Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

It’s so hot I have to take my shirt off and tie it round my waist, which ruins the new length of my cut-offs and shows the odd lumps of my bra through my singlet, but it’s not all bad. The route we take through the bush has a narrow pathway and I lead the way, looking back over my shoulder now and again to check he’s still following. I get the feeling he’s more into legs anyway. I hold a whip of wait-a-while out of his way so that it doesn’t spring back and catch him. ‘You’re a good bloke, Jake,’ Denver says with a smile around his voice, in a way that I’m pretty sure says he doesn’t really think I am a bloke at all. And then we go to silence, just the crust of us walking, me tootling around with a stick, looking for things to draw his attention to, and enjoying the feel of his eyes on my legs. Probably he’ll want to take me out, maybe I’ll meet his parents — his younger brother I’ve seen running a stick down the beach at low tide, maybe I’ll become a sort of older-sister figure to him. I have experience of that, I can make Anzacs and the whole lot of them would want me round all the time. Or maybe his parents will disapprove, maybe they’ll think I’m too young, or they don’t want their son going out with a whitey. We’ll ride out of town on his dirt bike, me clutching around his waist, or him hanging on to me like I might slip from his grasp.

‘Feel like a swim?’ he says, wiping sweat from under his eyes.

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I can show you the boat I found,’ and suddenly it’s all panning out, is there a more perfect way of getting kissed than lying in the bottom of a tin boat in the middle of the sea. The stories we will tell our kids. Denver grins at me, and says, ‘I’d like that.’

A curlew and the black tops of the gums against the white sky. Leaves that are brown, grey and blue, crisp with heat, the dry, face-burning heat and eucalypt that empties my nose and there’s Denver two steps behind me and we’re walking home again. I can feel his eyes on the backs of my calves, which are biscuit-brown with tiny white hairs that catch the sand in them. I have never felt beautiful until this moment, when I know he is watching, when I know he doesn’t see me as Jake the Flake, Brick Shit House, the Whopper. I can feel him thinking about touching my legs which now I look at them are long, not thick trunks, but strong and capable. He isn’t talking any more — we have been passing back and forth about the football season just gone, I’ve sensed that I have impressed him because today I said James Flannery was past his passing peak and that while Kale Aidie was fast, he was a pussy in the tackle. He laughed when I said that, and it was a nice laugh, surprised.

Even the spiders’ webs have disintegrated in the heat, burnt away, poof, in the air.

We’re on the track down to the beach when he points at the Carters’ property and says, ‘You know, that’s Flora’s place.’ Like it would be something I wasn’t aware of. I know where we are, know this stretch of bushland like the back of my hand, he doesn’t have to tell me where we are. Just round the back of the Carter property there is a sand track that gets you down to the rocks and in the rocks there are things to look at and to talk about. Octopus, nudibranchs, sand sifters, crabs and urchins. Oysters you can prize off with a knife that taste of seawater and cream. I think about the boat I found a month ago in the dunes, and us lying in the bottom feeling the swimmers underneath us. I’ve got a stolen joint and matches from Iris’s hiding place which I know all about. She’s going to skin me when she finds out but it’ll be worth it. I’d thought that we could smoke it once we were past the main street and into the trees on the way to my house, but the boat is so much better. I wonder at how impressed he will be when I present it to him.

‘Listen,’ says Denver, ‘you talk with Flora, don’tcha?’

‘I do. Sometimes.’ I pick up the pace a little because it is very hot and a cool breeze would be nice.

‘She’s nice isn’t she?’

‘I like her just fine.’ Although truth be told right now I do not like her fine at all.

‘What about me? You like me?’ he asks. I go red-hot in the face, but it makes me smile the way he says it, like he’s nervous I might say no, as if it were a possible thing to not like Denver Cobby with his hairy legs and his black eyes.

‘Yer orright. S’pose.’ I turn and give him a smile that says, Yeah — I think you’re good.

‘Well look — can you keep a secret?’ My heart is blood-thumping in my throat. We can see the back of the Carter house now, through the pigface and jarrah. A shadow passes in front of the window, but we are too far off to see who it is. Denver lets out a sigh that is long and deep.

‘Look. Me ’n’ Flo—’

Flo?

Flo away and into the sea.

‘Me ’n’ Flo have been going together the past few months. Only her old man’s not all right with that sort of carry-on.’

Carrion.

‘He won’t let blokes near his house, especially not a black bloke. But she’s really something, y’know, Jake?’ He says my name and I turn to look at him. I think nothing. It doesn’t get the chance to get in one ear hole and out the other, I don’t let it in. ‘I’m just about going fucking crazy out here — the two of us are. We’re gonna take the bike and head to Cairns. Get a little place there — I’ve got a mate who reckons he knows a guy with some labouring work I can get into. I dunno, mate, sounds crazy, I know. My fuck!’ And he goes on and on, but it is like the tops of my ears fold over and stuff up the holes. Something buzzes past my face, close enough that I can feel the air of its wings vibrate against my eyes. Then my ears open up in time to hear him going on, ‘But listen, we need someone on our side, try and help us get ourselves together — could you maybe store a bit of stuff at your house for us? Flo’s dad runs checks of her room, in case she’s hiding smokes or condoms or uh, I dunno, fuckin’ comic books, the way he goes on. I sleep on the sofa at Mum’s so there’s nowhere to put stuff. Thought maybe you had a bed we can stash shit under till we go? Maybe you might be able to lend us a bit of cash if you’ve got any saved? We need all we can get.’

‘Do you want to smoke this joint?’ I am holding it out in my fist like a lolly. A small frown goes over Denver’s lovely face.

‘Nah — not a real good idea I wouldn’t say.’

I hold the thing to my lips. Denver watches me, looking unsure all of a sudden. Good, I think. You should feel unsure.

‘So what do you say?’ he asks, leaning back a bit with his thumbs in the waistband of his pants. I light the joint. It smoulders red at the tip, and the smoke goes straight into my eye, but I don’t let myself blink it out. I watch him standing there, looking like all the world rested on me stashing a sleeping bag under my bed.

‘Jake?’

‘Go away,’ I say quietly, and inhale. I’ve done it before, so if he is expecting me to choke like the kids on TV do, then he is sorely disappointed. I pretend I am Nerrida at the side of the boat sheds, jutting one hip out and crossing one arm over my chest so that I can rest my other elbow on it, keeping the joint near my lips and pretending to pull a hair of tobacco from my mouth. I see for the first time that I am taller than Denver, and I look down my beak nose at him. Jake the Flake the Dyke. The smoke comes out of me, white. Denver runs his hands through his hair.

‘Well? Whad’ya say? Say something.’

Perhaps he is impressed by how I smoke, I don’t know. It looks like it just pisses him off.

‘Fuck. What’s your problem? Thought we were mates?’

He is shaking his head. I’ve made him angry.