flip the bird

An excerpt from flip the bird, a novel manuscript shortlisted for the Richell Prize, Hachette Australia + Emerging Writers Festival (2021). Photo: iStock by Getty Images

Judges’ report: “From the very beginning of this novel, the characters’ authenticity is gripping. A beautiful rendering of the joy of coming home to Australia and the sadness of unreached potential. Rich in descriptive detail and sharply observed dialogue that is powerful and authentic and used to excellent effect, Flip the Bird has both literary and commercial potential. This is a poetic, sophisticated and layered read that contains believable, well-rounded characters and an evocation of place that is impressive. A superb piece of writing with a narrative arc that promises a journey that is both intelligent and lyrically satisfying. Tension and tragedy underline each moment.”

New Year’s Eve 1993.

The Bay.

It’s the night of the beach bonfire. The pile of sticks on the sand has grown steadily over the last few weeks, the sun sucking the moisture from the gas-white branches.

We’re killing time in the pop-up soft-top of the Kombi van. The air in the cabin is a combination of scrambled eggs and baked beans, stale bed sheets, the wet smell of fridge and kerosene. Ange groans. I look over the top of the book balanced on my knees at my younger sister.

Ange is only fourteen but already her body reads like an invitation; her breasts lolly-wrapped in a rainbow-striped bikini. She’s lying, legs curled around her Flintstones pillow, thumb in mouth, staring through the clear plastic skylight.

Laughter peals out of the neighbours’ tent. The adults are playing five hundred.

‘Trev-or, no!’ Mum shrieks.

‘See!’ Ange digs her toe into my thigh. ‘Barb’s got the hots for him something fierce!’

‘Come again?’

‘Mum. She’s practically creaming her pants for Trevor Gibbs.’

‘That’s feral.’

‘Should have seen her and Sharonna drooling over him at breakfast. Sharonna reckons he’s got nice arms,’ Ange says. ‘At least Dad doesn’t have a great hairy crack sprouting out the back of his dick togs.’

‘Gross.’

‘Bet he’s all talk and no action, with a gut like that. Bet that’s why his wife left him. Got sick of plaiting his back-hair, waiting for him to sprog,’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Trevor.’

‘His wife died of cancer, Ange,’ I say.

‘Sure she did.’

The laughter sounds again.

Ange rolls face down; a mess of blonde curls. ‘Kill me.’

Outside the evening is closing in. The fluorescent lights arced above the campsite flicker on. Dad’s greying Y-fronts are spot lit, pegged up beside the sagging bosom of Mum’s floral cozzie. I shift Demian in an attempt to catch the receding light.

Something hits the plastic window an inch from my head. Ange looks up. A pebble hits the plastic again. She presses her face against the plastic then pulls on a singlet.

‘Come on. Let’s fuckoffski before the old slapper sobers up.’ She rims her eyes with black in the My Little Pony compact she’s had forever and drops into the main cabin.

I put down my book and stare out the window. A sluggish breeze moves through the branches of the Norfolk Pine overhead, scattering dappled light across the mattress. I can just make out the strawberry blond of Ben’s hair. Ben is my friend.

Ange sticks her head up through the gap.

‘Come on!’ she hisses.

I climb down.

Ben is standing out front, smoking a tailor-made. He shifts his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, his fingernails bitten to the quick.

‘Hey there, cowboy!’ Ange bumps against him with her hip.

‘Hey, sexy.’ His pupils dilate as he takes her in then he sees me. ‘James.’

I nod.

Mum’s voice comes from the tent next door again, shrill against the evening, ‘Well, it is CARD-onnay after all.’

Trevor hoots. ‘I like your way of thinking!’

There’s sounds of a kerfuffle and some dopey animal noises.

‘Stop it, Trevor. Stop – it!’ Mum cries. That awful laugh. ‘Honestly!’

It’s enough to make you vomit a bit in the back of your mouth. I grab my pipe and weed.

‘Later.’

‘Hey?’

