The Eye of the Sheep

Winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Sofie Laguna

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781760292485
• eBook ISBN:
  9781952534638
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2015 Voss Literary Prize and the 2015 Stella Prize
Longlisted for the 2016 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Meet Jimmy Flick. He's not like other kids - he's both too fast and too slow. He sees too much, and too little. Jimmy's mother Paula is the only one who can manage him. She teaches him how to count sheep so that he can fall asleep. She holds him tight enough to stop his cells spinning. It is only Paula who can keep Jimmy out of his father's way. But when Jimmy's world falls apart, he has to navigate the unfathomable world on his own, and make things right.

Part One

It was Saturday morning and I was doing the gardening with Mum. My dad was still asleep.

‘When will he wake up, Mum? Mum? When will Dad wake up?’ I asked as she watered the fern, its tentacles bouncing under the pressure. If I stood close enough I could hear the same tentacles inside my mum, waving at the dust in her air ducts. ‘Has he had enough yet, Mum? Does he still need more rest?’

My dad worked at the Mobil refinery in Altona, getting rid of the rust. Rust came back every time it rained, but even if it left my dad raw, his skin corroded so you could see the fibres that joined him, he didn’t stop scraping. He learned at the Western Car Yard in Laverton. Mum said all the Flick brothers knew how to work.

‘You help me in the garden, love, and let Dad have a bit of quiet. He’ll be tired after the night shift. Here, take the hose.’ Mum passed me the hose and I felt the water pushing its way through the rubber tube. The hose gave it a direction. I aimed at the leaves and then I aimed at the path, blasting leaves against the edges.

‘Keep it on the plants, Jimmy, that’s the boy,’ said Mum.

I watched as the leaves drank, absorbing fluid and light, and growing greener as water dripped down the stems and back into the ground. When Mum was getting her gloves and her kneeling pad from the laundry, I let go of the hose. It whipped and wriggled like a snake under attack and water flooded the paving. I grabbed the hose-snake by the neck and felt the water rushing through my fist. I looked at the soil refining to mud. I heard the plants drinking, their stems gulping back the drips. The darker the soil the more it had to drink. It processed the water the same way the refinery processed oil.

I got to see it up close one day. Dad left his thermos behind, and Mum took Robby and me, and drove it in to work for him as a surprise. Mum parked the Holden in Mobil Car Park A and through the high wire fence I saw the inside of a body with intestines made of steel and no skin around its precious metals. It smoked grey clouds and a flame blasted from the end of a huge pole like a giant pilot light. It was the same network that was in the rabbit that my Uncle Rodney shot and pulled open. The same network that was in my mum, the same network that was in me, in plants and leaves and machinery and all shops and underground in the earth’s core. It was the whole inside of all living things, but on the outside, and that’s where my dad worked. There! In that refinery! My mouth watered. I couldn’t look away.

Robby and me were eating Weet-Bix at the table when Dad walked into the kitchen. ‘Morning, boys,’ he said, his voice croaky with sleep.

‘Morning, Dad! Morning,’ I said.

Robby barely looked up – he was reading the instructions on the milk bottle; it was just Robby and the bottle. ‘Morning,’ he mumbled.

Dad leaned against the island and rubbed his eyes. The skin of his face was still red from the rust. ‘Might take my coffee down to the shed, love,’ he said to Mum. ‘Take a look at that chair.’

‘Good idea, Gav,’ she said, passing him his cup. ‘A chair with three legs isn’t much use, hey?’ She smiled.

‘Good idea, Gav,’ I said.

Dad looked at me and frowned, then he took his coffee and went through the back door.

A horn beeped outside. Robby took his bowl to the sink and pulled up his football socks. ‘Mrs Davids is here,’ he said, looking through the window.

‘Good luck for the game,’ said Mum, grabbing him and squeezing. ‘And thank Mrs Davids for the lift.’ Robby was twelve – six years older than me – and Mum’s first miracle. Her ovarian was crusted with cysts like barnacles on a boat. I saw a picture on Dr Eric’s wall. The boat was deep in the water and there was hardly any space. Only one tiny hole that took me six years to find – her second miracle.

Robby headed for the front door.

‘Bye, Robby, bye. Good luck in the game,’ I said, but he was already gone.

Dad’s shed was a garage with a roller door that didn’t roll. Dad used the thin door in the side instead. The shed was the one place Mum didn’t tidy. ‘You leave Dad alone when he’s in there, Jimmy,’ she said.

I hung around the doorway and looked in at Dad and rode my three-wheeler up and down the concrete path and onto the grass then back onto the path then onto the grass. Dad was drawing something on the wall. I dropped my three-wheeler and went closer to the open door. He was drawing lines around his tools with a texta.

‘What are you doing that for, Dad?’ I asked him. ‘Dad?’

‘So I don’t lose my tools, son,’ he answered. ‘Look.’ He took the hammer off the wall. Left behind was the outline of the hammer. ‘Now I know where the hammer should go. I’ll know when it’s missing. I should have done this years ago.’ He shook his head, then put the hammer back into the drawing of itself.

