor) to give Phoebe away and not to tell his wife is

the scaffolding that holds the narrative together. However this boundary does not just

hold Phoebe but her mother as well. As Phoebe’s biological mother, Norah is trapped

in the lie and David takes away her freedoms as much as he does Phoebe’s. This

power struggle defines and sets the outcome of the novel, but Phoebe’s Down

syndrome remains the catalyst for the lie. Without Phoebe’s Down syndrome there

would be no lie and without a lie there would be no story, thereby building Phoebe’s

Down syndrome into the narrative scaffolding, and trapping her there.

Similarly Brenda-Kay’s mother Jewel in Bret Lott’s novel of the same name

repeatedly chooses, throughout the narrative, to do what she considers best for her

child, her “burden” (Lott 1991, 124). In the face of extreme financial hardship

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the money comes from, because we are saving our daughter’s life” (Lott 1991, 116).

For reasons relating to Brenda-Kay, Jewel moves her family from Mississippi to

California where she learns the value of racial and social tolerance. The birth of

Brenda-Kay and the difficulties she brings to her family is the scaffolding that holds

the narrative together. Without Brenda-Kay, Jewel would have had no reason to

relocate to California and without moving to California, Lott would not have a vehicle

to comment on the differences between the new America of the west and the deeply

ingrained social values of the southern states.

However, mother narratives are not restricted to the U.S. Australian novelist

Kristina Olsson’s first novel In One Skin (2001) discusses the inclusion of a character

with Down syndrome through the narrative voice of Elena and the birth of her first son Thomas. After confiding in her sister about her husband’s negative reaction to the birth Elena’s sister advises her:

Your baby is abnormal. He is not like other children. For a man, a new father, this knowledge is unbearable. He feels like a failure, imperfect himself for having an imperfect child. Your baby’s whole existence threatens your husband’s, you see. He feels a kind of shame. And outrage. He’s probably even thought of getting rid of him somehow, even killing him… it’s normal (Olsson 2001, 116).

Later on Elena recounts Beaver’s first smile, “the smile of amused angels and nuns”

(Olsson 2001, 118). She remembers, “fall[ing] upon him, kissing him, smothering his face with words, with praise” (Olsson 2001, 118). Elena’s shock and joy at her son having smiled and the connection this has with her early guilt at having created him

and what this has done to her life is reiterated further down when she calls to her

husband “Michael, he smiled! He smiled! God he almost laughed, really, it was

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beautiful (Michael, I’m saying, forgive me. Let’s start all over again now, from this

minute)” (Olsson 2001, 119). It is not until after Beaver has smiled, doing something

“normal”, that the fear felt by his parents, particularly his father, begins to dissolve.

This is not an uncommon story in lived experiences with Down syndrome: “Looking back now it was bitter-sweet, it was both the best and worst day of my life” (Canning in Gothard 2010, 32). Where In One Skin differs from novels like The Memory

Keeper’s Daughter and Jewel is why the character with Down syndrome is included.

In One Skin is a story about loss, absence, and vulnerability. Beaver is vulnerable, but not weak. His parents feel a sense of loss, but Beaver hasn’t lost anything. He is a

“man-boy” (Olsson 2001, 9) who “has always had a sharp understanding of how be wants to be” (Olsson 2001, 4). In short, Beaver is a teenage boy. A teenage boy with

Down syndrome. Beaver is not invaluable to the plot; he is a thematic inclusion to build towards the narrative themes. In One Skin is not a Down Syndrome novel, even though Beaver’s disability adds to the narrative extremity, but a novel where Down syndrome is included. However, Beaver is not given the freedom of his own voice and also joins a long history of male characters with strange or silly names.

Many characters with Down syndrome, particularly male, are given unusually ridiculous names by the author. There is the adult Duddets from Dreamcatcher and

Uncle Punky from The Man Who Loved Clowns. However, there are also characters with Down syndrome and undiagnosed disabilities that are renamed once their disability manifests. Samson Lamb in Cloudstreet is renamed Fish after his accident, splitting how the reader views him even further. The renaming of a person with an intellectual disability in Gothic novels has been done before: most notebly in

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Maury Compson is renamed Benjy, and in In

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One Skin, Thomas renames himself Beaver. In order to keep their child and cope with

its unsettling presence, it appears as if families must reclassify, or rebrand their

intellectually disabled child to deal with their inclusion into the world of the narrative:

“One of the crucial moments in any enquiry is the naming of the objects of

investigation… as the initial naming of objects will define the design and the new set

of relations” (Fontana-Giusti 2013, 47). The naming of characters, particularly male,

with silly or strange names sets the tone of how that character will be read. Even

when we do hear a narrative voice it is told when a different name has already been applied, so the character with Down syndrome is not really narrating the story. This

“rebranding” is also a reaction to fear; it is assumed that a boy named Benjy poses

less of a threat, particularly sexual, than a man named Maury. For this reason I chose

to name the character in my novel, Samson Fox. Samson, as a reaction to the splitting

and rebranding of Fish Lamb, and Fox because I wanted to actively engage with, and

accept, Samson’s universally human capacity for violence. I did not want to

reclassify, rebrand or infantilise Samson as he entered his manhood. In order for Sing

Fox to Me to work as both a narrative and exploration into voice, it was important that

the reader immediately identify and accept him.

Through an analysis of Down Syndrome novels like The Memory Keeper’s

Daughter and Jewel it becomes clear that when a child with Down syndrome is born

within the narrative, and kept by their parents (or adoptive parents), the narrative

often shifts and becomes something more like a trauma narrative. Trauma narratives

are not a focus of this exegesis and are mentioned only to position the Down

Syndrome novel alongside a similar genre where the plot follows the acceptance of

pain and loss. The Down Syndrome novel focuses on the trials of Down syndrome.

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The start of the novel is generally the birth of a child with Down syndrome, the story is the trials of living alongside disability, and the conclusion is usually brought about by the final acceptance of Down syndrome by the narrator, usually a mother. The love and guilt of the mother is what propels the narrative voice forward as the mother argues for her child with Down syndrome to be included and accepted into the world.

Without Down syndrome these novels could not exist. They are only about Down syndrome and the effect intellectual disability has on the domestic space. Whereas in novels where the character with Down syndrome has been kept, such as In One Skin and The Sound and the Fury, the narratives are free to become about more than just

Down syndrome and the fear of Down syndrome. In discussing the social and parental fear built beneath the inclusion of characters with Down syndrome, Gillian Mears’

Australian Gothic novel Foal’s Bread presents an interesting movement beyond the fear of the child themselves and into a more abstract fear.

Foal’s Bread follows the life of Noah Nancarrow, horse jumper, alcoholic, and mother of two, one of whom has Down syndrome. Mears uses the birth of Noah’s second child George (who has Down syndrome) as another in a string of tragic occurrences: Noah believes he is penance for drowning her first child many years before. Mears writes that George Nancarrow was, “her (Noah’s) punishment … her mistake” (Mears 2011, 111). Noah views the “able-minded” son she sent down the river affectionately only after her intellectually disabled son is born and kept. So deep is the connection to Noah between these two babies that moments after George is born she sees her uncle (the father of the first baby) in George’s face: “For the brief look she’d got of the newborn [the child with Down syndrome] before they’d bundled him up and away she could see him all right. Uncle Nip. Even though his face was

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like an idiot” (2011, 77). As he grows, George’s story shifts and becomes focused on whether he can move beyond his intellectual confines (particularly in those passages narrated by his mother) to become a proficient horseman like his parents and older sister. The view of George moves metaphorically from one body into another, from the monstrous “contaminated” (2011, 78) infant to a baby where “god must lay in his heavier than normal limbs” (2011, 83). Even the “language” of baby George is that of

“god purring” (2011, 83). But George has his own interior world: he has relationships and joys and conflicts. His love of the farm cats and kittens is juxtaposed alongside his loss when they disappear. His taste for food, and his affection for riding, particularly with his sister, together make up a character with definition. Despite his later success as a horseman, George’s interior world is always secondary to his role as one of the punishments meant for his mother. In this multiple perspective narrative,

Mears never uses George’s point of view and when George is asked a direct question someone else always answers for him. We never really know what George’s experience of the world is except as it is translated to us.

The space beyond the parental narrative is rarely discussed. Whether it is

Brenda-Kay remaining with her mother in the house by the railway or Phoebe walking through the graveyard where her biological father rests, the adult character with Down syndrome walks out of the parental narrative and into a gap in fiction writing. Often the reader feels this gap, perhaps even without always knowing what it is, and the final pages of the Down Syndrome novel must wrap up quickly by restating social normalcy. Despite Phoebe having a boyfriend, an education, and a job, the last line of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter reads, “He [Paul] walked across the grass and touched her shoulder, to take her home,” (Edwards 2005, 401) while in

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Jewel the last image of Brenda-Kay is safely asleep in the room next to her mother.

They are both solidified in the domestic space. It will always contain them even when the domestic space extends its physical limits to outside the home as is seen in Foal’s

Bread.

In Foal’s Bread, George Nancarrow is never given direct speech and when

asked questions or engaged with by his family, his older sister Lainey often answers for him. She picks up the threads of her mother’s inadequacies as a parent and

becomes a “little mother” to George. This unusual middle space between siblings

within the Down Syndrome novel will be discussed later in the reflective character of

this thesis in relation to my own novel Sing Fox to Me. Even with these restrictions on

his voice however, George is somehow less restrained than Phoebe and Brenda-Kay, not because he is any freer but because we don’t really ever know what happens to

him. His parents die, and George’s life after their deaths becomes something of a

mystery even though his sister’s life does not. Likewise in The Sound and the Fury,

Benjamin’s parents do not play an active role in the events or the telling of the story

and, consequently, Benjamin has more freedom in narration. This freedom depends

firstly on his narrative being a Gothic text and secondly, as mentioned earlier, because

of the nature of Ben’s narration.