I head for the dunes, don’t look back.

The crack of wood. The flat pewter sea: its briny scent laced with rotting seaweed. Silhouettes stretching up round the burning tepee. A ghetto blaster on a smashed sandcastle competes with laughter and the shouts of beach football. From my spot in the dunes, I watch Ange arrive trailing Ben. He’s grinning, like a loon.

I pocket my pipe and stand, stumbling towards them. Kane, Jerry and Adam are already circling when I hit the outskirts of the party. Ange meets my gaze and pulls Ben in, kissing him hard. For years afterwards, I’ll hold her responsible.

1

Christmas Eve

Cornwall, England

The call comes at six thirty-three AM. It splits the dark into before and after.

‘James?’

‘Hi, Mum.’

She’s got the time wrong again.

‘It’s your dad,’ she says. ‘He’s had an accident. He had a fall.’

I knock the clock radio as I scrabble upright; the red digital numbers, wrong side up. ‘What happened?’

‘He was messing round with the gutters. I was making dinner. I heard something. I almost didn’t bother to check. Gott sei Dank.’ The German muttered under her breath.

‘Mum –’

‘He hit his head on the steps. There was a lot of blood.’

I swallow. I see it. ‘Is he okay?’

‘He was leant up against the house when I came out, nodding to himself. The ladder laid out on the grass.’ The static hisses.

‘Mum –’

‘He’s in hospital. They’re doing tests.’

I see him punctured with tubes and drips, sheeted in a white bed. The beeping machines. That claustrophobic sterility.

I count back in my head. It would be Friday there and Dad would’ve been at the pub early, would’ve had a few with the boys. He would’ve had a skinful. He would have been up that ladder half-cut, ciggie stuck to his bottom lip.

There’s a rush in my ears. I feel sick.

‘They put sixteen staples in his head.’ She stops. Then something about a bleed on the brain that I can’t catch above the static.

‘Staples? What? I can’t hear you, Mum. What did you say?’ I squeeze my eyes shut and try to quell the terror. ‘I mean, he’s alright, isn’t he? He’s okay?’ I sound like a child.

‘They don’t know.’ She sounds tired. ‘He’s awake. He’s talking. He’s lost a lot of blood. He was lucky.’

My eyes sting with tears. Thank God. Thank fuck. I feel dizzy. Gott sei Dank.

‘We have to wait. For the tests.’ She takes a breath. ‘The silly idiot.’

And I realise she’s crying. ‘Where are you, Mum?’

‘They sent me home.’ She breathes out. ‘To rest.’

She’ll be hunched over the table in the front room, a vase of her hydrangeas. The curtains with their tropical bird print. Her roses beyond the glass, all the bluster of her garden. Bright blossoms surfing up against the house. The fruit grove, the farm, the town arcing out in a series of ripples around her.

‘Did you hear me?’ she asks.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, he’s asking for you.’

And then I say it. ‘I’ll come home.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Come home.’

Then she’s saying goodbye. The click as the phone cuts out. I sit in the dark, listening to the bleat of the engaged signal.

Krishan is sprawled across the bed: an overlapping of blankets, brown legs and beginner’s potbelly. He looks shiny and happy, like one of his fat gods. I imagine what it would be like to reach for him, the way I used to in the beginning after my nightmares. But his lip snags and he sighs into deeper sleep and I grab my beanie and the brass door handle instead.

The morning has broken in diagonal sleet, pitting the slate-grey horizon with needles of rain. I stop, my coat hovering above the Welcome mat, the emotion fishboned in my throat. I consider going back in. Then the wind slams the door shut behind me.

I turn up the road, leaning into the rain, hampered by my Wellingtons. By the time I reach the corner, I’m out of breath, the angry prick of sweat in my armpits. I turn and look back. Home Sweet Home teeters on the cliffs overlooking the seaport. The narrow terrace with its lurid orange paintwork stands out against the barren landscape. A hostel for the lost at the edge of the world. Britain’s Hotel California.

