His Illegal Self

15

He vomited in the lantana and across his feet. He held the kitty to one side and threw up along a kind of path-severed stems, cut branches, banana and papaya. Stuff from his stomach, stuff he never even ate, spread across the blackberries.

He had nothing to wipe himself with except the cardigan. He spat. There was a sea of ferns beyond the brambles, like fish bones, covering a wide saddle. He broke off some of these to clean himself as well as he could.

Vomiting was ugly, shameful, mixed up with his feelings about soggy Uno cards and seeds. He told the cat he was sorry for the smell. The trees were wide apart here. They had twisted gray corded bark. Different birds were high up in their khaki canopies but there was another noise, like water, maybe wind.

He stroked the kitten’s bony head but even the tips of his fingers seemed fouled and filthy. He could hear a river, or it was the wind high in the trees, or the two, mixed up together.

He could smell damp. He knew damp. Maple woods in summer, rotting things, black mud. He went farther along the left side of the saddle, not far. Here was the edge of a rough red riverbank, no question. A big tree had fallen, its clay-and pebble-crusted roots naked in the air like dried-out innards. The trunk, which made a bridge between the flood bank and the low bank, was about as big across as a man is tall and he soon found a place, just below the disturbed earth, where you could jump down onto its broad back, like the back of an elephant or a slippery seal, and he walked along it, with the kitten now meowing softly, down to the place where the timber splintered and smashed and speared into the earth. The smell of damp was rich with rot.

Steel pincers pierced his skin.

He screamed.

He jumped to the soft ground. He hurt his foot. He dropped the cat. He ripped at his shirt.

Stay still, said Trevor, who came from nowhere, a nasty-looking groundhog, completely naked, covered in mud and dirt. Stay still.

The boy shrieked in fear.

Trevor took the boy’s shirt off over his head. The pain went on and on without reason.

Got it, Trevor said.

And held a shining ant, two inches long, a stinking, angry, black, plastic-coated, dying Australian thing.

Bull ant, he said.

The boy stayed frozen, vomity, ashamed, his pain still pulsing, while Trevor walked down among the wide tall grass toward Buck, who was drinking something. Trevor found water too, enough to wash some mud from his own body. He shook himself like a dog. Then he grabbed the cat, held it locked inside his arm.

Did you come looking to see where my stash is hid? He had pale blue eyes, hard as broken bathroom tile.

The kitten was afraid, his mouth as wide and pink as dentistry.

No, sir.

Trevor returned the cat and then put both his hands on the boy’s square bare shoulders. He did not squeeze or hurt, but it was a hard and heavy weight without forgiveness.

You wouldn’t want to see.

I want to wash.

You understand it would be a bad thing to see?

I threw up, the boy said. I need to wash the stuff off.

Once, not so long before, he had pooped himself. He had been hosed down in public by a nasty man in boots.

Come here, said Trevor.

The boy was relieved to feel his hand held gently.

See, Trevor said.

The boy looked down into the ground-it was the damp he had smelled, a smeary rainbow, thick clumps of brown grass.

Snakes.

He could see no snakes. All he saw was water.

There. What do you reckon that is?

He thought, A bone?

It’s not a good idea to come looking for my stash. You understand me.

At that moment the boy saw the actual stash, in the fallen tree. On the underside there was a splintered rotten place where there was blue plastic showing clear as day.

You understand? Trevor’s eyes were cold enough to hurt.

Yes, sir.

Don’t call me sir, Trevor said.

The boy washed his arms and legs and down his front. He did not stare at where the money was.

You OK now?

Yes thank you.

You don’t come back here without me, OK. The voice was not unkind.

From the corner of his eye the boy could see the flag of blue plastic. It was so clear, like underpants showing through an unzipped pair of shorts.

Always look at the ground, Trevor said, as they headed up the saddle.

The boy did what he was told.

Where’s your father?

What?

Where’s your dad? Trevor mocked the boy’s shrug. What does that mean?

I don’t know, sir, he said, his heart like a washing machine inside his ears. He thought his dad might be in Sydney but no one knew his name.

Trevor took the boy’s chin and tilted it so there was no escaping the interrogation.

The boy’s blood was swooshing and thumping in his ears. He met Trevor’s cold gaze and let himself be seen in all his everything.

That’s right, Trevor said as he released him. That’s right.

The boy understood his secret had been touched. There had been a conversation of some sort.