In the Down Syndrome novel, the character with Down syndrome is always

fenced and boundaried, the naming of the character’s disability is owned by a figure

in a position of care, the limits of the character are repeatedly mapped by the narrative

and, possibly most important of all, the character with Down syndrome is translated to

the reader through the voice of a parent or authority figure. In fact, many of the same

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text. In his journal article Reading Post Colonial Australia (1995), Bill Ashcroft suggests that some of the phases of ownership within the colonial text include language, naming, boundary (both physical and metaphorical) and ownership. As discussed earlier in this exegesis, these are some of the same phases of ownership the character with Down syndrome experiences in the Down Syndrome novel. They are both colonised and, at the same time, highly protected/boundaried by their colonisers

(both narrative and authorial). In order to go beyond the boundaries of the Down

Syndrome novel, the author must allow the character some freedom in narration, but also must move the character with Down syndrome from outside the narrative confinement of the Down Syndrome novel. This begs the question, where does the character with Down syndrome go, particularly beyond the confines of childhood where protection and ownership are arguably “natural” to that stage of life? This exegesis suggests that the Gothic genre, particularly Australian Gothic, is a space that can free the character with Down syndrome.

As stated earlier in the chapter on my Methodology, this exegesis positions the

Down Syndrome novel alongside Colonial fiction, not to reposition the colonial novel, but rather to situate the Down syndrome narrative within a broader literary context. The Colonial text seeks to represent settlement and sovereignty, and therefore the power of one country over another, without engaging with the post colonial dialogues around possession, restriction, ownership and, particularly, language and voice: “The power of language to construct the physical environment is one with which the colonised must always contend… it is clear that place may be controlled by being familiarised and domesticated by language” (O’Reilly 2010, 29). The Down

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Syndrome novel, as defined and discussed above, shares many distinct similarities with traditional Colonial fiction texts particularly as it relates to language and voice.

The Gothic mode is capable of applying pressure to the boundaries of colonial writing, but also traditional literary fiction. It bends and manipulates the borders of traditional fiction and consequently provides a dark fringe where characters (trapped within traditional fiction) may scurry to hide, or may escape to exist. As similar to the movement from tightly confined colonial narrative to the arguable freedom of the

Australian Gothic, the character with Down syndrome can only find freedom in a fictional world where he/she is not the principle figure of fear, and all characters are monstrous. In the Gothic, characters with intellectual difference are rarely diagnosed: no one says, ‘he/she/I have Down syndrome.; The boundary is always penetrated or dissolved (with mixed results), and, because of the movement beyond normative characters and story telling devices, the character with intellectual difference is often given the space to either narrate or become peripheral. In the Gothic novel the character with Down syndrome is rarely, if ever, required to carry the narrative or be either the most monstrous or angelic character. The Gothic allows for an “escape from blunt edge binaries” where “the thoughtful reader must find [meaning] for himself

[sic]” (Hughes in Faulkner 2013, 7).

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1.4 Gothic and Down syndrome

In a Gothic novel all characters have some monstrousness. Being damaged is the currency of how Gothic characters belong: “The Gothic is preoccupied with the hidden or monstrous side - particularly as it relates to human nature” (Turcotte 2009,

354). The Gothic novel invites mystery, cruelty and deformity. Its landscapes are foreboding and strange and within this landscape characters like Benjamin Compson are not just allowed to exist, but are welcomed. He is not incidental or essential, rather

Benjamin is welcomed because of his “universal” otherness. The Gothic mode is capable of understanding him: “The Gothic knows the body. It knows about physical frailty, about vulnerability… The Gothic also knows about monstrosity and about people who seem to be dangerously unknowable” (Punter 2012, 3). Benjamin is fragile and vulnerable, monstrous and dangerously unknowable, but he is also an active participant (and some may even argue catalyst) in the story. Benjamin adds to the atmosphere and tension of the novel, but the story does not depend on him.

Including Benjamin enriches the story, but Caddy and her brothers could have supported the (albeit very different) novel without him. This is also true of my novel

Sing Fox to Me.

One distinction between the Down Syndrome novel, and a novel where a character with Down syndrome is simply included in the narrative, can only be discovered when the character is removed from the story. If the novel can still function as a story after the character with Down syndrome is removed, it is not a

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Brenda Kay from Jewel and the narrative caves in because the story is exclusively about the character with Down syndrome and the medical, social or financial issues that surround them. In Sing Fox to Me it was important that I have a sustained narrative where, if Samson were removed, the narrative could sustain itself. In some ways this proved very difficult, in part because of how I weave stories together, and in part because Samson is so likable. Where Jonah is difficult to like and Clancy is disarmingly strange, Samson is open and honest and connected. But, he is also completely inward facing until he meets the bees. The bees were a mechanical device included in the story to contain the narrative and release Samson into the landscape.

They are the secret keepers and unlike The Memory Keeper’s Daughter where the secrets are kept by Phoebe’s paternal father, I wanted Samson to keep the secrets of the mountain. Only he knows what really happens to Jonah at the end of the novel and only he leaves the door open for his brother’s return. I chose to tell Sing Fox to Me in short, single perspective vignettes. For Samson, the vignettes grow longer as the story builds, until eventually he is the sole narrator. In many ways this structure released the boundaries around Samson while avoiding much of the voice shock present in The

Sound and The Fury, and it also keeps the reader from diving into the narrative.

However, these structural difficulties are somewhat nullified by narrative devices such as the lack of involved, demanding, or present parental characters.

The Sound and the Fury is virtually free of active parental characters making it the perfect breeding ground for sibling deceit, cruelty, and even incest. The parents do not have a voice in the telling of the story and are emotionally, physically or intellectually absent throughout. There is no mother or father to protect Benjamin and, while this does not make him physically free, he is given a voice and in many ways

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this voice is prioritised because it contains the answers to secrets concealed in the

other narrative voices. In Lion in the Garden William Faulkner discusses his

particular interest in “the idiot” as a practitioner working within American Gothic

conventions: “So the idiot was born and then I became interested in the relationship of the idiot to the world that he was in but would never be able to cope with” (Faulkner

1980, 22). This freedom from parental expectation and involvement can be seen in a different way in Foal’s Bread using the voice of George’s sister Lainey and his mother Noah. While Noah is a mother, and a mother of a child with Down syndrome,

Foal’s Bread is not a Down Syndrome novel.

The most fundamental and obvious difference between Foal’s Bread and

Down syndrome narratives such as Jewel or The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is that, again, the character with Down syndrome (George) could be removed from the novel without changing the narrative itself. Another important difference is the landscape and how the farm in particular functions as a Gothic backdrop to George’s story.

George is one of the few characters in the novel who seem to be truly accepted into, and by, the landscape. He is the first and only son and heir, he is allowed free run of the property and, because he has none of the responsibility, George really seems to inhabit the place. This shares an important place with Samson in Sing Fox to Me.

Samson is embraced, almost immediately, by the mountain and Tasmania because he is capable and open to the idea of communicating with them. Another of the differences between Foal’s Bread and the Down Syndrome novel is found in the character of Noah Nancarrow. Noah fails as a “mother” where Caroline and Jewel

“succeed.”

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The cultural narrative of motherhood… characterises a mother as a person in an independent relationship where she is self sacrificing… nurturing, selfless, emotional, compassionate, connected with nature, and gives efficient and effective attention to everyday tasks; she is always available to her children and assumes complete responsibility for them, she is unselfish and supportive and her children are always in need of her, particularly when they are young (Austin and Carpenter 2008, 378-392).

By this definition Noah is not a “good” mother because she fails her newborn (born from an act of paedophilic rape) when she sends it down the river in a butter box to drown. She also fails Lainey by competing with, and resenting her, and later Noah fails George when she refuses to accept him because of his intellectual differences.

Noah’s failings build to a very Gothic crescendo when she castrates her children’s uncle as she perhaps wishes she had done to her own uncle Nip. Noah is almost an

anti-mother and her neglect of George is perhaps only possible because Foal’s Bread

is a Gothic novel and not a mainstream trauma narrative: “The gothic voice is a

common narrative device used to explore melancholy and maternal failings”

(O’Reilly 2010, 213). Unlike Caroline or Jewel, Noah fails to teach her son,

understand him, and maybe she even fails to love him, and because of these failings

George is free. He has no boundaries because his mother doesn’t care where he goes.

She doesn’t care, because she’s in a Gothic novel and not a Down Syndrome novel.

However, there are some cases where the failures of the mother do not release the

boundary around the child with Down syndrome but tighten them to breaking point.

This is generally seen in those novels where both the character with Down syndrome and the mother are incidental to the plot.

Australian Gothic novel The Harp in the South ([1948] 2009) by Ruth Park

follows the Darcys, an Irish Catholic family living in the slums of Sydney in the late

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forties. The Darcys rent an attic room, in their slum home, to an abusive woman

named Mrs. Sheily and her twenty-year-old intellectually disabled son Johnny. It is

clear that Johnny has Down syndrome. Early in the novel Park specifically outlines

some of the traditional stigmata: “for his tongue, like the rest of him was twisted” and

“the dark little current eyes of an idiot, his chinless face, and thick red neck and bowed legs” (Park [1948] 2009, 4) and “his blubbery mouth pursed in a ludicrous

parody of a child’s” (Park [1948] 2009, 7). Throughout the first few pages of the novel Johnny is described with a mix of the grotesque and pity: “God has struck them

as the wild lightning strikes a tree and no one knows why” (Park [1948] 2009, 4).

Mrs. Sheily beats and torments her mature aged son, going as far as to tie him to the

radiator as punishment.

And there against the wall was Johnny, his hands tied around a disused gas jet… Beside Johnny Miss Sheily stood trembling, thin as a piece if wire, her drooping black skirt hardly hiding the bones which stood fragilely beneath it. In her hand was a piece of knotted electric flex. Her white face was a smudge under the dim light which filtered from the skylight (Park [1948] 2009, 6).

Mrs Sheily’s failures as a mother and her violent anger towards Johnny’s disability

are brutally admonished by Margaret “Mamma” Darcy: “It’s not his fault he’s a

cripple” (Park [1948] 2009, 6). However, Mrs Sheily’s failures do not release Johnny,

as Noah’s release George, because where Noah ignores her son Mrs Sheily does not.

She hates him, and her hatred traps her as surely as Jewel and Caroline are restricted

by affection: “I tried every way to get rid of him before he was born. And then when

he came he was like a monster. I hate him. I hate him!” (Park [1948] 2009, 7). Mrs

Sheily’s focus remains so intensely on her son that after he is dead she is seen

flagellating herself and calling his name. However, like Jewel and Caroline’s

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affection, this hatred is not necessarily their role as mothers, or their child’s disability.

It is about what his disability means. Like the Rorschach test mentioned earlier, the character with Down syndrome is included in The Harp in the South to intensify the poverty and ferocity of Shanty Town in Sydney. The torment of Johnny and his eventual death add to the atmosphere of the novel but it also builds towards depicting the “tormented sleep of the poor” (Park [1948] 2009, 9). Johnny is Shanty Town.