We’re one of only five apartments. Falmouth is remote. We’ve been here two years. It’s just until we find something permanent. Krish says he likes the hostel’s eclectic element, and it’s cheap. Cheap is his favourite colour.

I count my steps to take my mind off things. One, two, three, eleven years. The wind picks up a notch, lifting the lid off the past.

Dad beside the Kombi van, waiting for me to finish on my yellow potty, camping somewhere. Dad chewing on a smoke in the shearing shed, ewe pegged between his legs. Ciggie hanging from his bottom lip, his arms bloodied with pig guts. Dad on the edge of the football field, coaching through his fag, handing out frozen orange segments at half time with his game play. Dad chainsawing the banana palms at the side of the house, the crack as the great purple fronds break away and hit the ground.

I pass the library and the old dairy and then the Bald-Faced Stag. The road winds through the last dregs of town and thins into a mustard thread of pebbles and silted dirt. I pick my way through the mud to the lookout on the headland.

The sea is gunmetal grey. It splits across the charcoal rocks below, throwing spume high into the air, lashing the cliffs; huge shelves of stacked shale, sandstone and quartz. The rail is cold in my bare hands. I hold on fast; I’m not pegged down.

I lean out over the edge. I feel dizzy, nauseous then almost free. I rock back on my heels, let the wind tear through me until my body is blown eggshell empty.

When I let myself back into the apartment, Krish is snoring gently. I sit on the bed. The fine downy hair around his nipples is visible where the blanket has slipped. I breathe in the flat, mercuric smell of his body. Sleep softens him. The grey round his temples. His aquiline nose. His profile less disparaging.

For a second, I think of sliding in beside him and burying my face in his neck. As if we could drive back these last few months – or is it years?

I lie down with my back to him and graze my butt against his cock in slow rhythmic movements. He fumbles sleepdrunk, his pores releasing the legacy of last night's biryani as we fuck.

When I tell him about Dad afterwards, he’s surprised I want to go. I was barely on speaking terms with my family, wasn’t I? But he hands me his credit card. I call to book my flight. “But no matter how far, or how wide I roam…” I suffer three rounds of childish falsetto before I complete the transaction.

I’m going home.

2

Boxing Day

Guwali Guwali, Southern NSW, Australia

The plane pitches and bears down on the runway. As we land, acid rises at the back of my mouth. I grapple with the seat in front and retch violently into a paper bag advertising photo development.  

The plane bounces on its wheels and taxies towards the terminal. I rub my hand across my clavicle, stroking the necklace of protruding bone. I am ridiculously hungover, or maybe even still drunk. I dab at my mouth gingerly with the serviette from lunch.

At the airport in Hong Kong, I kept having these freakish visitations. The kind I hadn’t had in years. Like full-bodied hallucinations. I could feel them thrusting the pipes down his throat, feel the needles for his catheter piercing the back of my hand, the white of the walls, the fluoro lights. I hate hospitals. I was petrified I’d be too late. I stood shivering into a public phone. Mum sounded tired.

‘He reckons he’s cheated death,’ she told me. ‘Even told one poor nurse he was the Second Coming.’ She tried to laugh. ‘He’s been a right pain in the behind. You’ll see. And your sister’s just encouraging him.’

There is a trio of bells and the hostess pulls the Tannoy from its wall-holster, her voice almost a parody of Aussie twang.

‘Hello and welcome to Guwali Guwali. Outside it’s a cool thirty-three and the time is currently five twenty. There will be a slight delay due to our late arrival as the ground crew relocate the gangway.’

I turn my cheek against the scratchy fabric of the seat with its scent of dust and deodoriser. The view from the window is uninspiring: flat, parched fields, concrete and the light brown smirch of the town. People say central Australia is the Dead Heart but I believe the condition is more widespread.

I nurse my sick bag on my lap. Krish will be waking up right about now, pressing his nose to his armpit to assess its meat-pie smell.

‘Shall I take that for you?’

