truck. He slid inside and rested his head on the steering wheel. He pushed his tongue into his bottom lip and made the noise ‘eughn’ like one of the kids might. He tried to feel silly but he just felt disappointed. Of course, after what had happened to the Mackelly kid . . . of course she’d get picked up by her parents. She was only seven. He breathed a sigh of relief, imagining what would have happened if she had seen him, if she’d thought he was collecting her and not her mother.
He didn’t feel like going back to the shack, but he drove there all the same, trying to shake off the feeling that the day had been a waste. He’d bought a reinforced prawn net anyway.
The cockatoo was gone from the side of the road, just a few white feathers lifted in the breeze as he drove by. When he pulled up, Linus was there. He’d helped himself to a beer and sat on the steps wearing his old green hat far back on his head, leaning into the last of the yellow sun. His belly had snuck out of the bottom of his T-shirt and rested like a cat on his thighs. ‘How’s life, ol’ matey?’ he asked.
‘Good, good,’ Frank exaggerated. ‘What can I help you with?’
‘I already helped meself.’ The grizzled old bugger raised his bottle at Frank, the white of his stubble shone against his black skin.
‘Right.’ There was nothing for it but to get a drink and sit with the hoary coot.
‘Just wondered how the place was treating you. Getting on okay? Need any hocus-pocus doing?’
Frank laughed a loud ha! and opened his own beer.
A yellow light hit the tallest of the box trees at the edge of the bush. Frank waited, but for a long time the only noise was the far-off applause of crickets and cicadas.
When Linus finally spoke it was to say, ‘Terrible business, Ian’s girl.’ He looked out over the cane, no eye contact.
‘Bad as it gets.’
‘I ’member her being born. Well, it was only fourteen years ago, so I suppose I would. Makes you think you could go back an’ do something ’bout it. Gonna be some sort of memorial thing at the enda the week. I’m sure Stuart’ll have told you – she had a lot of aboriginal friends. They’re going to do some sorta ceremony for her. Not really sure how Ian’ll see that, but.’ He snorted. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Ian hasn’t really got a problem. ’S more he’d just like to crush someone I think. Grind ’em into the ground. An’ who can blame him? Heard he went ape-shit when they found out her boyfriend was a black fella. But he wouldn’t have minded, not really – he just didn’t know about it.’
The sun was lower down on the box trees now, a lick of yellow on their trunks. Flycatchers settled on the tips of their branches. There was a sudden brightening of everything, the sun took one final deep breath, then the light mellowed and started to fade. Frank’d never been so aware of night falling. ‘You live alone, Linus?’
‘I do. I prefer to live in the town, though. Me and Eleanor. Left her at home. Not like you, not one of those “flash your bum at nature and sleep on the grass” types.’
‘Oh?’
‘Tell the truth, mate, gives me the willies, a man staying out here all on his own.’
He looked at the old man, but Linus stayed looking dead ahead. He sipped from his beer. Frank shrugged, tried to look nonchalant. ‘Sometimes I hear a thing or two I can’t put a name to. But then most of the time it’s just bandicoots and dreams.’ There was a silence and Frank started to form a long complicated question in his head; then, surprising himself, he said, ‘What do you know about the bunyip?’
Linus frowned, looked down at his drink. ‘He’s that fella on TV with the orange face, isn’t he? The one that’s rude t’ everyone? Swears a lot – a puppet.’
‘No – that’s a wombat – and I mean the actual bunyip.’
‘The actual bunyip, y’say? Where did you grow up? Fuckin’ out the back of beyond?’
‘All I know about the bunyip is stuff from kids’ books. He hangs around swamps or something.’
Linus drank from his bottle and Frank could hear it going down, heard it snake through his gullet, drop into his belly. Linus’s stomach made a noise like something being