The Chantic Bird by David Ireland

feeling off, but I couldn’t; I hoped it wouldn’t make me spend my energy before I was safely camped, but there was nothing I could do. I felt so good, I knew I would have to wait until I calmed down.
    Miles away I got the tent up. I was feeling pretty gold, but I’d lost my pink a bit, so I lay right down to go to sleep. I knew like that I’d never feel cold no matter what blew up from the south.
    On a night like that you could hear the tree bark growing, and light airs would come over the dry hills and hum very quiet in the tree leaves, and far down in the valley you could hear the little creek that came and went from nothing to waterfalls, making its talk over the rocks and cold stones. Even though I felt good I couldn’t help thinking that even the winking little stars have rough edges, that look so smooth a few light years away.
    My funny warm feelings must have coloured in my dreams that night. I even dreamed I was in the bush. While I can still dream, I am me. Down where three valleys met and the cool sound of water and the quiet bark of the trees made it my private theatre, a singer stood on a rock surrounded by the green and amber of young, moist leaves. He sang a slow song, very sweet, it made a funny feeling on top of my head and suddenly I felt cold, and shivered. I still seem to hear what he sang. In my dream I knew that was the sort of song that made a bit of wet come into my eyes, the next thing I had some tears gathering up to make their own private waterfall down from my eyelids.
    When I woke up cold just before dawn for my usual reason, I thought that no matter what was outside my tent, all I had to do was go inside and I could imagine myself alone on a desert with nothing but rocks and bones and prickly ants for company. Or like one of those explorers that get time off from their bosses, I could imagine myself on top of a mountain with the wind slashing through and round and under, with nothing but snow and age-old granite for company.
    When that thought hit me, I picked up a lump of rock and I looked at it hard, trying to pretend I could see it, looking close at the grains stuck together that made them all together a rock, and thinking how blasted old it must be. And the rest of it, that this bit broke off from, and so on. How simply old; stinking, stupid, unreasonable old…Thinking like that made me throw the rock as far as I could, and when it landed the last shadow of my dreams and thoughts vanished.
    On the way back to the house to have a game with the kids, I made a few of my special traps in the paddocks I crossed. You dig round holes and cover them with cowcakes. People tread in them and twist their ankles or just fall over. It’s great fun doing it and laughing about what might happen. I carried a few cakes in my shirt and when I’d dug some holes in footpaths I lidded them with cowcakes. Nice, dry, thin ones. I couldn’t wait to see them in action, though I thought I’d like to spend a few hours at the house with Bee and the kids.
    First I thought I’d get them a lot of vegetables cheap, because there was a glut at the markets, but no go. I suppose they were dumping their potatoes at sea as usual, and the farmers that couldn’t get their things to market were ploughing them in. You hope that some things might have changed, but they don’t change.
    When I got there next door’s cat was on the verandah sunning his claws, and Stevo was in the middle of telling Bee how a dog had followed him to school. He wasn’t too happy with strange dogs.
    ‘Were you scared?’ asked Bee.
    ‘I shaked a bit,’ said old Stevo. ‘He stopped and did wee-wee a lot.’
    I played cricket with him in the backyard. Chris and Allie got in the way a bit and pretty soon there was yelling and shrieking. It never bothered me, but Bee got sharp. She abused Chris and Allie and Stevo as well as me. I knew she didn’t mean it, she was just yelling because we were out there and she wasn’t.
    ‘Come and get on