I jump. The hostess is leaning over my seat. Her lipstick is M.I.A leaving only a fine coral line around the bow of her mouth.

‘Thank you.’

I try to look suitably chagrined as my “discount for double prints” spew-bag disappears down the aisle. I take a hit from the hipflask of scotch in my bag and search for a chewing gum chaser. The pack is empty.

The man beside me holds out a paper packet.

‘Fisherman’s Friend?’

‘Thanks.’

That’s all I need. The kindness of strangers. The aniseed burns a hole in my tongue. I slide down in my seat waiting for the plane to empty.

Heat rushes across the tarmac. I’m struck by the strongly familiar scent – summer: baked asphalt and the sweet rank smell of the Murrumbidgee. The brick departure lounge looks unchanged: the curved roof, primary-yellow painted railings reminiscent of primary school buildings.

I think of Ange in her school uniform, wearing new green ribbons, standing beside me on her first day of school. The two of us starched within an inch of our life standing under the weeping willow. Mum behind the camera, her hair wrapped in a red scarf, recording the moment. I’m beaming down the camera, my arm around Ange. She’s staring up at me, holding onto her briefcase with both hands, in her too-big tunic.

Outside someone leans on the horn. The luggage belt snakes around the carousel; my suitcases are at my feet. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass I watch a car swerve into the curb. A lanky man with sand-blond hair gets out. My heart thuds against my rib cage.

He takes two steps to the pavement and engulfs a pregnant woman, bending down to rub the tight ball of her belly. The woman laughs out loud, her face thrown up to the sun.

But when the man stands upright, it’s not Ben.

Bile scalds my throat as I stoop for my bags. I swallow hard and shuffle through the automatic doors into the blinding light.

 

A car pulls into the carpark and careers across the concrete. Ange is a giant pair of Aviator sunnies and blonde curls crouched behind the steering wheel.

I’m feeling a tad average, what with the decline in blood-alcohol and the searing heat. I’ve been standing outside the departure lounge for half an hour. It feels like a lifetime since I waved goodbye to my Fisherman’s friend from the plane. Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel is stuck on repeat in my head. It’s not helping.

Ange slams the door of the car, talking at high speed. She’s wearing a pair of tiny shorts and a bikini top. She leans into the backseat of the car.

‘Wipe your face, matie! Oy, Nic! What’s up, ladypants? You better hope the wind doesn’t change! You’d be pretty sick if your face got stuck like that.’

Then she’s hugging me. My little sister, in the flesh. She smells peppery, of sweat and supermarket perfume. I swallow hard. Please, please don’t let me vomit.

‘You made it, Jamison! I thought you’d dog us at the last minute.’

I pull back, swipe at my eyes. ‘Ye of little faith.’

‘Oh! Look at you, you old softie!’ She gives me a squeeze but her eyes are wet too.

I clear my throat. ‘How’s Dad?’

‘He’s good. Well, he’s okay. He’s home. Jesus, there’s not a lick of fat on you. You look like a bloody stick insect. You look très chic.’

I tug at my creased shirt.

‘This is not a fashion statement,’ I say. ‘This is ninety days in cattle-class.’

‘Not first class? Don’t tell, Mum. You’re her success story. You’re the smart one, remember?’ Ange swings my bags off the ground and drops them again. ‘Holy mackerel! What have you got in these things?’ It’s a good question. ‘Nice hair by the way. Very Jimi Hendrix.’

‘Cruel.’

            ‘I’ve missed you, brother of mine!’

            And she flings herself on me again. Eleven years of abstinence and the feted family loving has begun. Death by suffocation. I try not to give in to my anxiety about Dad. The heavy black fear in my belly. I’m not prepared for all this. My fingers grip the neck of my hipflask through my canvas bag.

            Ange is hunting around in the front of the car.

‘I don’t suppose Santa could find you whizzing across the sky in your little Coca-Cola can. Tada!’ She brandishes a cask of Stanley Dry White, reefing the wine bladder from the box. ‘How bout that for a silver lining!’

