Effie had that look on her face. She got out of her caravan and slammed the door shut behind her. Gus crouched down behind the bales of hay. He’d been feeding Buster little pieces of chocolate, trying to coax him to dance on his back legs the way he did for Effie. Half a family-sized block later, Buster was happily stretched out in the shade, licking his snout but he hadn’t performed a single trick for Gus.
Effie hated Gus mucking around with Buster. Gus took one look at her furious expression and decided to make himself scarce. Before she could spot him, he slipped inside the nearest caravan – the bunkhouse. It was the drabbest caravan on the lot. An ever-changing procession of tenthands lived in it, and it had a worn-out, uncared-for feel. The tenthands were all busy pulling down the tent and loading up for the trip across the Nullarbor.
Gus blinked as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The air was thick with the smell of men’s bodies and stale tobacco. Gus lifted one of the curtains and watched Effie as she wiped a bit of chocolate from Buster’s snout and looked around suspiciously.
‘What you doing in here, kid?’ asked a groggy voice. Pikkle raised himself up on one elbow in the top bunk.
‘Avoiding Effie.’
‘Why’s that? I thought you two were buddies.’
‘Mostly we are, but not today. She got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. If she calls me fishface one more time, I think I’m gonna have to punch her lights out.’
Pikkle laughed and swung his legs over the side of the bunk. He stretched like a cat and the caravan shook as he jumped out of bed.
‘Wanna coffee?’
‘I don’t drink coffee. I’m only eleven.’
‘I can’t live without it,’ said Pikkle.
He tipped a handful of beans into a grinder and the smell of coffee filled the air. Pikkle’s hair stood up in orange tufts, sharp and spiky with black roots so the top of his head looked like a weird cactus plant. He had nothing on but a pair of boxer shorts covered in yellow smiley faces and a single black ‘Marvin the Martian’ sock. Gus tried not to stare but it was hard not to. Pikkle’s back had a long winding tattoo of a dragon on it, and a circular Chinese symbol hovered above his right nipple. His left nipple was pierced and the gold hoop that hung from it shone in a ray of sunlight that slipped in through a crack in the curtains. There was even a silver ring through his navel.
‘What’s the matter? Haven’t you seen any body piercing before?’
‘Just ears,’ said Gus, dropping his gaze for a moment.
‘Got a few of them too,’ said Pikkle grinning. He pulled his ears out like a monkey and Gus counted nine studs and rings in one ear and eleven in the other.
‘Oh and this too.’ He stuck his tongue out and curled it up so Gus could see the silver stud piercing the flap of skin beneath his tongue.
‘Oh, sick! Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘No, I like it. Mind you, getting the nipple done was kind of painful but the rest were easy. I did the ear stuff myself.’
‘I like your tattoo,’ said Gus shyly.
‘This one’s my favourite,’ said Pikkle. He pushed down the top of his Marvin the Martian sock. ‘Check it out.’
Gus squatted down and looked closely. A white rat with bared teeth was circling Pikkle’s ankle. The rat’s tail wrapped around and up his leg.
‘I reckon I was a rat in my last life,’ said Pikkle, and he laughed.
Gus looked at him admiringly.
‘You know, Vytas reckons you and me should do a regular clown routine together.’
‘Your old man wouldn’t like it,’ said Pikkle.
The coffee percolator began to sputter just as they heard the roar of Doc’s voice echoing across the circus lot. Pikkle and Gus both winced at the same time and then laughed at each other.
‘Are you scared of him too?’ asked Gus.
‘Nah, it’s just he gives me the shits sometimes. I don’t know if I’m gonna last till we get to Perth.’
‘What were you going to do in Perth?’
‘Busk. It’s good money busking in big cities. I’m heading to Europe next; London, Amsterdam, Paris. Maybe join one of those French circus schools and work up some really good stunts.’
‘What kind of stunts?’