Broken, poor, damaged, mindless and incapable of improvement. Unlike Noah, Mrs

Sheily’s failures as a mother do not release the boundary around Johnny but tighten them, because both Johnny and Mrs Sheily are virtually incidental to the plot.

Like the parents in The Sound and the Fury, Noah is not as trapped within her narrative as Caroline or Jewel. For example, Noah has a relationship with her husband outside his function as George’s father, whereas Caroline and her husband do not.

They discuss Phoebe, spend time with Phoebe and worry about Phoebe but do not, even on their wedding day, exist outside of their relationship as Phoebe’s parents.

George also sits outside the Down Syndrome novel because, even though Foal’s

Bread includes an Epilogue where Lainey returns, the reader never really learns what happens to George. This begs the question: what does happen to the character with

Down syndrome once they are an unrestricted adult?

The literary world outside the Down Syndrome novel seldom includes grown characters with Down syndrome. The adult years for these characters are often left off the end of the novel and certainly do not represent the lived experiences of many people with Down syndrome: “The transition to adult life can be a challenging one for people with disabilities and their families. From the ultimately reasonably comfortable and familiar vantage point of the school years, the future can appear 395

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confronting, representing as it does the end of childhood” (Gothard 2010, 233).

Narratives do not often follow characters with Down syndrome into adulthood

because the space beyond the teen years symbolically represents the end of childhood,

whether the character is disabled or not. For an author to follow a character with

Down syndrome into their adult years would be to move them beyond the boundary

of an infantilised permanent childhood common in the Down Syndrome novel. The

author must acknowledge that the character with Down syndrome can grow, mature

and change, and in acknowledging this, different types of stories would begin to

emerge. The adult with Down syndrome who has a job, lives alone or in a couple or

share house, and does not rely on his/her parents for support is one of the great

underrepresented stories in modern literature.

The research, relating to the underrepresented adult character with Down

syndrome, is valuable but is not explored in my novel. In Sing Fox to Me Samson Fox

is only fourteen and while, by the end of the novel, he has certainly matured, taken

over the family property and developed his own honey business, he does not strike out

on his own and the novel does not follow him into his adult years. Instead, Samson

replaces his father and grandfather, and Murray replaces his. Fiction stories of adult

characters with Down syndrome, employed, and living independently from their

family are virtually non-existent and this represents the space I will pursue in future

creative work. In most cases the character with Down syndrome must literally walk out of the parental narrative in order to become an unrestricted adult. But where do they go? In many cases the character body dictates what will happen to them. Gender and the differences in how male and female characters with Down syndrome are represented is only briefly discussed in this exegesis, but it is important to note that

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there is much work to be done in the field of gender, race and class paradigms within

fictional representations of gender and Down syndrome. Male characters with Down

syndrome are often thought to pose more of a sexual threat, and so, often young male

characters are killed or damaged in some way to manage this threat. Female

characters are the ultimate feminine in many ways and are hyper-protected and

treasured within the narrative: “What happens to my body, happens to my life” (Frank

in Couser 1997, 13). Though Arthur Frank does not directly mention Down syndrome

in At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness (2002) this connection between life

and the body poses interesting questions in relation to depictions of otherness that

could include Down syndrome and character with Down syndrome in both classic and

contemporary narratives.

In The Sound and the Fury this is reversed. What happens in Ben’s life,

happens to his body. He lives with no agency and when he is castrated it is not to

make the world safer: it is a metaphor for how his life already exists. This way of looking at the character with Down syndrome outside the confines of the Down

Syndrome novel raises several important questions. Will the character with Down syndrome always exist within a narrative life that responds to their disability? If they are disabled, will the narrative always be disabled? Evan Chaloupka goes some way towards answering these questions in his 2012 thesis (University of Akron) That

Damn Looney. He suggests that much of the problem with the intellectually disabled

voice (specifically Benjamin Compson) is in how it is viewed and received.

To suppose that Faulkner was simply subscribing to common disability terms and not contributing to and refining a mutable discourse of disability is a critical misstep. Such a belief not only undermines Faulkner’s insight, but also allows Benjy, an engaging, dynamic character, to mutate into a form inhuman. “Idiot,” by its very use, directs attention to problems of 397

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Benjy’s text: its practical incoherency, rudimentary language, and an apparent lack of structure (Chaloupka, 2012, 53).

In order to prove that the character with Down syndrome can narrate their own story and exist, no more or less trapped than “normal” [sic] characters, it is crucial to find a genre that allows for difference, both in character and narrative voice. This chosen narrative form must engage with lived experiences of Down syndrome, such as guilt, boundary, and sometimes (particularly for parents) invasion, but does not necessarily

translate or trap these characters. Like many early Australian writers moving from colonial to post colonial writing I, as a practitioner, found this freedom within the

Australian Gothic mode. Primarily, because the Gothic (particularly the Australian

Gothic), already embraces these themes: “The gothic is favoured by Australian authors due to the combined feeling of guilt over invasion and love of country”

(O’Reilly 2010, 207). Chapter Two of this exegesis looks at the Gothic mode, particularly as it relates to Australia’s “weird melancholy”, and suggests that Sexton’s products of “nature, but nature works such crimes” (Sexton [1969] 1999, 215) could find less restricted involvement within the narrative if let loose in an Australia that is

“grotesque,” and “weird”, perhaps even intellectually disabled.

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CHAPTER TWO –

Going Beyond the Fence: Into the Strange Scribblings of Nature

What comes to mind when you think of gothic? Is it the European visions of ravens and gargoyles and dark foggy cobbled streets? Or are you haunted by Bunyips in the desert? (Radio National, 23/03/2007).

In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of nature (Clarke [1896] cited in Birns 2005).

While Australian Gothic fiction shares similar, sometimes even interchangeable,

conventions with European and American Gothic fiction, it is also marked by

difference. These differences between Australia and Europe, at first threatened

Australia’s inclusion into the Gothic mode: “Few would disagree that Gothic

landscapes can be dark and sinister. What surprised many… was the thought that this

Gothic landscape could be in any way Australian” (Turcotte 1969, 1). Prior to the

publication of Clarke’s seminal work, immigrant journalist Frederick Sinnett wrote an

essay in 1856 called The Fiction Fields of Australia where he suggested that an

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No storied windows cast a dim, religious light over any Australian premises. There are no ruins for that rare old plant, the ivy green, to creep over and make his meal of. No Australian author can hope to extricate his hero or heroine, however pressing the emergency may be, by means of a spring panel and a subterranean passage, or such like relics of feudal barons (Sinnett in Turcotte 1998, 3).

Not old enough for ancient mansions and castles, Australian Gothic found other

spaces to disturb, most of them natural and therefore old enough for Gothic tropes.

The Australian soil cracked open and from inside the country itself came the

melancholy of rivers and creeks, snatching rocks, crumbling mountains, and coasts

filled with gnashing mouths. Lush forests swallowed, red dirt turned to quicksand,

mountains crept ever upwards, and rivers ran like overflowing veins through the

country’s skin. Tigers, devils, and cobbled together animals lurk in the shadows. The

Australian Gothic landscape, particularly the Gothic bush, is filled with life and,

because of this, is often an active participant in the story. It does not sit back and rely

on the characters to do the work like the backdrop of a high school play, nor does it

necessarily hunt them. The Australian landscape simply exists, and in existing

becomes dangerous.

The real complexity of the Australian Gothic narrative emerges from a lack of

strict physical limits. Violence or abuse has no place to hide, it always surfaces, and

the Australian landscape can affect or create tension within the narrative using these

limits: “The instability, curiosity and sense of disjunction which was exported to the

colonies… was supplemented by a further sense of spiritual and physical alienation in the so called barren lands” (Turcotte 2009, 17). No human character is safe, because the environment actively works against human inclusion like a haunted house rejecting a new owner, or a body working against disease. It is difficult, therefore, to 400

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“diagnose” the Australian landscape because it rejects knowing and forces back those

that seek to understand. It welcomes, almost exclusively, only characters with some

internal duality because the land itself is built from polarisations and binaries. If

Gothic writing is the style of disintegration, of exile and strangeness, it follows that

strange, socially rejected or “boundaried” characters would make a strong thematic fit

in these places.

As discussed in Chapter One, characters with Down syndrome are often

represented as “lacking” or “boundaried.” This same representation can be found in

Gothic literature in relation to the landscape. This shares a similar space with the

character with Down syndrome. The landscape is a place not easily defined or

categorised and, as expressed by Marcus Clarke’s “weird melancholy” (Clarke [1896]

cited in Birns 2005, 131), it is almost always presented as a place of fear, strangeness,

and sadness. This is not unusual; in fact, the Australian landscape still struggles to

move from strange to familiar. Again, sharing similarities with the character with

Down syndrome moving with public opinion (and political correctness) from monster

to angel, the Australian landscape is often caught in blunt binaries; the hell of Europe,

and the heavenly or more “natural” landscapes pre-existing colonisation and now

again in post colonial writing. Most Australian authors attempt to drag the landscape

into a central position within their own narrative but, like any human character, the

Australian bush often both supports and rejects the binaries used to describe it. There

are, however, specific landscapes in Australia where blunt binaries are acceptable and any argument against them often works within the novel as narrative tension, particularly within the Gothic. These binaries and juxtapositions are not limited to

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subject matter. They are also foundationally built into the style and mechanics of the

Gothic voice:

The Gothic is also a hodge-podge of differing literary devices—it mixes high and low characters; realism and melodrama; good and evil. The Gothic, it could be argued, suffered in terms of its critical reception precisely because it sat uneasily within so many literary traditions, but especially because it dealt with so-called low culture and subject matter (Turcotte 2009, 355).

One Australian landscape that is frequently explored in Gothic fiction is Tasmania.

The island was termed by Mark Twain, and further contextualised by Richard

Flanagan, as both Hell and Utopia. In many ways fictional Tasmania is still

represented like the basement in the traditional Gothic mansion, sitting alone and

quiet at the bottom of Australia: filled with secrets too terrifying to be kept on the

mainland. The crevices between the vast fields of rock are the cracks in the

floorboards. The dense Tasmanian bush sits beneath the mainland forming a kind of

secret basement complete with hidden tunnels and caves, while the heavy northern

climates are the cloying attic spaces complete with cobweb-like vines and restless

closeness to freedom. The vast western deserts are the barren ballrooms and sparsely

decorated sitting rooms of the European mansion and the borders of Australia are the

(often penetrated or destroyed) walls of the house. In trying to find a castle the

Australian Gothic writer builds walls around Australia itself. This is a boundary

capable of containing a story without restricting the characters within it and

Tasmania, as a single literary space, covers much literal and metaphoric ground. It is a

place where blunt binaries are often acceptable and, in fact, already exist, sometimes

in characters, metaphors and even in the flora and fauna.