I love her so much it hurts. Ange is a walking ball of wild energy, just like Dad.

‘Merry Christmas!’ Her lips smack my cheek.

‘Is that stuff still legal on this continent?’

‘You’re welcome, James Theodore. You’d think your mother never taught you any manners!’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘What a lovely gift. You shouldn’t have. Really.’

Light blanches the bonnet of the Holden, reflects off the silver sac and time concertinas. Adam Rothwell is leaning over me, aiming the silver bladder into my mouth. The jet of warm red wine as it hits my tongue.

I dry-retch, coughing behind my Oedipa Maas tear-catchers. I bought the huge pair of rocket-green sunnies my first year in London. They practically take over my face. Best camouflage ever.

‘You okay?’ Ange asks. ‘You can’t cark it now. You just got here.’

If only escape was that easy.

‘I’m fine. How’s Dad? How’s he doing?’ I ask again. ‘Mum said the nurses couldn’t get him to rest.’

‘You know Dad. I’m going to live when I’m alive, and sleep when I’m dead.’

‘I know but –’

‘No buts. When I left yesterday, he was doing laps of the hospital ward in his wheelchair and tormenting the nurses. I think they only let him out to get rid of him.’

‘Right.’

‘God. It’s as hot as,’ Ange says. ‘And I’m still stuffed from yesterday. My body is my temple.’

I look at my sister. She’s round, pert, never fat. She oozes sex. Men love her.

She hands me a plastic bag. ‘Barb thought you might be hungry. She’s starting in early with the feeding.’

‘Thanks. RegionAir doesn’t do vegan.’

‘Don’t say the V-word, Jimmy D. It’s blasphemy. This is cattle country. We kill our animals with our bare hands out here. Indiana-eat-your-heart-out. If you know what I’m saying.’

‘No.’

‘You know! That bit at the beginning of Temple of Doom when they rip out the guy’s heart while he’s still alive and eat it.’

I touch my chest and try to swallow. ‘That stuff is occupying valuable space in your head.’

‘You’re the brains of the family, James. I’m just the one with the dashing good looks.’ She flicks her hair and grins. So like Dad. My head reels.

I extract an irregular-shaped peach. Mum’s fruit grove, the gnarled branches of the citrus and stoned fruit trees lined up in soldier-like regularity. The grey palings of the side fence covered in tendrils of choko vine. We used to splatter the prickly green fruit against the roof of the woolshed. Its mushy white flesh exposed and baking on the corrugated iron. Dad’s angry face when he caught us.

‘Want one?’ I ask.

Ange shakes her head. I dig my teeth into the fuzzy skin of the peach. The taste is wet, not quite warm, and sweet.

The back door opens.

‘It’s too fucking hot.’ A girl with red hair is sitting beside an old kelpie dog. I can just make out the little boy eating ice cream behind them.

‘Don’t get out, Nic! We’re going,’ Ange says. She pops the boot. I’d forgotten how loud she is. ‘Come on. Chuck your shit in there and let’s skedaddle.’

            The boot is crammed with takeaway containers, a tarp, a gas lantern, a hammer, a slinky, flannelette pyjama pants, a pillow and a blow-up mattress. I sling my suitcase on top of a padded underwire bra. The bag of duty-free alcohol chinks.

‘For the welcome home party, is it?’ Ange asks.

‘For medicinal purposes.’

‘We can start on the Stanley now if you like. It’s mostly chilled,’ she says.

‘You’re driving,’ I say.

Ange pulls open the driver’s door and turns to me. ‘That door doesn’t work. The limo’s seen better days.’

I scramble across the seats.

‘Nice ass,’ Ange says.

‘Perve.’

Family. I’ve missed it.

3

The car stinks of cigarettes and warm dog. The windows are wedged shut with pieces of folded cardboard. The seat is so low I feel like I’m lying down. I mop the sweat moustache from my upper lip and try to ignore my rising panic. Ange swings round in her seat.

