The Chantic Bird by David Ireland Page B

went round the world. The last to read about the bird was the King, and what he read was that the best thing in his country, better than the china palace and the garden of a thousand miles, was the Chantic Bird.
    ‘Why didn’t I know this?’ asked the King. ‘Get me this bird.’
    I laughed at that, because the very first day I brought home from school my card from the Gould league of bird-lovers, I took out the old BB gun and got my first bird, a sparrow on the clothes-line. But no one in the palace knew about the bird, even though it was famous in every other country in the world. And no amount of punishment or promises could make anyone produce it. They would soon have to look for their information among the poorer classes because when they did they would come across the pretty little kitchen-maid who knew all about the bird.
    I could see Stevo was pleased to be telling me so much of his story, so I decided to let him leave some pleasure for next time. Lucky I brought two bags of chips with me; I gave him one and one to Bee for Chris, then off. Actually I went first and changed the metho for my great-grandfather’s eye.
    Did I tell you about the eye? He got it torn out in a fight—yes, that’s the one—and shoved it back in and went after the other bloke. Well, the eye is still in the family. The old man didn’t like the idea of keeping it, but he kept it anyway when we begged him to. People, even fathers, always like you to beg. You had to keep changing the metho every few months, otherwise it got all brown and cloudy. I’m glad it didn’t end up in some hospital incinerator with the amputations and tonsils and things.
    I didn’t keep it where Bee might get it.
    Next day a brown bomber—a parking cop—gave me a fright. I came round a corner slap bang into him, then later on one was following me. Being in jail hadn’t done me any good. I was getting nervous. The first time I ducked into a doorway, the second time I stepped off the footpath between two cars without thinking, and only the sound of a hellicking great rusty bulldozer saved me from going under it.
    I hate uniforms very much, and walked along by myself as usual, hating them all day. And thinking. Actually the only way I could stop suffocating was to keep away from people. With too many around too much of the time it was as if there couldn’t be enough air for me to breathe.
    Did those two people, who might have been strangers to me if I hadn’t been their son, did they enjoy it when they had me, or rather when they started me? Or did they slog away for hours, hating it? Trying again each month when they missed, getting nastier…

7
TENT
    A tiny bit of light came through the bush at me and a huge bellow started a sort of echo, a tingling echo, in my chest. The light was the tiny shout of a match flaming, the shout was the huge flaming of a very red man in a check shirt and open chest. There’d been a racket coming from this other camp, they must have been drinking dozens of bottles of grog and now they were singing. The red man had an open chest, since not only was his check shirt open, but a round red opening had appeared on the skin of his chest. What it was, they shot him in mid-song. Dead silence contradicted his cheerful racket.
    Maybe someone only let off the rifle to get rid of a shell. Since it was night and the man had been shot by matchlight and there was little or no campfirelight, I got closer, and while they were still shocked at what they’d done and scrabbling at their things to get away, I pinched their tent. The whole tent. Pegs and all. Pulled it out of the ground and off. The man with the rifle was busy stuffing dirt and gravel down it, ready to loose another shot and put different markings on the inside of the barrel. I suppose he’d burn off the stock on the fire.
    I felt suddenly pink and gold. And found myself running again. I knew that track and folded the tent in my arms while I was running. I decided to turn the