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One animal that lives with the Gothic landscape and has been used in several

modern Australian narratives looking at colonisation such as The Hunter (1999) by

Julia Leigh and, as mentioned earlier, Into That Forest by Louis Nowra (2012) is the

Tasmanian tiger. The tiger is a clear and very public example of a Tasmania caught between blunt binaries. The wicked sheep stealing devil of colonisation is certainly not the tentative, easily domesticated parental figure of the modern day. The tiger has moved from monster to angel, in part because such binaries are acceptable, and because Tasmania is a place of frequent reinvention. Tasmania, as a literary

landscape, is an ideal location for the character with Down syndrome who has, as

discussed earlier, historically been caught in the binaries of monster and angel. The

island welcomes characters that can exist in binaries but also requires them to resist

polarisation. This thesis argues that the character with Down syndrome can find more

freedom within the Gothic mode (than in other genres of fiction) because many of the

boundaries common in the Down Syndrome novel are dissolved or contested within the Gothic genre: both resist strict physical boundaries, such as the fence or property border, and metaphorical boundaries, such as entrapment or social expectation. This power dynamic, and the effect characters and boundaries (both metaphoric as well as literal) can have on the meaning and intentions of story, can be better understood through the Foucaudian lens:

What defines a relationship of power is the mode of action which does not act directly and immediately on other. Instead it acts upon their actions: and action upon an action… The exercise of power… is a total structure of action brought to bear on possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; in the extreme it forbids absolutely (Foucault 1982, 789).

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In The Sound and the Fury, for instance, this power of action upon action allows for

the castration, both literal and figurative, of Benjamin after he puts his hand through

the fence and attempts to take hold of a girl that reminds him of his lost sister Caddy.

While character construction can reveal the limitations and boundaries placed “onto”

certain characters, so too can form, place, and setting. For the purposes of this chapter

I focus on Australian Gothic novels, particularly the Tasmanian Gothic, with

occasional references to American Gothic novels, primarily because some of these

texts, such as The Sound and the Fury, have characters with identifiable intellectual

difference and disabilities.

This chapter of my thesis does not seek to represent the foundation of either

Gothic or Australian Gothic writing or comment on specific definitions of the Gothic

mode, but rather to address certain important aspects (from select novels) of the

Australian Gothic landscape as a home for difference and strangeness(this landscape

where I set my novel). This is in order to establish whether these landscapes can be

used to embrace traditional depictions of intellectual disability, and whether these

landscapes release boundaries around characters with Down syndrome. Rather than

focus on broad discussions of the Australian Gothic bush this thesis seeks to bring the

character with Down syndrome into a landscape where they might find narrative

purchase. Bringing the character with Down syndrome out from beneath the

scaffolding of the Down Syndrome novel and into the Gothic landscape will create a

bigger narrative space where the character with Down syndrome may narrate their

own story and move beyond blunt binaries. This bringing together represents the contribution to new knowledge presented in this thesis. Therefore, the focus of this thesis remains on how the Australian landscape has been represented as disabled, and

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how a character with Down syndrome might not just exist, but find a narrative voice

within these landscapes.

2.1 – Australian Gothic

Australian Gothic began in 1870 with the serialised publication of Marcus Clarke’s

Tasmanian novel For The Term of His Natural Life ([1870] 1997) in the Australian

Journal. Clarke’s novel followed the movements of wrongly condemned convict

Rufus Dawes and Australia embraced Clarke’s combination of sublime and grotesque.

His affectionate mix of reality, myth, darkness and light still resonates with readers

(both local and international) today. This is strange, considering that at its time of

serialised publication Australia was still principally a place of significant fear:

Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness (Clarke in Kinsella 2008, 227).

This suggestion made by Clarke that, “Some (England, perhaps) see no beauty” in the

foreign, and often threatening Australian landscape is interesting because within this description Clarke accumulates tropes of the Gothic bush until, together, they form a picture of something universally human. My novel responds to these same ideas: “the

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beast who ha[s] not yet learned to walk on all fours” describes Jonah, and the novel is the story of how he comes to inhabit the body of the Tasmanian tiger. “The birds who cannot fly” is Samson, and this is commented on in Sing Fox to Me very early on when Samson tries to connect the image of himself from the outside and his own understanding of who he is using the song Blackbird by The Beatles (Lennon and

McCartney 1968):

That is what happens when my body wakes up before my mind. …singing in the dead of night… I can hear my mum next to me and even though she is driving her head is against the window. She sings along but in a voice I can hardly hear and I remember this is my dad’s song. …take these sunken eyes and learn to see… My body isn’t awake and so my mind curls back under the curtains and falls asleep again. In my sleep I think of Lucy and I think about my mum too but my mum is differently… ‘I am not odd.’ ‘Some people think you are,’ says my mum, ‘or can be. You need to stop signing. That was just to help you when you were little,’ she says. ‘You’re not deaf, are you?’ I shake my head. ‘Use your words, darling. Remember when we talked about you using full sentences.’ ‘Okay, Mother. I will use full sentences,’ and I say this in my robot voice and I make my robot arms. Lucy always thinks this is funny but Mum sighs and puts her forehead into her hands and this is her telling me that my answer is not the right answer. … for this moment to arise… I think I hear my mum crying (Kanake 2013, 40).

Samson tries to effectively “take these sunken eyes and learn to see” but does not succeed until he is removed from his family home and effectively released from the confines of the Down Syndrome novel. Where these images in Clarke’s description of the Gothic bush become dissimilar, or rather in contrast, to my story is in Clancy.

“The dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities” describes the dichotomy of Clancy being both dweller and coloniser.

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Clancy is ultimately rejected by the Gothic bush once he removes the manmade fence and allows the monstrosities in. Colonisation was a time of both loneliness and inhabiting, adoration and rejection, belonging and foreignness. Sing Fox to Me reflects on, and connects with, these dualities both in place and character. Samson,

Jonah, and Clancy are all foreigners, but where Clancy colonises the mountain, building gardens and fences, the twins inhabit burrows, hives and caves. Responding to the colonial narrative through the lens of Foucauldian power, together the twins and Clancy represent a move from Australian coloniser to inhabiter. Clancy resists, but Samson and Jonah accept through their separate relationships with the bee colony and the Tasmanian tiger skin. The bee colony accepts and reflects Samson’s style of communication, and the tiger covers Jonah’s tiny body and allows him to pursue an existence free from human interaction. Both boys are released from the expectations and boundaries of being human, and are therefore able to transgress the limitations of their disabilities.

Unlike his grandsons, Clancy is the memory keeper for the colonial world, but he also cleaves to this past. The dog, Queen Elizabeth, does not just disappear. Jonah devours her because, on a metaphorical level, he is overthrowing bastions of the old world. While Samson accepts and inhabits quickly, Jonah does not. It takes time for him to move from explorer (Kanake 2012, 126) to “native” (Kanake 2013, 288).

Jonah drowns his string of horses, at first because of his disappointment in Clancy as representing this past. Later it is because of the physical and metaphorical boundaries they represent.

The fence surrounding the paddock was old and rusty. Inside Jonah could see the white training yard fence and a small shack where they must keep

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the saddles and whips. Jonah lifted the heavy iron-gate and walked it open. The hinge creaked (Kanake 2013, 51).

Even King, the black kookaburra, is murdered not because of his connection to

Murray, but because he cannot fly; he is disabled. King is both indigenous to the land and unusual to the people currently inhabiting the land in the same way Murray is, but

Murray is not parent or protector to King: “He was wearing dirty, loose jeans and beneath the brim of his hat Jonah could see a small bird resting on his shoulder. It was black, like a crow or a butcherbird. The man was an Aborigine” (Kanake 2012, 51).

Thus, when Jonah murders Queenie and King, he is rejecting the Queen of England and the perceived “unusualness” of being aboriginal in Australia, particularly

Tasmania. However, one could argue (though not my intention as the novel’s author) that in suggesting that both King and Queen do not belong in Australia, Jonah is also suggesting that no human does. Here, Jonah becomes an important symbol because of how he moves from “explorer” to “native.” This interplay between resistance and acceptance is not new in Australian writing. Gothic researcher Gerry Turcotte writes in his paper Peripheral Fear that Australian Gothic emerges from a time of European agitation, and is subsequently built from a dual act of resistance and acceptance.

Although Australia was principally settled in the early nineteenth century… it is safe to say that the colony derived from formative settlement patterns in the eighteenth century, at a time of turmoil and agitation in Europe…. Given Australia’s … origins and the instability and tension of the time it is not surprising that the Gothic mode influenced early writers. Nor is it surprising that [Australia’s] literature continues to reflect that grimness of a perspective often associated with a “Gothic sensibility (Turcotte 1998, 1).

The Australian Gothic mode, which sprang out of this time, accepts the existence of polarisations and does not necessarily attempt to dismantle binaries. Binaries open up

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an almost endless darkness between two lit beacons and darkness is the terrain of the

Gothic novel. However, this darkness is not easily inhabited. Like a lonely character or forgotten domestic animal, the Australian landscape often reacts protectively, sometimes even aggressively, to new characters, stories, and certainly settlement:

[These early] “works… offer disturbing images of colonial existence in a land that seems almost actively to resist settlement and habitation, haunted by ghosts or phantoms, mythological beasts, unsettling aural effects, and the horrifying residues of colonial frontier violence” (Weaver in University of Melbourne digital Archive 2009).

The bush steals children, transforms families, devours crops, separates loved ones, and conceals criminals. It is an active and often primary participant in the story. In

Sing Fox to Me the landscape participates in several ways: the mountain breaks

Clancy’s leg, it brings Essie and Bill together, all three female characters are devoured by the mountain and the tiger skin brings itself back to the mountain using the body of Jonah Fox. The mountain, as a symbolic space, has a long history in

Australian fiction of being a place for monsters:

The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle in their black gorges a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly on his bier. In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds’ shout among the rock clefts, from the melancholy gums strips of white bark hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great gray kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that when night comes, from out the bottomless depths of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and in form like a monstrous sea- calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire, dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have 409

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named them out of their sufferings - Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair (Clarke in Kinsella 2008, 227)

As a literary space Australia is capable of being both monstrous and alluring, new and old, natural and unnatural but it is in the Gothic mode that these binaries find a place to exist. The modern day tiger is a lone survivor, and without a pack. It is not just a symbol of man’s casual tyranny over nature, or a sudden preoccupation with a post extinction existence, but rather it is a symbol of place. Like Benjamin Compson and the misunderstanding over his intentions with the girl from town, the Thylacine was wrongly accused of violence and Tasmania has been trying to reinvent it ever since.

