Geoffrey Cousins: The Butcherbird

Jack Beaumont’s bare feet edged their way onto the deck, stepping quietly, carefully, even though there was no one for the feet to wake. The other guests were three decks above and Mac slept in a separate apartment at the stern that was the size of the average Hawkesbury cruiser. The movement of the feet was almost furtive, as if their owner was afraid to be seen, to be discovered emerging here as early a riser as the mist. The feet arrived at the rail and Jack looked down at the pelican. He knew this river so well, ever since he’d first paddled fifty miles of it in a Canadian canoe as a boy, all the way from Windsor to Lion Island, letting the canoe run when the tide was flowing out and paddling steadily into the incoming stream. He knew it better than the pelican, because the huge bird wouldn’t fly into the upper reaches where the grass ran down in a smooth edge to the casuarina roots disappearing into the water. He knew it as it was now, at peace, and he knew it when the storms whipped waves over the sandbars and the outgoing tide was a flood you’d never swim against. He knew the wide mouth into Pittwater and Broken Bay. He’d slept on Lion Island, which was infested with snakes baking on burning sandstone in the furnace of the summer midday, and woken with tiny penguins in their dinner jackets sniffing inquiringly at his swag on the beach at midnight. He remembered blue swimmer crabs boiling in a pot over an open fire and his father poking in the ashes for potatoes in their charred jackets. He’d felt the first stirrings of rising sap in an old Halvorsen on this river, as his fourteen-year-old hands ran over the nearly there breasts of Bobbi Ruwald and the Everly Brothers sang nasally about tearing down goalposts.

But now he felt a vague queasiness, bile in the mouth from a cocktail of guilt, remorse and champagne. Why should he? It was all well and good for the pelican to cast judgement with that great nodding bill of supposed wisdom. What did he know of copper-coloured loins thrusting and sliding in a marble spa? No one was hurt. No one knew. She seemed to demand orgasms for her reward, nothing more. Anyway, girls were like that now. They didn’t need love and promises anymore, just orgasms. And Louise wasn’t here. She was at a literary retreat, discussing the early novels of Jane Austen, or Tolstoy as a misogynist, or something. The kids were in camp. So who was he hurting? After all, he was still Jack-the-lad to the boys in the group, so now and again you had to play the part. Besides he was bored, life was too easy, business was too easy, money came too easily. You had to look over the edge now and again. But still his mouth was a stale lemon.

The pelican drifted almost to the hull as if to check the alignment of its bill in the mirrored wood, looked up at Jack briefly, then slowly turned and paddled off into the gentle eddies. Jack followed its dignified exit up the river. Minutes ticked away. Nothing moved except the great bird and the sliding clouds.

Crack. Suddenly an explosive sound, a gunshot, a weapon of some sort wrecked the peace and a missile fell into the water not far from the pelican. Jack was shocked into action. There it was again. Crack, and then a thump into the water, closer to the bird this time. Jack was running now, bare feet thudding on the immaculate decks, any thoughts of disturbing sleepers cast aside, running to the stern where someone-who?-was shooting at the pelican. A pelican, for Christ’s sake. Who could ever shoot at any bird, let alone a pelican, the most majestic of all birds? Jack had always loved watching them landing like 747s in the bays of Pittwater and waddling onto Snapperman Beach to take the chips he threw from the greasy paper, the hard bits that were left from the fish and chips his mum bought from across Barrenjoey Road. He loved to watch the span of their wings as they rode the uplifts along the cliffs between Whale Beach and Palm Beach above the wilderness of rockpools where he went to search for shells, or tiny, brightly coloured fish that looked like they belonged on the Barrier Reef, or octopus that sometimes leapt frighteningly from crevasses. He always poked around with a stick in the pools for the octopus but secretly he hoped never to find them.

Now someone, on this boat, where he was a guest, complicit in a way in this barbarous act, was shooting at a pelican. There it was for a third time-another crack, another missile into the water. It was originating from somewhere above him. He looked up. There was a figure holding a rifle. He called out, ‘Hey!’

The figure turned in surprise. ‘Hey yourself. Didn’t know anyone was up and about. Come up and have a whack. I hear you’re pretty good at this.’

Jack squinted into the sun, panting from his dash down the deck, confused by his panic for the bird. The voice was unmistakeably that of his host, but what was that he was holding? As Jack scaled the gleaming ladder he could see it wasn’t a rifle the man was swinging, but a stick of some kind.

‘This is the new Taylor Made. Big bastard, isn’t it? Had it flown in from the States, just arrived yesterday. Pretty good weapon.’

Jack peered at the golf club held out to him, still slightly out of breath, unsure how to respond.

‘Here, have a crack. You need to warm up for later. We’ll have the longest drive competition after breakfast, so might as well get a head start on the others. Not that I think the rest of them amount to much. But you’re pretty hot I gather. Single-figure handicap, hey? Anyway, we’ll see. Have a couple of swings.’

Again the club was pushed at him. Jack took it, looking around. There was a rack of golf clubs like a billiard cue rack standing nearby and a huge plastic tub of new golf balls, individually boxed, into which Mac was dipping his sizeable mitt. ‘Were you… were you…’ Jack began hesitantly. ‘Were you aiming at the pelican?’

Mac started. ‘Good God no. That’d be worse than killing an albatross at sea and they reckon that’s the worst luck around.

Who was that bloke?’

‘Ah, the Ancient Mariner I think.’

‘Never read it, but heard about it. I don’t read stuff like that. No time. I don’t read anything, to tell the truth, unless it can be put on one page. Winston Churchill was like that-put it on one page or forget it.’

‘But I saw your magnificent library on the lower deck.’ Mac chuckled. ‘People like books, I have books. People like pictures, I have the best. But you needn’t worry about guns; there’s no shooting anything on this boat, all fish are tagged and released, all foods organic, all juices fresh-especially mine.’ The last comment was delivered with a cross between a wink and a leer that should have been repulsive but, for some, was strangely endearing. ‘The only time any of my shots goes near anything is purely accidental, but I hit them a bloody long way and on a river that’s what counts. No greens, no fairways to hit, just whack it as far as you can. Have a go.’ Jack took the proffered club and swung it easily in the smooth arc of a gifted player. ‘Nice swing. I see you’ll be a problem. Still, there’s no run out here for your top spin, it’s all carry. Mac’s the reigning champion and not about to give up the belt without a fight, so let’s see your form.’

Jack removed the ball from the box, placed it on the artificial grass pad with a built-in plastic tee and, in one easy motion, swept the missile fifty yards past where the last explosions had landed and fifty yards to the right of the pelican. Mac drew his breath in through his nostrils.

‘Hmm. That’ll do you. No more practice. You don’t want to tire yourself out. Come and have breakfast.’

He led Jack by the elbow in a direction the younger man’s nose was already following. ‘Jack, this is Ernest, the best omelette-maker in the world. Aren’t you, Ernest? Of course you are. He gets them almost crisp on the outside but still fluffy and moist inside. Unbelievable. I sound like a damn ad or something, but you’ve got to have one, Jack. What are you going to make for Mr Beaumont, hey Ernest? Spanish, mushroom-what’s your poison, Jack?’