‘Have youse gone all shy or something?’ she says.

‘Get real.’

‘This is my bestie, Nicole.’

Nicole looks all of fourteen despite the make-up, her clothes held together by a series of safety pins. I take a sharp breath. With her freckles, her red hair, her pinched lips, the kid’s a Rothwell, no doubt about it.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hey.’ She scowls beneath her freckles.

‘And this handsome devil is my son. Guthrie, say hello!’

Guthrie is tucked in behind the dog, a bright-eyed pixie. The little Downs boy of the Santa photos in my wallet. A new one every year. Ten pics of this little man. Only he isn’t so little anymore. He’s solid. Not fat. But chunky. The few photos Ange sent I framed for our mantlepiece. Guthrie with his blond curls, just like his mum’s, leaning in to blow out the candles on a lion birthday cake, Guthrie lying face-down eating the dirt, riding a bike with training wheels, and one where he’s all dressed up in his scouts’ uniform – my favourite.

Krishan’s mother saw the photos of Guthrie that first Christmas. She told me Indian children didn’t get Downs Syndrome; it was a white man’s disease. I lost my shit. Krishan was more democratic. He said no one in my family seemed the full punnet. It’s the only argument Rashmi and I’d ever had. She likes me despite herself. I brought her son to see her.

Guthrie is losing the ice-cream battle in the back seat. The dog comes to his rescue as he reaches across to kiss my hand.

‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Nice to meet you too, Guthrie.’

My throat tightens as I search his face for something familiar. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. His eyes, a bright hazel, his strawberry blond hair spiked at the front, the neat baby teeth visible when he smiles.

‘He’s a true gentleman, aren’t you, buddy? I’ve trained him well. He’s going to be a serious lady-killer when he grows up.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘If you ask me more men should go in for that extra chromosome,’ Ange says. ‘Guthrie, this is your long-lost Auntie James. She’s travelling incognito today.’ 

‘The habit’s in the bag. Those miracles can take it out of you. It’s the expectation,’ I say.

The jokes are old. The fissures open between then and now as the burn of sick tracks up my oesophagus. Ange doesn’t look any different. She’s lost all her pregnancy fat. But I guess that’s what happens when you have a kid at fifteen, ten fucking years ago.

Ange reaches back and rubs the scruff of the dog’s neck. ‘You remember Jedda, don’t you? Jedda, the un-dead, we call her these days. Bet you thought she’d be six feet under by now.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I say. The old dog looks like she’s grinning.

‘Oh! She loves it, don’t you, Jeddriggles.’ The dog whines in pleasure as Ange strokes her ears. ‘Besides, these are decorative. She’s deaf as dog shit now. Aren’t you, beautiful? Alrighty. Let’s head!’ She jerks the engine into action and the radio explodes with static. ‘I have to deliver you on time or Barb’ll castrate me.’

‘I think you’re pretty safe.’

‘Never underestimate the Germans.’

Paddocks of burnt grass speed past the window. New industrial outlets with farming machinery for hire. The old bowser petrol station attached to Mike and the Mechanics has turned into a gigantic BP with a Red Rooster attached. Teenagers stand under the fat red chicken, sucking on Slurpees. Shania Twain is up full blast and Ange is giving her a hand with the lyrics.

            “The best thing about being a woman, is working round you need to have a little fun… Oh, oh, oh, oh.”

            Ange is tone-deaf but she gets points for enthusiasm.

            We skirt town with its motels and rows of redbrick council housing. Snatches of past fling up from the road like stones, threatening to lacerate. The school bus route, the old fire station, the single-storey bungalows that just seem dingier. We pull up at the lights. An old couple are sitting on foldout chairs on their concrete porch beneath a striped awning, staring glaucoma-eyed into the traffic speeding past their patch of brown grass.

‘Oh, oh, oh, going crazy… lalalala lady. Men's shirts, short skirts.’

