Flocks of birds speckled the fields. As they landed they would fold away their long white wings and dip their beaks to the earth. Some hopped about, raising their heads as the car went past. Sam tried to imagine the squawking among them all, bickering over a seed or a nut—he wasn’t sure what cockatoos ate. What if one was in charge? He’d seen TV shows about dogs. How they were pack animals. One was always in charge, and it would bite at the others to make them stay in line. Pack leader. He searched for the two galahs Dettie had told them about. The ones that travelled in every family. Sometimes they were in the furthest corners of the group, other times surrounded by the swarm. But she was right. They were always together.
Since the ant had crawled up his ankle a prickling sensation had been irritating his leg. He tried to scratch it slowly, rubbing the base of his palm along his skin.
Katie lay on the back seat with her pillow over her head.
Dettie had let her cry until she was quiet, but she kept looking over her shoulder to check on her. ‘Let’s all play a game, shall we?’ she said suddenly. ‘Let’s all try to remember a fun memory about your father. Do you want to do that?’
Their mother’s handkerchief was twisted around Katie’s finger, and before she had buried herself beneath the pillow, Dettie seemed distracted by the way Katie was cradling it, stroking the cotton.
‘That sounds good.’ Dettie grinned, her yellow teeth clenched. ‘I’ll start. Let’s see,’ she hummed, tapping her nails on the steering wheel. ‘All right. Here’s one.’ She sat up in her seat. ‘When your father and I were little, we had chores to do around the farm. And my job, you see, was to bring in the eggs from the hen house. So one morning I go out, as usual, and all the eggs have just disappeared. Couldn’t find one.’
She hunted in the rear-view mirror for Katie’s reaction.
‘I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when the same thing happened,’ she said. ‘Then the morning after that. And the one after that. Two weeks and not a single egg. Eventually, I woke up extra early and snuck out with a cricket bat, thinking maybe there was a fox—but I looked, and there were the eggs, still under the chooks. So I hid and waited to see what was happening. Soon enough, here comes something sneaking in through the door. And what do you think it was?’
Sam was glad he couldn’t speak, because Dettie didn’t bother turning to him with the same look of expectation that she trained on his sister. Katie didn’t move.
‘My brother,’ Dettie said. ‘Your father. With a filthy big grin on his face.’ She was smiling at the thought of it, shaking her head. ‘So I wrestled him to the ground, telling him what a dirty stinker I thought he was, and he fought and screamed and punched. We ended up waking the whole house, and that was that. Your grandpa pulled us apart with his big hands. He said we were thick as thieves, and gave us such a hiding I couldn’t sit for a week.’
Dettie chuckled and laid her hands at the bottom of the wheel. ‘Turns out your father had been stealing them for weeks. He was taking them to school. Selling them to his friends. Throwing them at other kids on the way home. I tell you, he was the dickens back then,’ she wheezed.
It was hard to imagine Dettie that young. With her tense jerking gestures and the tight sound in her voice, she had always seemed old to Sam. Even the photo of her as a child that hung in her apartment had always looked peculiar, as though it was somebody else’s face shining out from it, smiling carelessly over the tricycle’s handlebars.
‘Does anyone else have a story?’ She flashed hopeful glances at them both. ‘Sammy, I bet you’d remember your daddy getting you ready for the swimming carnival,’ she said, drumming her thumbs. ‘How he took you down to the pool with him in the mornings. The two of you sneaking out of the house with your towels.’
Sam remembered the swims, but not fondly. He turned back to the window.
‘He’d hold you up in the water. Your little legs kicking. The sun still creeping over the city.’ Dettie hummed. ‘How I wish I could have been there to see it.’ The corner of her mouth turned up.
What Sam recalled was very different. His father, off on his own, running long, steady strokes, face down, unspeaking, in the water. Sam thrashing through a sloppy lap or two before waiting around in the shallow end, hungry for breakfast, tracing circles with his feet on the concrete base of the pool and ducking his shoulders below the surface of the water to avoid the morning breeze.
The itch on Sam’s leg began to sting. His skin was pink from scratching, so he pinched either side of the most irritated area and squeezed. The flesh dimpled white beneath his fingers.
Sam preferred the beach. The warmth of the sand. Feeling his body held aloft by the chill salt water. Tumbling about in the foamy wash of the waves. But now, since the operation, he wasn’t allowed to submerge his neck in water at all. Just having a shower was problematic. So even if he wanted to go swimming with his father now, he couldn’t.
‘What about you, Katie? Can you think of anything?’
Katie’s elbows flapped as she pushed the pillows harder onto her face.
‘Your father, dear?’ Dettie turned. ‘You must have stories. Birthdays? Holidays?’
There was no answer from the back seat.
‘Come on. Sammy had one,’ Dettie sang. ‘There must be plenty of things to talk about. I know. Do you remember, there was a time at one of Sam’s soccer games—’
Katie squealed and threw a pillow against the opposite window. She lay rigid across the back seat, glaring at the ceiling. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. Her voice sounded strange. Deeper. ‘I don’t care.’
The pillow had startled Dettie. She blinked and wiped her mouth. ‘Oh, settle down,’ she scolded, then turned back to the road and stopped talking.