This is seen in Sing Fox to Me when Jonah shrugs on the tiger skin. He is really trying to reinvent himself.

Because of these ways of viewing and representing Australia, it has already been marked as an acceptable location for difference and fear: “Long before the fact of Australia was ever confirmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imagined as a grotesque space, a land peopled by monsters” (Turcotte 1998, 1). The truth was, more people could go missing in the bush than the moors, and haunted natural monuments had fewer restrictions and could haunt further back in time. The

Australian landscape shifts and changes, and unlike English or American Gothic modes, Australian Gothic only welcomes those with some internal duality. Thus,

Australian Gothic characters, particularly those who are damaged or different in some way, must have some internal duality to survive within the harsh Australian landscape. This requirement for duality arguably finds its origins in colonisation and the resistance and eventual acceptance of the Gothic mode through the shifting tensions within Australian settlement. Australian characters resist the act of being

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colonised while colonising themselves and, are often left in this act of resistance.

Australian novels outside the canon of disability are filled with characters, such as

Irma from The Picnic at Hanging Rock ([1967] 1999) and The Secret of Picnic Rock:

Joan Lindsay’s Final Chapter by Joan Lindsay (1987) or Quick from Cloudstreet,

who grudgingly traverse the boundary between resistance and acceptance, survival

and the sublime. These characters are not disabled, but the polarisations expressed by

them in their novels create an interplay between nature and human that forms the

foundation of Australian Gothic work, making it a highly adaptive genre.

This adaptability is further revealed by the colonial relationship with boundaries

within narrative text. Like the Down Syndrome novel, the colonial text adheres to

boundaries such as fences and maps: “Fences are a metonym of the constrictions of

European habitation in the “horizontal sublime” of Australian space” (Ashcroft in

O’Reilly 2010, 25). The colonial text rarely moves beyond these strict physical

boundaries, and if they do danger is virtually inevitable. Interestingly it was not

claustrophobic spaces (such as the castles and dungeons of the European Gothic

sensibilities) that instilled fear in those exploring and colonising Australia. It was

vastness: “One of the enduring conflicts in the Australian cultural consciousness was

the conflict between the incomprehensible vastness of Australian space and the

colonial necessity for borders – inscribed on maps and erected in post and wire”

(Ashcroft in O’Reilly 2010, 25). Vast, seemingly endless barren landscapes were

frequently a cause of fear for early Australian settlers, consequently vast landscapes

(land, beach or ocean) became places of fear for Australian characters. In the

introduction to a multi authored story collection entitled Australis Imaginarium

(2010), editor Tehani Wessely discusses this vastness. She writes that there is,

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“something about the vastness of this land [Australia] and the many weird, wild and

dangerous creatures that populate it that lends itself to terrifying tales” (Wessely

2013). Similarly, University of Tasmania lecturer and author of Tasmanian Visions,

Roslynn Haynes writes that the “void” was the great fear of early inland explorers.

[The] most alarming prospect faced by the inland explorers, coming from the confines of heavily populated Britain and Europe was that of void. This was particularly true of the desert with its repeated vistas of empty horizontal planes under a cloudless, overarching sky. It therefore seems paradoxical that this vast expanse of apparently empty space was so frequently described, in their accounts, in Gothic terms often closure and entrapment (Haynes 1999, 77).

While vastness is not a focus for this research (primarily because Sing Fox to Me flees

the coastal vast for a very enclosed, even claustrophobic, fictional mountain in

Western Tasmania) it is important to both understand and reflect on vastness as a

character concept within the Australian Gothic landscape. This move to the north is

not uncommon in Gothic writing, both in Australia and Europe: “European romanticism had sought the Gothic and the sublime in northern nature; only the southern experience suggested better. The flora, the fauna, the landscape, the natives were all constructed by Europeans as exotic if repugnant and grotesque” (Beiharz

[1997] 2002, 30). While not necessarily considered “exotic” the Gothic bush has an almost “unreal” or “imagined” quality. The real place is, of course, not imagined, although as a literary space the Gothic bush stretches the boundaries of the real and imagined. As a figure, the Tasmanian tiger sits at the centre of one of these “unreal” landscapes, capable of being both romanticised and grotesque. As a literary space the tiger mountain in Sing Fox to Me is both south and north. South from Europe, and

Queensland within the narrative, and north from populated and “settled” regions of

Tasmania. Landscape becoming character also opens the space for characters to be 412

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described as, or to take on characteristics of, the landscape. In Sing Fox to Me, Jonah

becomes fauna when he shrugs on the tiger skin and becomes a Tasmanian tiger.

Australian Gothic continues to provide a home for characters with

abnormalities – for those dumped, rejected, or feared – and cannot, therefore, be

entirely separated from its European roots. However, as stated above, the Australian

Gothic narrative crosses boundaries. Even the transposing of the Gothic genre from

Europe to Australia is a crossing of a cultural and literary boundary. In fact, the

Gothic fiction author often erects obvious boundaries within the novel only to

penetrate them. Whether this is because the author plans to transcend boundaries or because boundaries are inevitable, the Gothic narrative is foundationally built on dissolving, ignoring or demolishing normative human restrictions, even those (like fences and walls) that are there for the purposes of safety. Why? The answer can be found in the space beyond the fence. The Australian bush is more frightening than the city; a binary contested by works such as Harp in The South by Ruth Park. The less a landscape is understood, the more fearful it becomes. Likewise, the character with a disability can, and is, more frightening because less is often known about them.

Turcotte discusses this literary response to fear using the image of early colonial mapping in his paper Peripheral Fear. Turcotte writes that early colonial writers,

“began to map out a specifically local variant of the Gothic mode” to articulate experiences of “isolation, entrapment, fear of pursuit and fear of the unknown”

(Turcotte 1998, 1). In colonial Australia, characters were often limited to convicts, law enforcers, settlers, bushrangers, and indigenous peoples and, unlike Britain,

Australia seemed to actively resist settlement and capture. This duality within the

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Australian Gothic emerges from a time of European agitation and is subsequently

built from a dual act of resistance and acceptance.

Although Australia was principally settled in the early nineteenth century… it is safe to say that the colony derived from formative settlement patterns in the eighteenth century, at a time of turmoil and agitation in Europe…. Given Australia’s … origins and the instability and tension of the time it is not surprising that the Gothic mode influenced early writers. Nor is it surprising that [Australia’s] literature continues to reflect that grimness of a perspective often associated with a “Gothic sensibility” (Turcotte 2009, 17).

Colonial Australia was the place England feared: “The Antipodes was a world of reversals, the dark subconscious of Britain. It was, for all intents and purposes, Gothic

par excellence, the dungeon of the world” (Turcotte 1998, 1). Like Australia being the

“dark subconscious of Britain”, Tasmania represents the wild and dark subconscious

of Australia. Tasmania is also a place, however, of significant and important literary change. In fact, many of Australia’s literary “firsts” have been set against a

Tasmanian backdrop (Crane 2012, 1). Tasmania has a long history of attracting storytellers, both Tasmanian and mainlanders, to the island. In The Anthology of

Australian Colonial Gothic Fiction (2007) Ken Gelder suggests that the: “Colonial

Australian Gothic is drawn to primal or primordial landscapes, no doubt reflecting the early sense that even relative proximate places were - in spite of the rapid development of the colony - still wild and unknown” (Gelder in Gelder and Weaver

2007, 9). The blunt binaries of the Tasmanian landscape, the wilderness in particular, come from this assertion that the state is still wild and unknown. This is included in

Sing Fox to Me in two very different ways, first through the eyes of Jonah and then

Samson:

Jonah could already tell Tasmania was going to be different. Someone on The Able Tasman called the rest of Australia the mainland. Jonah liked it. 414

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He liked knowing that Tasmania was different from where he came from”. (Kanake 2013, 43).

And a page later from Samson:

My dad says things can stay hidden in Tasmania. He says, ‘there is still bush in the west no one’s ever seen.’ And I think this means that when you go west the trees all join in together and are so thick you cannot get through and it is like a song from Special School that goes, ‘you can’t go over them and you can’t go under them. You’ll have to go through them. I’m not scared, what a beautiful day.’ ‘Can you get through,’ I ask with my voice because my dad doesn’t like it when I sign. ‘Not even with a Whippersnipper,’ says my dad (Kanake 2013, 44).

There are in fact still regions of Tasmania that remain untouched and unchartered by man. However this is also the argument, presented by the landscape itself, for being released from these binaries. The mystery of these areas fuels the movement inwards from Tasmania’s otherwise hellish and heavenly polarised ends. It is the freedom of not really knowing that makes Tasmania such an active and prolific landscape within

Australian writing, but it is the certainty of heaven and hell that makes it an ideal location for the Gothic novel.

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2.2 – Hell and Utopia

On the 9th of October 2006 the ABC News online reported that Tasmania’s slogan

“The Natural State” would soon be replaced with “Explore the Possibilities.” This

public slogan-change represented a significant ideological shift for the island, but

dramatic changes are not unusual for Tasmania. In January 1856 the name of the

island, then Van Diemen’s Land, was changed to Tasmania in the state’s first act of

rebranding: “The name change of the island to Tasmania was in part an effort to

dispel the gloomy, unsavoury connotations of Van Diemen’s Land” (Punter 2012,

387). Many followed, even if only in colloquial language. “Transylvania” (Davidson

2012, 313), changed to the more modern “Apple Isle”, and throughout this time there

was a slow movement (both on the island and mainland) towards describing Tasmania

as the “deep south” of Australia and those that live here there not as Australians, but

“Taswegians” (replacing the once popular “Vandemonian”). Even the proliferation of

the image of the Tasmanian tiger is, in itself, an act of rebranding the history and

cultural expectations of Tasmania.

Tasmania has always seemed ‘different’ from the Mainland. It is an island of high latitudes, of mountains, lakes, mists, clouds and rain; of wastes of awesome scenery, tempestuously mocking the homely allusions made by the early settlers. Tasmania is also the only state which systematically set about erasing its first half-century; under a new name, it was determined to be born again (Davidson 1988, 307 ).