Ange changes lanes sans indication and the dog skitters across the backseat. A truckie yelps, slamming his hand on the horn. Ange extends a terracotta arm out the window and awards him the bird. The highway stretches out ahead: patched bitumen and roadkill. Our figures waver in the heat rising off the tarmac. The three of us walking home. Ben and me. Ange lagging behind, sucking on her menthol ciggies.

The upholstery is baking hot against my back. I peel away. I feel woozy, reach to wind down the window, remember. The little bits of card holding things together.

‘How was the flight? How you feeling?’

‘Shagged.’

‘Lucky you.’ Ange grins. ‘Steel yourself. Barb’s been working herself into a frenzy. She’s going to literally explode when she sees you.’

The niggling guilt. At the time it seemed easier not to talk about dropping academia, but now the prospect of owning up to my lies was sick-making.

Outside town the landscape changes. Ange sings on. The motor inns give way to the familiar wheat and dairy properties, the sheep and stud farms with their barrel letterboxes. Trailers with bags of nectarines for two dollars, native flowers, manure sit at the roadside. Homesteads with corrugated iron roofs fenced in white picket stand out against the surrounding expanse of sheeped-up paddocks, the arcs of telegraph wires.

Krishan and I went on holiday to the Lake District in winter, driving along narrow roads past fields fenced off with stones. Rounding a bend, we came across a black-faced sheep staring us down through the windshield.

‘Does it make you homesick?’ he asked.

The vivid green of the grass, the heater blasting, the wipers working overtime. I laughed. In any case, home was a construction. A farce. Home was in the past.

Ange is driving really fast; in the back, Nicole and Guthrie are arguing. I lean back and try to relax as Ange yells at them. The ochred fields, the radio static, the heat. The music chafes at my fragility in figure eights. We speed through hewn rock and out into the open again. A road sign reads: “Country people die on country roads”. My grip on things is loosening. A line of sweat runs the length of my arm as the sky opens up above.

To the right, above the flat, open paddocks, the Rock rises up in burnt-out scrub, shaped like the hunched shoulders of the birds on the river. I feel the insidious creep of nostalgia. Guwali Guwali – ‘place of cormorants’, of shags, the huge black birds with their hooked beaks and red eyes, crouched on the rocks. The rural town masquerading as big city chewed away my teens in febrile parties and late-night creek runs, digging its fingers in beneath my dick togs, glutting my throat with goon. The towering gums are indifferent.

I’m swimming in a pool of sweat. ‘It’s like a sauna in here.’

‘We’re travelling au naturel. This car is a petrolator. And anyways, the air-con’s busted.’

‘Were you always that brown?’ I ask.

‘I went in for a reverse Michael Jackson.’

‘That’s permanent?’

‘It was a joke, James. I’m going to have to start cuing the canned laughter,’ she says. ‘Guthrie likes Michael Jackson, don’t you, lovely? He writes all the words out in his exercise books. It’s freakin from my baby,’ she sings, and Guthrie joins in. ‘It don’t matter if you’re black or white.’

He’s inherited his mother’s relationship with tone.

‘Are they even the words?’ I ask.

Ange tweaks the radio. ‘It’s school holidays. This is from chilling out poolside at the farm. We’ve been keeping the old folks company, haven’t we, buddy?’

‘Yes, we are.’

I’m getting the fear again. ‘So, how is Dad? I mean, how is he really?’

‘I told you already. He’s okay. Good as can be expected after a stroke.’

‘Stroke? I thought he slipped?’

‘Later.’ Ange glances in the rear vision mirror. ‘This is a later conversation.’

I stare at her, her bronzed limbs. ‘Whatever happened to pale and interesting?’

‘English propaganda.’

I lift my arms and move them away from my body to encourage air travel. The heat is beyond unbearable.

‘There is such a thing as skin cancer, you know,’ I say.

Ange shrugs. ‘It helps hide the cellulite.’

‘What cellulite?’

‘And anyway, we’ll be fine. We’re drinking Chardonnay.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Works a treat.’ Ange grins. ‘And it tastes way better than cod liver oil. Just ask Mum.’

