The Island(80)

“Go on, then,” Heather said.

At first shyly but then with more confidence, Olivia sang and rapped all of Pink Friday by Nicki Minaj with Owen joining in on the choruses.

“What about your stuff?” Olivia said.

“You wouldn’t like it. I’m a woman out of time. Mostly.”

But they insisted as she stoked the fire. They wanted a story or a song. She offered to sing them Greta Van Fleet or Tame Impala or Lana, but now Olivia actually wanted the retro-hipster stuff, so she ended up singing them the whole of the White Album, including the shit songs.

“You can really sing,” Olivia said and meant it.

“Yeah,” Owen agreed.

“Thank you.”

They yawned and stretched and talked and fell asleep next to each other. Kids have the gift of sleep. They were so peaceful, they were part of a tomorrow when all of this was over.

Heather cleaned her rifle and put it within easy reach.

She had one bullet left.

She closed her eyes and lay down on the sandy cave floor, and within minutes she too fell through the dark blue midnight into a deep sleep.

She dreamed. The kids dreamed. The dreams syncopated.

On the land above all was chaos, storm, and lightning, but down here in the underworld all was quiet.





41



The sun was old iron, then blood, then faded yellow playground plastic. She sat on the tree limb and looked through the binoculars at the water and the mainland. You could possibly try a shot over there but that was a two-miler without a guarantee of hitting anything or attracting attention. Ammunition was precious. She watched a dorsal fin rise and sink beneath the waves.

The tree began to shake. She looked down. Owen was climbing up. He cleared the first level of branches and the second and the third. The old Heather would have told him to watch himself but he didn’t need to be told much now. “Hey,” she said.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked.

“Keeping an eye out.”

“What’s that bird?”

“Which one?”

“The one next to the crow on the other tree.”

“Oh, that one. I dunno. Some kind of raptor. An Aussie peregrine? Here, look at it through the binoculars.” She passed him the binoculars and resumed her rumination.

Olivia was at the bottom of the tree now. “Can I come up?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Olivia climbed the eucalyptus tree and sat on the branch next to Owen.

Heather adjusted her position and looked in the direction of the farm. She couldn’t actually see it from here, but she could make out an inky line of smoke coming from that direction.

“The bird has red on its front—what would that be?” Owen asked, handing her the binoculars back.

“Gosh, I dunno, Owen. Big mistake not bringing an Australian-bird guidebook here. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it,” she said and adjusted the focus. “Some kind of kite, maybe?”

“Would Dad know?”

“He knew everything.”

“He didn’t know about birds,” Olivia said.

“I need to go to the bathroom. It’s a number two,” Owen said.

Heather knew what the problem was. “Use grass. That, I guess, is what humans used for the two hundred thousand years before the invention of toilet paper.”

He went off for two minutes. When he came back up the tree, he gave her a nod. “It worked OK. But now I’m hungry,” he said.

“We can’t get the eggs in daylight. What about that snake? Do you think we could eat that?” Heather asked.

“It’s poisonous!” Olivia said.

“No, it’s venomous, not poisonous! Dummy!” Owen said.

“Don’t call your sister names.”

“He’s the dummy!” Olivia said.

“Apologize, Olivia.”

“Make him apologize first.”

Normally this could go for fifteen or twenty minutes, but today Owen said simply, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that,” and Olivia said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it either,” like two goddamn kids on the Hallmark Channel.

“It seems cruel that they fly all this way and then we eat their eggs,” Owen said.

“We’ll get something else, then.”

Heather scanned the horizon. She knew the O’Neills would start looking for them again eventually. But without the dogs and with fuel low in their vehicles, they might not be moving that fast. And maybe this morning, they would start feeling sick from the poisoned well.

“You learned all about birds on that place you grew up?” Olivia asked.

“Goose Island. Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Why did you leave?” Olivia asked.

“Um, I think I just got to that stage when your parents suddenly flip from being always right to always wrong.”

Olivia nodded and dropped out of the tree and went wandering by the old ruined bus.

“That’s never going to happen to me ’cause I don’t have any parents,” Owen said.

Heather swallowed, hard. “Owen—”

“Hey, look what I got,” Olivia said. It was a side mirror from the bus. “It’s useful, right?”

“Of course it is! We can signal for help from passing planes. You catch the sun like this,” Owen said, climbing down out of the tree and grabbing it.