This is further represented in Sing Fox to Me when Clancy and Murray are discussing

the changes in how the Tasmania tiger has come to be viewed, just prior to its official extinction in 1986.

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Cascade’s putting one on their labels. Did you know that? What does a tiger have to do with apples? Leave it a few years and kids’ll be wearing a tiger on their fucking uniforms. Bet they won’t make them look like the sheep killing little buggers they were either... They’ll probably even put one on license plates. The entire country’s going to be saying sorry forever… The tigers on the signs and bottles looked the same. They were tame tigers, never shown to be walking or rearing up or opening their mouths. They were frozen (Kanake 2013, 46).

But despite these multiple rebrandings, there is still no denying that Tasmania, like the rest of colonised Australia, has a sometimes torrid history. Tasmania is often described as “an island haunted, preoccupied by its past traumatic events” (Punter

2012, 389). But in 2006 the island “looked forward” and publically reinvented itself once again. Of the change in slogan Education Minister David Bartlett said:

Explore the Possibilities… is about exploring a broader set of values that enhance Tasmanian lifestyle. Rather than just being wholly tourism focussed we’re now focussing on what it is to be Tasmanian, what it is to live in Tasmania and what potential we believe this island has” (ABC 2013).

In the same article the ABC reported the creator of the slogan, public servant Bridget

Hiller, as saying, “I wanted to get across the sort of wildness of Tasmania and its

isolation as well as the growth that we’ve been experiencing.” But beyond the literal

interpretation of this slogan is something much more important, the social and cultural

abandoning of “natural” (perhaps even normal) to the “possible.” This shift identifies

Tasmania an ideal literary location for the character with difference. In embracing

these and many more juxtapositions and binaries, Tasmania becomes an ideal location

to include a character traditionally trapped in the polarisations of monster and angel,

not just because it is heaven and hell (discussed later) but because, as a literary

landscape, Tasmania welcomes change and diversity. Sing Fox to Me brings the

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character with Down syndrome who has, as outlined in previous chapters, been in

need of reinvention to a landscape that welcomes change. Reinvention in Tasmania is

certainly not new, particularly within the literary landscape. In fact, Tasmania is a

place of almost continual literary reinvention, and this is possibly because (rather than

in spite of) the blunt and sometimes ill-fitting binaries used to describe and represent the state.

The island was portrayed as the source of psychic distress, cultural disenfranchisement, intense disappointment, a land scape-goat for social evils, it was gothic, it was grotesque, it was hell, it was heaven, it was penal, it was paradise (Cranston 2003, 29).

Tasmania, “the natural state”, is still also a place of environmental excess: “The

colony was cradled in excess, grew up with the constraints of intricacy in landscape

and social arrangements, and today delights in odd juxtapositions” (Davidson 2012,

310). Every traditional Australian landscape (with the exception of sand deserts)

exists in Tasmania, and therefore almost any story is possible. Australian Gothic

writers frequently turn to the island and, in many ways, the traditional Gothic

conventions and stories often seem a better fit in Tasmania than the mainland. As

Australia moves from its European roots it turns from an external Gothic contrast to

an internal juxtaposition. Tasmanian is the space within Australia that is both

accepted and resisted, adored and feared, a place of change and timelessness. It is

heaven and hell.

This is the view of Tasmania as our very own little gothic repository… A gothic Tasmania proves to be a synthesising vision, since it can accommodate disjunctions between past and present, even thriving on them, settling them down in a common landscape. Or, more correctly, an uncommonly picturesque one, of crags and the Splits, of a myriad of sudden lakes, or the wonderfully overwrought coastline of Tasman Peninsula, with its clefts and pavements and blowholes located exactly where a gothic novelist would want them (Davidson 1988 310).

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As mentioned earlier, Mark Twain was the first to describe Tasmania as both hell and

heaven in his writing regarding the island. He wrote in 1910 that Tasmania was “a

sort of bringing of Heaven and Hell together” (Twain in Crane and Wood 2012).

Much later in 2004 novelist Nicholas Shakespeare, in his novel In Tasmania, uses

light and dark to comment on the polarised spectrum of Tasmania. He writes, “there is

the Tasmanian light, and then, all over the island, there are pockets of extraordinary

darkness.” (Shakespeare 2004, 270) In an interview with The Australian newspaper in

2013, playwright Tom Stoppard (author of Beyond the Neck – a play about the Port

Arthur Massacre) said: [Tasmania] “is beautiful but impenetrable, and there’s

something about the Tasmanian psyche that can be beautiful and impenetrable too.

We’re at the bottom of Australia, which is at the bottom of the world, and I think

Tasmanians, consciously or unconsciously feel that” (Flanagan in Hugo, 2013). This

is certainly felt in The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997) by Richard Flanagan,

which opens with an elegiac description of Tasmania that exposes the Island as a

place where something is always concealed but nonetheless felt. In this description

Flanagan does not suggest that “the island which few have heard of” is epic or

sentimental (and yet both the epic and elegiac exist), rather he is suggesting that the

story is the landscape and the landscape is story. Neither can exist without the other.

Flanagan writes:

All this you will come to understand but can never know, and all of it took place long, long ago in a world that has since perished into peat, in a forgotten winter on an island which few have heard. It began in that time before snow, completely and irrevocably, covers footprints. As black clouds shroud the start and moonlit heavens, as an unshadowable darkness come upon the whispering land (Flanagan 1998, 1).

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Flanagan tells the reader what they will understand and what they will not, making an

important distinction between knowing and understanding. In Australia the landscape

has been both a literal and literary dumping ground for society’s unwanted and

damaged, and has historically been represented as weird, strange and disabled itself.

There are a series of responses to Tasmania; one is to present it as a Gothic horror land, and the other is to present it as Utopia. But nobody wants to look at truths that might be more complex. And everybody’s after a little box to put the place into, rather than to accept that it’s a large and moving mystery. And they ought to try to come to terms with some of the tensions that make that mystery, to me, so interesting. I personally think it’s a terrific place for a writer - there’s an enormous well of subconscious experience that’s accumulated over centuries (Flanagan in Hugo, 2013).

This “subconscious” experience surfaces from within Tasmania itself, and literary

texts both before and after Flanagan’s novel continue to respond and add to this

experience. The Tasmanian landscape is, as Flanagan puts it, “a moving mystery”,

capable of not just the blunt binaries mentioned above but the full spectrum of

experience between Utopian beauty and hellish danger. Tasmania is marked for difference. As a literary landscape, it rejects being known and, because of its still uncharted territories, it can remain literally unknown. However, the real literary

freedoms, sustained by the Gothic genre, come from the island’s frequent reinvention.

Tasmania wants writers and authors to tap into the reservoir of the island’s

“subconscious experience” but, once there, it wants to be reinvented and exposed: “I

think the Tasmanian experience is a particularly powerful and rich one on which to

draw. The great problem with a lot of Australian writing, I think, is that it's constantly

in flight from the truths of this place rather than engaging with it” (Flanagan in Hugo,

2013). Tasmania welcomes the Gothic because of its hybridity and capacity for

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conflations, by fragmentation and incompletion, by a rejection of set values and yet a dependence on establishment” (Turcotte 1998, 1).

Tasmania is still a place of strangeness and guilt. The subconscious experience

and ways of looking at Tasmania may never change. It may always be a place peopled

with convicts, cannibals, shy tigers and hunters, but it dares Australia to take it further. Tasmania says, “Explore the Possibilities” and, as a literary landscape, the island is an ideal location for this exploratory inventiveness. Which is why, when

developing my novel, I chose to set Sing Fox to Me on a mountain in Western

Tasmania; a state that I, as a practitioner of writing, had never seen or known. A place

without desert at its heart, a place that did not shift on sand but reached down into the

crust of the earth. Untamed and wild, filled with endlessly dying and growing

greenery. This state did not spread itself out. It didn’t want me to understand, just to

be convinced. If the Gothic mode did, in fact, open up possibilities for characters with

Down syndrome to transcend boundaries unaided and unpunished, a landlocked

mountain in rugged West Tasmania seemed like the perfect terrain to test my theory.

As a result, Down South became the place where Samson Fox explored the

possibilities of boundary, voice, and independence from parental protectors.

My novel culturally represents a character with Down syndrome as an active

agent in his own life, capable of complex communication and emotion. However,

without the Gothic Tasmanian landscape and the narrative elasticity of the Gothic

novel, Samson would have stayed trapped with his mother in the domestic space, and

Sing Fox to Me may have been at risk of becoming a more traditional Down

Syndrome novel. This movement away from the traditional Down Syndrome novel

was central to this project and for reasons discussed in Chapter Three: Self Reflection:

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Burning Down the Fence was one of most difficult spaces to navigate within my own practice.

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CHAPTER THREE –

Self Reflection: Burning Down the Fence.

Disability is… one of the many things in heaven and earth that we have so far failed to [adequately] explore, even in some of the most well-known literature (Hall 2012, 8).

A reflective process was central to the development of my novel and thesis. The

Down Syndrome novel rarely seemed to match up with experiences expressed in

disability memoir, research and stories found in books such as Greater Expectations

or my own lived experiences as a practitioner. Early in my process of writing about disability I recycled many of the same limitations found in numerous Down

Syndrome novels. It was only in reflection that I began to notice this trend. In my

Honours novel I wrote a scene between a character with an intellectual impairment (a scene that would later be cut from Lazarus and rewritten as a scene in Sing Fox to

Me) and in this scene I referred to Boz as a, “quiet sleeping giant with the mind of a child” (Kanake 2011, 39). I began to question why I was using this language to describe characters with intellectual differences or impairments because in describing

Boz as childlike I was also limiting the readers’ expectations of him. The language used in Lazarus and Down Syndrome novels in general did not reflect what I know to

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be true of intellectual disability in life. I reflected on how the expectations of

intellectual disability are embedded in the language used to describe it. In beginning

to represent characters with Down syndrome and the expectations of the reader I realised it was crucial to change some of the ways the character with Down syndrome was described. Samson is never depicted as monstrous or unattractive. In fact, he is very conventionally handsome. He is never described as baby-like or having a mind like a child, and nor does his name conjure something ridiculous. These choices work against the grain of the Down Syndrome novel and, in some ways, the Australian

Gothic novel as well. Throughout the process of researching and writing the exegesis my research was the barometer for what I didn’t want to replicate from the Down

Syndrome novel in my own narrative. In beginning to understand how I was initially describing Samson and Boz from Lazarus I quickly came to realise that the only way to work against the literary blueprint for Down syndrome was to reflect on my creative practice.