Dad always loved a beer but I don’t remember Mum drinking til we moved from Orange: the white weatherboard with the pond in the backyard, the popping of the frogs summer nights. Mum taught English at the high school, studied at night. When we moved to the farm, she quit it all and her breath was sweet and dry when she kissed us good night. Maybe it was too much space. Or not enough. Years later I realised she was lonely. That was before she met Sharonna Jeffries. That last summer was the worst. The two of them laughing like hyenas, fawning over Trevor Gibbs. And Dad just sat there. He didn’t even try to compete. Trev was a dentist after all.

Guthrie appears between the seats. He’s wearing an ice cream moustache.

‘You live in England?’ He tilts his head to one side.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘That’s about as far away as he could get,’ Ange says.

‘Ange!’

‘It’s true.’

‘You could have come visit.’

‘Why didn’t I think of that? We could have popped back via the Maldives,’ Ange says.

‘Cliff Richard lives in England,’ Guthrie says.

‘That’s your fault.’ Ange says. ‘You ran off to the other end of the earth, so I had to rely on the crazies to babysit.’ She swings round in her seat. ‘No more stealing Nana’s records. Gees, buddy. What did you do with that tissue? Eat it?’

‘I didn’t eat it.’

‘Well, you certainly didn’t use it.’ She roots around in her bag with one eye on the road.

‘Do you want me to help with that?’ I grip the side of the car as we shear a truck full of live sheep. The stench of urine and musk drags in its wake, seeping in through the car’s air vents.

She hands her son another tissue. He wipes it across his face and hands it back.

‘Why thank you,’ Ange says. ‘I’ll add that to my collection, shall I?’

‘Better?’ Guthrie leans forward, smiling up at her.

‘Perfect, porcupine!’

She takes one hand off the wheel again to ruffle his hair. I try to breathe. He smooths it back into place.

The motion of the car, the peach meat in the pit of my stomach. I stare at my sister. I’m having an out-of-body experience. Like I’m stuck up in the corner of the car, just watching my body frozen, cradling the peach stone in my lap. This is some jetlag.

Nicole sparks up a cigarette in the backseat and passes it through. Ange pegs it between her lips. She shifts down a gear as the road narrows into a mess of dirty scrub. Nicole lights another for herself. I fan my face as smoke fills up the tiny space.

Charred tree breaks speed past. The cicadas shriek. And I think of the branches of the liquid amber stuck with their crisp, brown shells. Afternoons spent pelting seedpods across the paddocks, evenings spent crouched behind the banana palms getting stoned. Dad chopped them down after we got back from the Bay. The heavy leaves falling to the ground with their thick, white sap. His whole body hacking at them, heaving away until they were just stumps.

Ange squints as the sun lowers in the sky. ‘How are you going back there, my main man?’

‘Good.’ Guthrie grasps her shoulders with sticky hands.

‘I love you, my Guthrie.’

‘Is he wearing a seatbelt?’ I ask.

Out the window, a burst of colour breaks through the monotony: the bright red spindles of the bottlebrush. In my lap, the peach stone, its pink flesh clinging to the rough seed. I pop it back in my mouth and suck on it. Ange is watching.

‘You’ve been gone forever,’ she says.

I nod. The dry seed cuts into the flesh of my hard palate. I tongue at the shredded skin. Up ahead on the road two coloured birds skip across the tarmac. As the Holden approaches, they take flight and I see the soft green and salmon-pink of their underwings. They say your soul is like a bird. Your body, just a meat suit.

There’s a thump. One of the birds has underestimated the car’s speed. Its body leaves a tiny smirch of blood on the windshield. I stare in horror at the dull red mark.

‘Fuck!’ Ange checks the rear-vision mirror to see if the kids noticed.

I twist in my seat, trying to locate the bird’s body on the road behind us. I can’t see it.

She shrugs. ‘No use crying over spilt bird.’

…