‘You’re full of questions, kid, aren’t you?’ He gulped down his coffee and dropped the cup into a sink full of three-day-old dishes. ‘Look, I’ve gotta get out there and help load up. Why don’t you hitch a lift with me today? We’ve got a long ride across the Nullarbor and I could use some company.’
He pulled on a baggy T-shirt and a pair of bright orange track pants and picked up some sunglasses.
‘Catch you later,’ he said as he leapt out into the sunshine.
Gus tried to sneak around the back of the caravans so Effie wouldn’t spot him, but as he came round the back of the elephant truck, she was standing in front of him with her arms folded across her chest.
‘What do you think you’re doing, fishface?’
‘If you call me fishface one more time…’
‘What? You want to make something of it?’
Gus took a step back and thought about hitting her but then thought better of it.
‘No, not really,’ he sighed. ‘But why are you so pissed off with me?’
‘I’m in big trouble because of you – again. You haven’t done your correspondence work, and Dad says it’s all my fault. He says I distract you.’
‘It’s just it’s so boring.’
‘Boring or not, you have to do it. Dad says he’s going to send me to boarding school if we don’t keep up with the correspondence stuff, so if I do wind up going, it will be all your fault.’
‘Why will it be my fault?’
‘I can’t sit in the caravan by myself doing all that stuff alone while you’re mucking around doing nothing and feeding my dog chocolate. It’s not fair.’
‘Oh sooky-sooky-la-la,’ said Gus.
Effie’s fist hit him right on the bridge of his nose, making little white stars spin around in front of his eyes. The next thing he knew he was lying flat on his back in the dust. Effie’s face appeared above him with the blue sky behind her.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked nervously.
Gus said nothing. He sat up and cupped one hand under his nose to catch the blood trickling down his nostrils.
Cas came around the side of the truck carrying a bale of hay. When he saw Gus’s blood nose he dropped the bale and knelt down beside him.
‘Effie, what have you done to Gus!’ he said.
‘It was an accident,’ said Gus.
‘This looks like a very Effie sort of accident,’ said Cas. He reached out and took hold of Effie’s wrists.
‘Tell me what you did, Effie.’
Effie’s eyes were wide and dark. ‘I was showing him how to do a pirouette and he stood too close to me and my elbow caught him in the face,’ she said, the words spilling out. ‘That’s all. I didn’t mean to hurt him. It really was an accident!’
‘Is this true, Gus?’ he asked.
Gus looked from Cas to Effie. She stared at him intently and her lip quivered as she waited for him to answer.
‘Yup,’ said Gus. ‘It was all my fault.’
Cas didn’t seem really satisfied, but Kali leant over the electric fence and called for him impatiently with a wheezy trumpeting. Cas glared at Gus and Effie, exasperated, and nodded his head, dismissing them. They retreated to the Cuelmo caravan while Cas dropped the back of the truck and broke up the hay bale, preparing for the long drive westward.
‘Thanks for that,’ said Effie.
‘That’s okay,’ he replied. ‘But hey, you’re a pretty good liar.’
‘I know. Sometimes I think I’m too good.’
They sat down at the table and sorted through some of the lesson sheets scattered across its surface. Lily slithered down off the windowsill and curled up on the bench beside Effie as they worked.
‘I guess we can do some of this on the drive across the Nullarbor,’ sighed Effie,
‘I’m going with Pikkle,’ said Gus.
‘Pikkle? What do you want to go with him for?’
‘I like him. He’s different.’
‘Everyone in the circus is different.’
‘Yeah, but he’s cool.’
‘I thought you were meant to be solving the “Who was Gus?” mystery. He won’t know anything about that.’
‘Look, I can’t get anything out of anyone. I thought of asking my mum when I phone her tomorrow but she doesn’t like talking about the circus. I can never think of anything to say that won’t upset her.’
‘You should just ask someone here.’
‘Who? Doc’s too scary to talk to and Nance just won’t and Vytas is too weird and Hannah, well, she gets kinda snappy. Anyway, there’s always other people around. It drives me crazy the way everyone lives on top of everyone else. It’s like living in a fishbowl except all the fish have secrets, like they’ve swallowed magic rings or diamonds or stuff like that, but even though you can see everything in the fishbowl, you can’t see what’s inside the fish.’