Often my engagement with the primary fiction texts altered the way I understood the expectations of my character with Down syndrome and the blueprint I was attempting to dismantle. While I did not journal these methods and processes I did write character development, interviews and disconnected shorter works of approximately 80,000 words about each of my characters (both primary and secondary). This writing was not included in the novel but was instrumental in developing three very distinct narrative voices and moving Samson beyond the conventional boundary of voice. Narrating Sing Fox to Me from three points of view, as opposed to Samson carrying the narration alone, allowed me to create a more complex understanding of voice in relation to disability. By expanding the parameters

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around the novel I was able to consciously create a character with Down syndrome

who navigated around and, more importantly, often through the blueprint of social

and literary expectation and construction.

As my project progressed, I discovered that many of the difficulties of

representation, outlined in Chapter One of this thesis and present in most novels

where a character with Down syndrome is included, were difficult to move beyond.

These difficulties are reflected in the material discussed throughout this exegesis, the

boundary of the mother and her narrative voice, the narrative voice of the character with Down syndrome and the Gothic space as a creator of monsters.

3.1: The “Little” Mother as Boundary in Sing Fox to Me.

The first draft of Sing Fox to Me had four primary narrative voices, Samson, Jonah,

Clancy and the 17 year-old older sister of the twins, Sylvia Fox. Over 40,000 words of Sylvia’s story were cut from the first draft of the novel and an entire character and narrative point of view were dissolved. In removing the parents, David and Alice, I hoped Samson would be free of familial protection but in creating his sister Sylvia

“the little mother”, I simply shifted the confines of the mother to the nearest woman.

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Where the mother/Down Syndrome novel follows the parenting ordeals of a mother

from the birth of her child, Sylvia, like Lainey from Foal’s Bread, seemed to have

little choice but to pick up the threads of her parents’ inadequacies. Despite shifting the focus from mother to sister, the narrative still developed rigid and arguably inescapable boundaries around how the character with Down syndrome was viewed.

This was in part due to the nature of Sylvia’s relationship to Samson but it was also due to her gender. As a man Clancy is capable of ignoring the boys, manipulating them at times and even harming them. As a woman in a Down Syndrome novel

Sylvia was not at first capable of releasing her protection around her brother. There is certainly still space around the conclusion of this research within relation to gender not just (as mentioned earlier in this thesis), in regard to the character with Down syndrome but also the gendered expectations of the caregiver. In Sing Fox to Me

Sylvia, like Noah Nancarrow from Foal’s Bread, was locked into judgment for her

actions. If she left her brothers she was selfish, but if she stayed, her “natural” care

tightened the boundaries around Samson and made it impossible for him to move

beyond them, let alone speak for himself. I made the creative choice to remove Sylvia

from the story.

3.2: Down syndrome, Australian Gothic and Bees.

There is already existing connection between bees and disability, however fragile, in

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further connection between gendered “Otherness” and bees in The Year of the Flood

(2009) by Margaret Atwood. In these novels bees are the conduits to the natural world. They exist between flora and fauna and inhabit a liminal space that can be both mystical, as seen in Remembering Babylon ([1993] 2009) by David Malouf, or representative of a character’s search for language and understanding. In Sing Fox to

Me I created a language that only Samson, his grandmother, his girlfriend, and the native hive of bees could understand. Bees are an interesting literary device because they are often presented in very different ways for very diverse reasons, with one distinct and pervasive similarity: language.

The themes of language, sound and communication as a group construct

through the use of the hive, are almost universally included in fiction writing about

bees. However, as shown in chapter 15 of Remembering Babylon, bees are often

relegated to mystic or spiritual metaphor, but in doing so they can also become a

symbol of entrapment. When the bees swarm around Janet in Remembering Babylon

they envelop her body and from inside the swarm she has an epiphany that is both

religious and natural: “She thought, just for a moment … she would know at last what is was like to be an angel” (Malouf 2009, 140). After her spiritual epiphany, Janet

turns from her old life and becomes both nun and beekeeper.

The bees in Sing Fox to Me connect with this idea of being trapped, although

it is not in relation to the body as in Remembering Babylon with Janet, but as a device

to free Samson from expectations of how his language should sound and what he

should say. In my novel, the connection between the natural world and spirituality is

still principally governed by the Christian faith via the bible stories Samson uses to

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understand Jonah “of the belly” and Samson “the strong.” However, the connection

between the bees and Samson’s language is dissimilar to Janet’s epiphany because it

is an everyday experience not a transcendental one. The bees in Sing Fox to Me were

also an attempt to reposition one of Gothard’s “less articulate” people with Down

syndrome who, my novel argues, are not less articulate but are simply communicating

in a different language.

As a practitioner I approached intellectual disability not from wanting to

represent ignorance or lunacy, but from a desire to represent difference. Samson’s

voice trips across the page, moving back and forward in time with his mood and

memory like Benjamin Compson in The Sound and the Fury, often bending the

“laws” of traditional narrative structure in order to reflect how he thinks and feels.

Despite this, there are still several characters in the novel (his mother in

particular)nthat expect Samson to change, perhaps even mimic, what they consider

“normal.” Alice is not capable of hearing Samson’s often probing questions, and she counsels him to hide his disability through mimicking her own style of communication:

Your granddad might find you a bit strange, or uncomfortable. Just to start with. He’ll get used to you, darling, like we all have. Give him a chance… Like this sort of thing, darling, not answering with full sentences. Your grandpa might find that odd (Kanake 2013, 40).

Rather than leave Samson in the mimicry his mother thinks necessary, I wanted to create a space, like Rick Riordan does in the Percy Jackson (2005-2009) series, where

Samson’s disability doesn’t make him “special”, but special. In Percy Jackson,

Percy’s ADHD and dyslexia are symptoms of being a demigod and as soon as Percy

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is in the right place, Camp Half God, his “disabilities” become useful, even necessary, for his survival. The space where Samson is special and not “special” is in his relationship with the bees:

With my hands I ask the bees questions. The bees answer me but it is not like at home. At home, I ask a question and my mum sighs and tells me to play outside. At home, I ask my dad a question and he answers it but in his mouth my question turns around and becomes complicated and the sign for complicated is both hands like cages sitting on top of each other. One hand goes one way in a circle and the other hand goes the other way. This is how my dad answers me. He always goes the other way. The bees are different. They go my way (Kanake 2013, 135).

Like Samson the bees in Sing Fox to Me live in the “dead part” of the world they inhabit, the part that comes after trauma and before regrowth:

‘Choppin wood with me da. Next thing, crack,’ said his father and he clapped his hands together for emphasis, ‘down it comes. Lightning. Like an arrow hitting a target. Right down the middle. That tree had me da baffled. It was dead through the centre, still is, but the rest is as alive as anything out there,’ said his father. He pointed out the window to the bush. There was no fence and no lawn back then. ‘The bees live in the dead part’ (Kanake 2013, 125).

The language of the bees is broken but poetic and shares a space with Samson’s language, which is a hybrid between spoken English and sign, specifically Auslan.

The hierarchy of detail, and what makes certain information important to both

Samson and the bees, is different, almost inverted. “Am I hearing you?” Samson asks the hive: “Not hearing us. No. Understanding” (Kanake 2013, 134). It is this ability to communicate that moves Samson from migrant with a foreign language, to local with a recognisable voice: “All migrations represent a dislocation of sorts” (Turcotte

1998, 1) but it is also this communication that moves Samson from coloniser, because the bees are the colony and in many ways they colonise him not through his body but

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through a hybrid language. The only human who really understands Samson is

Murray, the Aboriginal beekeeper. They do not understand each other because they

are both “Other”: Murray is no more or less connected to the flora and fauna on the

mountain than Samson. They understand each other because Murray is a beekeeper

and Samson “speaks” bee.

In an attempt to understand, and make solid or literal the way that Samson interacts with the world, Samson approaches information like a collector. He collects stones, words, stories and memories, almost as if he is trying to manifest himself physically in a world that largely rejects him. The bees collect stories and pass them down through the generations of the hive. Samson wants to be heard, but often the meaning of his language is missed, particularly by his parents.

In bringing together Down syndrome and the Australian Gothic, the bees were, I believe, my most important literary contribution in terms of how they fill the metonymic gap defined as, “ a sense of distance that comes about through the use of certain linguistic strategies.” (Ashcroft 2001). This gap is further defined by Ashcroft in his essay Reading Post Colonial Australia:

Post-colonial writers find themselves in a double bind in which language, as a field which is in itself constructed, is conveying two contradictory orders of message; identity and otherness. Consequently, post colonial discourse copes with this double bind by inserting a hermeneutic space between itself and received language, a space that could be called the “metonymic gap” (Ashcroft in O’Reilly 2010, 31).

As a response to the metonymic gap present in all literature including a character with

Down syndrome, the bees signify a shift from representing the character as poorly spoken or silent, trapped, monstrous or angelic, but also signify a significant

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movement away from the more traditional and didactic Down Syndrome novel towards a portrayal of Down syndrome that owns itself. The bees and their relationship with Samson is only possible because of the language he learnt in Special

School: a language taught to him because people with Down syndrome were thought

to be incapable of comprehensible communication:

Over the past fifty years we have seen the lives of people with disabilities change almost beyond recognition as expectations of their capacities have grown but it seems clear that society itself has to change to keep up with this new reality (Gothard 2010, 337).

This idea of language that is both misunderstood or “unheard” is also a preoccupation

of post colonial writing because it often signifies a movement from coloniser to

inhabitant: “For Australian writers, language was a medium of transition par

excellence” (Ashcroft in O’Reilly 2010, 31). In Sing Fox to Me the bees and their

language are an ultimately successful attempt to move Samson out from under the

colonial possession of the Down Syndrome novel, and “keep up with the lived

reality” of Down syndrome. This proved extremely difficult because although the

Gothic mode opens a space for otherness it often pays for this space with monstrosity.

