him?’
‘No. Not that I’m aware of. I mean he’s just a story to scare kids.’
‘Father Christmas doesn’t scare kids.’
‘Okay, well, forget Father Christmas. Think ghosts. Bogeyman.’
‘Ghosts exist.’
‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion.’
‘It is my opinion that ghosts exist.’
‘And good for you.’
She took a long slow drink out of the tin cup he’d given her, eyes fixed stonily on his. ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
He pretended to think hard. ‘Sort of roundish with legs.’
‘You are making that up.’
Frank sighed. ‘Okay; you’ve got a kangaroo’s tail – the size of an emu.’ He thought a bit – some children’s book from when he was a kid. ‘Sort of a beak, I think, and these funny bobbles on his head. Feathers – but no wings. Scales. And maybe fins. Big sharp teeth.’
‘Is it always a man?’
‘What?’
‘Is there only one bunyip and is it a he?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose there might be more than one. And maybe he has a girlfriend.’
Sal was unimpressed and turned her face away. ‘You’re making it up. You don’t know anything about it.’
‘Well, be fair. I’ve never met one.’
‘Ha! So it does exist!’
‘I didn’t say that. Eat your sandwich.’
She picked up a prawn and galloped it round the plate. ‘Anyway. I know he exists,’ she said, teeth clenched together.
‘And how’s that?’
‘Bunyip got my sister.’
The sheets bunched damply under his ribs, and his eyelids were light and wouldn’t close. It was hot, the air in the shack hadn’t moved since the sun had breathed into the room that morning. He thought about trying to sleep on the veranda, but Jesus roamed the cane and it made him less inclined to move from his sagging bed. He remembered wading through that cane, leaving Bo by the fire. He had been fogged up to the neck with gasoline and the leaves of the cane threatened to cut open his eyes. He’d sat in the firelight the night Bo’s ear was bleeding all over the place, and they’d passed the gas and rag back and forth between them.
Bo’d talked to billy-o. ‘I dunno, man,’ he’d been saying, ‘we should shoot through, move up north, there’s jobs for people like us up there, there’s fruit picking and farm work, and we could pick up a new couple of chicks just like that. Or the girls could come with us. Could hitch up there, or even if it’s just the two of us, I dunno which is best. Man, we could get fish outta the sea and we could get us a tent or maybe we’ll get a VW and we can sleep in that, self-contained like.’ And he went on and on like that, and to Frank it seemed like there was something evil in the fat-mouthed idiot all of a sudden. Sat there with blood crusted round his earhole, his fat neck creasing at the back, he looked like someone you’d see molesting dogs in the park. He thought of his dad’s nose, the nostrils black with dried blood, a busted blood vessel in his eye, after the pub.
Something heavy was on Frank’s chest. ‘I’m going to go,’ he interrupted Bo, who was still talking about how their sleeping quarters would look, how they could get one of those chemical toilets or they could do their craps in paper bags and throw them out the window.
Bo blinked. ‘Going where? How d’you mean?’ He cocked his head to look up at Frank, shielded the bad side of his face with his hand against the fire. ‘Jeeze, you look like your old man tonight.’
Frank took a heave on the gasoline rag and ink spilled out of the dark that twitched and churned at the edge of the fire. It looked like things beetled all around them, and when he turned his head they flowed from Bo’s mouth and attached themselves to his eye sockets then disappeared back in again. And there was one big one that chewed at Bo’s ear, drooled and snotted and rapped his skull with its fingernails, which split and then multiplied and its eyes were the eyes of a cooked fish, white and blind and popping out of their sockets. And Bo was fat and content to let it lick at his face, let it eat from inside his mouth, pull on his tongue, this terrible fat lump with a bloody ear.
Frank stood up and walked slowly round Bo, looking him over, and Bo looked back dully, thickly. Frank kicked some sand at the fire and Bo flinched. He