‘You’ve been hanging around with Vytas too much. You’re starting to sound like him. It’s probably really straightforward. Maybe Gus was the cockatiel your grandparents had before Lulu.’
‘Oh right. As if my mum would name me after a bird. And what about the accident he had?’
‘Maybe he fell off his perch.’
Gus didn’t know whether to laugh or punch her. He gathered up his note books and headed for the door.
‘See you in Norseman,’ he called, slamming the door behind him.
The road across the Nullarbor lay like a licorice strap across the scrubby red plain. Pikkle put the music up loud and rolled down the windows. He jived around as he drove, beating time on the steering wheel and shouting out the lyrics when the song got to the chorus until there was a scraping whine as the old tape player scrambled the cassette.
‘Shit!’ shouted Pikkle. ‘Get it out of there, kid! That’s my Fun-Loving Criminals getting cannibalised in there.’
Gus yanked the cassette out of the deck, but a long loop of tape stayed crumpled inside the machine. Pikkle groaned and snatched the tape from him.
‘That player, it’s like everything else in this outfit – totally rooted!’
‘Sorry,’ said Gus.
Pikkle looked at him and suddenly laughed.
‘You don’t have to feel personally responsible. You take this stuff about being a real Zarconi, or an O’Brien or whatever, pretty seriously, eh?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m a McGrath anyway.’
‘So where’s your dad?’
Gus looked out the window. The Southern Ocean had come into view, deep blue stretching to a hazy horizon. White crests flecked the surface and surf foamed against the jagged coastline.
‘Hey, kid. You don’t have to tell me anything. Look, my dad shot through when I was kid. It was a big deal then, but you grow up, get a life, have a few laughs. You don’t have to carry that garbage around with you forever.’
‘Hannah says you have to carry stuff for your parents.’
‘Not me. No way. Learn to juggle, kid. That’s my advice. Chuck it all up in the air and make it spin.’
He slowed the truck down and pulled off the road.
‘Why are we stopping?’
Pikkle lifted his sunglasses up onto the top of his head.
‘Time to take a leak and check the view.’
Rain was on its way, and the air was heavy with moisture. They picked their way through the low twisted scrub to the clifftop. A breeze lifted up off the sea and Gus hungrily swallowed mouthfuls of the briny air. Looking out across the Great Australian Bight, he stretched his arms out wide on either side and felt the wind sweep up the cliff-face and whip around him.
‘You look like you’re going to take off,’ said Pikkle. He put one hand on Gus’s shoulder and pulled him back from the edge.
‘Wish I could. I’d dive right off, fly along the surface for a while and then swim all the way to Antarctica. That’s what’s out there. Effie found all these pictures of it in National Geographic. I’d keep heading south until I saw the icebergs.’
Pikkle took his sunglasses off and looked at Gus long and hard. He had one eyebrow up in the air as if he were caught out by surprise.
‘Gus McGrath – part fish, part bird. Yeah, kid. I can see it; feathers, scales and a very funky tail. Wild stuff.’
They heard the blast of a horn as Doc sped past on the highway in Kali’s truck.
‘Hey, that’s our cue to hit the road again. The boss will go ballistic if we don’t make Norseman by dark,’ said Pikkle.
Back in the truck, Pikkle pulled the shredded tape out of the cassette and pushed another one in.
‘Won’t that get wrecked too?’ asked Gus.
‘I’ll risk it. This one’s for you, kid. Everything these guys do is seriously mythic. There’s a track called “Backwards Voyager” that makes me think of flying fish.’
Gus shut his eyes and felt tangled up in the weird music. A violin solo wove its way through the beat of a drum and a gently strummed guitar, like a strange sea-creature moving between air and water. His head filled with images of fins and wings, his body moving just above the surface of the Southern Ocean.