Monstrosity is central to the Gothic, beyond simply being a trope of the genre. The

monster is the Gothic itself. Thus despite being a location for difference and

transgression the Australian Gothic is also where everyone either becomes monstrous

or is devoured by the monstrous. One of the primary outcomes discovered through the

interactivity between research and creative practice in this thesis is the shifting of the

monster. In order to have a character with Down syndrome in a Gothic novel that is

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After writing my novel I realised that this “monster” or monstrous element was

not a person, as is found in Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men, or Benjamin

Compson from The Sound and the Fury, but a characterised energy throughout the

novel. The monster in Sing Fox to Me is not Jonah, although he makes a good red

herring, or Clancy, even though the reader cannot trust his point of view, or River and

Jack despite being malevolent ghosts. In trying not to create another “other”, or to shift otherness from Samson to Jonah, Clancy, or Murray, I made grief the monster in

Sing Fox to Me, and by physical extension the mountain that contains this grief. This

interaction between melancholy and the Australian environment has, as mentioned in

Chapter Two, a long history in Australian writing often as a reaction against the

perceived “newness” of the landscape. Likewise, the “newness” of Samson Fox as a

narrator reacted against the confines of the narrative, sometimes pushing the story into

areas I did not necessarily want it to go.

When writing Sing Fox to Me I set out to create a new kind of narrator capable

of resisting monstrosity. A study of the Down Syndrome novel reveals that in

diagnosing disability the character with Down syndrome is bound by the reader’s

expectations. In the Gothic novel, these expectations also exist. Once the monstrosity

of the character is revealed, the character with Down syndrome or an undiagnosed

intellectual disability, becomes a monster so they can be removed from the story (as

seen in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men when Lennie Small is “put down” by his friend George). I tried not to create another “other” but in writing this novel I also

tried to respond to the Gothic monstrosity that clings to the character with intellectual

difference. In order to do this I built Sing Fox to Me from the most traditional Gothic

tropes: Tasmania, ghosts, secrets, dead bodies and cloying natural landscapes. This

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was in order to understand how Samson Fox could fit into a pre-existing Gothic

landscape and what effect his presence would have within the narrative landscape.

Early in writing Sing Fox to Me, I realised that while I could change the reader’s expectations for Samson and give him a voice, I could not shift other tropes of the

Gothic genre without creating an unmanageable ripple effect. More than one experimental or new narrative element would upset the balance of Samson’s presence and undermine a real understanding of what was needed to include him.

When creating Samson I was very aware that in order to make any kind of sustained contribution to knowledge I would need to reach further than inclusion and further than voice. A strong voice was necessary, central even, to the project, but so was giving Samson something to do. The bees emerged out of a desire to give

Samson a place and a voice but soon after finishing the second draft (included in this

PhD) I realised that I did not need to work that hard to include Samson, nor did I need to reorder the natural world in order to make a space for Samson. He already had one.

In rewriting this novel for the second time for publication (third draft) I found myself uncovering and remaking decisions I initially felt locked into regarding Samson. For instance, why does Lucy need to live on the coast? Why can’t she be a Tasmanian with full access to Samson and therefore have more of a role in the story? Why do

Samson and Lucy need to like each other right away just because they both have

Down syndrome? And, why avoid a love story between them when a love story between two characters with Down syndrome (particularly a story where they are not separated) is a significant contribution to literature? Why does he need to communicate with the bees rather than with the people living on the mountain? In removing the bees from Sing Fox to Me I have been able to make Samson a deeper

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participant in the story, and have created a stronger intimacy with Tasmania and a

Gothic space.

Tasmania is not just an acceptable location for Gothic difference but

Australia’s Gothic basement. Using the unnamed mountain I tried to make Samson

not so strange but setting him down in a very strange place. In doing so, however, this

novel adds to the stories that force Tasmania into the basement beneath Australia

where it has little choice but to grow in monstrosity given the boundaries set by its

miscreation. While many of the boundaries common in the Down Syndrome novel are dissolved or contested within the Gothic genre it still requires a monster and in Sing

Fox to Me this monster came in the form of a place. In shifting the expectation of

monstrosity (using the Tasmanian Tiger skin) Samson was given the freedom to

transgress boundaries around the expectations of Down syndrome and in so doing is

an important contribution to new knowledge.

3.3: Becoming Not so Strange, in a Strange Place

The central focus of the creative practice Ph.D. is the dual submission of a creative

piece and a practice-led thesis in order to engage with common elements in both. This

connectivity provides a dynamic and living examination into the pitfalls of trying to

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create something new, or in stretching the boundaries of expectation. Early in this project I identified many complications, some of them not included within this project, in representing a character with Down syndrome inside the Down Syndrome novel. Character expectations, narrative voice and “care” as a protective boundary were examined, not just to unpack the current Down Syndrome novel but because each of these difficulties arose in my own work, and will continue to arise given the alchemy of any new narrative. Many of these difficulties in representation, outlined in

Chapter One of this thesis and present in most novels where a character with Down syndrome is included, were difficult to move beyond or within. The most difficult for me to understand within my own creative practice and Sing Fox to Me specifically was the Gothic space as a creator of monsters.

As mentioned throughout this thesis, representations of characters with Down syndrome have historically fallen into two polarised categories – angel and monster – with few transcending the boundaries to become fully realised characters with their own autonomous voice. This lack of freedom in voice is generally connected to the fear of the character with Down syndrome and their inclusion into the world, even an imagined world. Within the Australian Gothic mode, however, there is the expectation of monstrosity. The Gothic needs monsters to survive. In this project it was important to navigate Samson Fox around this monstrosity because the monstrous is central to the ongoing difficulty with the representation of Down syndrome outside of the Gothic mode.

Despite making several significant contributions to furthering the inclusion of the character with Down syndrome into narrative fiction, Sing Fox to Me still falls into many of the same pitfalls. The voice of the mother was virtually impossible to 435

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silence without first excluding women entirely from the story, and Gothic

monstrousness was difficult to relocate without creating another “other.” However,

Sing Fox to Me follows many of the traditional conventions of the Gothic genre

without placing limits or boundaries around the concepts of the monstrous, while at

the same time recognising these boundaries as very ingrained in the genre. While many of the choices made, both consciously and unconsciously, in Sing Fox to Me

represent a significant contribution to literature and new knowledge I am also mindful

of Gothard’s suggestion in Greater Expectations: “The more that people with Down syndrome and other disabilities are included in the community, the more visible they become, the greater the chance society itself can ‘flex’ to accommodate ‘difference’ as normality” (Gothard 2010, 338). As outlined in this chapter, the pitfalls in representing and including a character with Down syndrome are numerous, but the benefits are equally as abundant. I hope that in writing this novel other practitioners will come to understand that there should be greater expectations and wider boundaries for the character with Down syndrome, particularly within the Down

Syndrome novel.

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CONCLUSION –

Sound and Fury: Signifying Something.

The more that people with Down syndrome and other disabilities are included in the community, the more visible they become, the greater the chance society itself can ‘flex’ to accommodate ‘difference’ as normality. There is still a way to go” (Gothard 2010, 338).

In researching, defining and terming the “Down Syndrome novel” I found that characters with Down syndrome were largely invisible in modern writing and, in novels where they were included, monstrous and angelic binaries were used by the author to describe them and therefore keep the reader safe. In the Down Syndrome novel, the angel need not be feared, and the monster is rarely allowed to live, restating to the reader that they are safe. The term was intended to instantly reveal the hierarchy in the Down Syndrome novel. Disability first, character second. As

mentioned in Chapter One of this thesis, these novels cannot exist without the

character or disability as it is central to the story and built into the narrative

scaffolding. Unfortunately, in forcing the character with Down syndrome into the

scaffolding, the author is virtually required to engage with the blunt binaries of

previous representation. However, as discussed throughout this thesis, these binaries

exist in all fiction writing including a character with Down syndrome and, as

mentioned in the Reflective section, are difficult to shift. The angel is necessary for 437

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novels like Jewel or The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and without monstrosity novels like The Sound and the Fury would lose much of their mystery and emotional effect.

These binaries trap the character and rely on the expectation for the reader and narrative voice to function, making it impossible for the character with Down syndrome to have agency. In the Down Syndrome novel, the disability is central to the story, and not the character. Through a discussion of both Down Syndrome novels and novels where Down syndrome is included, Down Syndrome novels were shown to be highly contained, or “boundaried”, and the characters within them spoken for, and generally used for narrative conflict, rather than included as individuals with a clear agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and point of view. The Gothic novel, however, provides the space for a character with difference to have their voice heard.

Whatever the outcome of my novel in terms of how it is received after publication, the experiments with voice and point of view in this novel and exegesis are crucial, particularly with regards to the broader social issues effecting inclusion.

As mentioned earlier, the novel is often a powerful tool in social change and historically, diversity in fiction writing participates in, and sometimes even creates a dialogue for changes in social views. In my creative practice and analysis, I seek to illuminate and partially fill the current gap in fiction writing about Down syndrome in order for my work to have some social value, but also to discover new possibilities for myself as a practitioner. While this thesis did not directly deal with secondary elements of a character’s Otherness (gender, race etc), there is certainly space for this sort of research to emerge, particularly in relation to the character with Down syndrome’s restriction to specific and repeated “safe spaces” such as the bus.

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As mentioned in the Reflective section of this thesis, in setting out to write this

novel I wanted to understand why characters with Down syndrome did not seem to

match up with the lived experiences expressed in books like Jan Gothard’s Greater

Expectations. What I discovered is that the world both within and outside the Down

Syndrome novel is still struggling to understand the limits and expectations of Down

syndrome. Down syndrome is still something of a mystery because it is largely

represented through archetypes, and images folded down through literature. As stated

earlier, I do not attempt to correct this imbalance but rather to illuminate the gap in

order to become part of the social and cultural dialogue looking at how people with

Down syndrome are seen and categorised, and why the expectations of people with

intellectual disabilities are still so low. Sing Fox to Me makes a difference in the literary landscape, however small. It situates my practice and understanding of the

power dynamics in every narrative choice, particularly voice and point of view.

Ultimately, I do not expect to fill the gap outlined throughout this project – no

single author could – and Sing Fox to Me was certainly never intended to be the final

word on how characters with Down syndrome could and do function within the

Gothic novel. The Gothic is forever changing, and my hope is that characters with

Down syndrome will diversify and change also. I will continue to pursue some of the

ideas presented throughout this thesis in future work, because: “I don't write a book

so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not

necessarily written by me” (Foucault 1971, 157).

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PUBLICATION STATEMENT

Sing Fox to Me was picked up for publication prior to final examination and will be published in early 2015 by Affirm Press with Aviva Tuffeild as editor. The novel included in this thesis is a second draft and should not be considered a substitute for the published work.

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