In the corner of the shed was a small fridge where Dad kept beers. There were stickers on the fridge door: pictures of highways that led to the beach. One said Golden Valley Highway, another said Southern Lands Highway, and one said Great Coastal Road. Some of the stickers had a wave curling over. Others had a fish or a fishing rod.

The shed was where Dad went to fix things like a chair. I stayed at the open door and watched him where he stood, gripping the chair between his legs, his mouth tight with a nail sticking out, his lips bitten back as he hammered at the place where the leg had snapped. The refinery’s magnetic powers streamed through him and drew me. I couldn’t leave him alone.

Soon he came out of the shed, pushing past me with the chair. ‘Paula!’ he called.

Mum came into the yard. ‘Oh, love, that didn’t take you long!’ She looked closer at the leg he had fixed. ‘Think it’s strong enough to hold your other half?’ She smiled at him.

‘’Course it is,’ he said, before turning away. Her need was like a blanket you throw on a fire to extinguish the flames. Dad couldn’t breathe under there.

Dad pulled the lawnmower out of the shed. I wished I could mow. I liked the way the grass got sucked under then sliced off. While Dad took out the jerry can I ran my fingers down the long handle of the mower until I reached the round orange body. I wished I could turn the mower upside down and put a stick in the blades and see it get cut in half. I wanted to see how fast those blades could go.

‘Careful, Jimmy!’ Dad called out to me. He unscrewed the lid of the jerry can and poured the petrol into the mouth of the mower. I squatted beside it and watched the air shimmer and cloud. It didn’t matter how far the fuel travelled or how long it was stored, it never lost energy. If you lit a match and held it near, the air would catch fire.

When he’d finished pouring, Dad screwed the lid back onto the jerry can and put it beside the shed wall. I watched him cross the yard, his body small and quick. He stood over the engine, legs apart, and pulled the cord. The ladies on his arm shot up into the air, nearly knocked off his muscle. The sun behind him shone bright in my eyes.

‘It didn’t work, Dad. It didn’t work,’ I said. Dad pulled at the cord again, harder. The motor still didn’t start. Underneath the metal body of the mower the blades waited. ‘Are you going to pull it again, Dad? Are you going to pull it again?’ I asked him.

The answer was yes yes yes! He pulled the cord again, his arm a fast red streak up into the sky, sending the ladies on his muscle through the air, squealing and shrieking. This time the motor started. ‘Rrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm!’ Engines send my cells into a spin as they try to keep up. I ran towards the mower then away from it, then towards it, then away from it, then around it in a circle, then another circle, then another circle then another circle.

‘Paula! Paula!’ Dad shouted over the rumble. ‘Come out here and get Jimmy!’

‘Get Jimmy, will you! Get Jimmy!’ I shouted. ‘Get the kid, get the kid!’

‘Paula! Paula!’ Dad called. The engine kept chugging, and I kept running. I jumped over the top of the mower, first from the back and then from the front. ‘Paula! Paula!’ Dad grabbed at me as I leapt but I was too fast for him.

‘Whooooeeeeeee!’ I called as I jumped. ‘Paaaauuuullllllaaaaaa!’ The blades or me, who was the fastest? Nobody knew! Nobody even knew! I jumped again then I ran to the fence, touched it and ran back. Dad swiped at me. Mum came running, rocking like a rowboat on the sea, down the back step and across the gravel path, towards me and the mower and my shouting dad. ‘Wheeeeeeeeeee!’ I screamed as I jumped, falling against the handle of the mower, tipping it on its side so its whirring silver blades glinted in the sun. I jumped again, Dad reached for me, but he went too close, too close!

‘Aaaahhhh!’ he called out, falling back from the mower.

Mum screamed, ‘Jimmy!’ and hauled me up.

Dad held his arm against himself, his face white and blue and green and grey, blood bursting across his shirt. Mum dragged me to the back door and pushed me through. She locked it from the outside and ran back down to Dad. I pressed my face to the glass, and watched their mouths moving around and up and down and around. I looked at their eyes and I saw that they were filled with tiny sharp rocks. I shouted to them, ‘Your eyes! Your eyes!’ but they couldn’t hear me. Mum tried to check Dad’s arm, but he pulled away. He shook his head, then looked back up at me. All of his face was closed, hard as the blade slowing to a stop beneath the dying engine.

I ran into the bathroom where the tiles were white and cool and I leaned my cheek against the wall. I looked at the crisscrossing lines. I traced my finger up and down the grooves where the mould collected, growing thick and black with spores that shot out from strings attached to the main body. Each spore was poison but you would need to lick every crack in the bathroom wall and the guttering at the base of the shower and the circles around the taps before you showed the symptoms.

The cold of the tile against my cheek slowed my cells to a cycle per second. One . . . turn . . . two . . . turn . . . three . . . turn . . . I closed my eyes and made a picture of my dad’s hands.

Mum told me Dad was the first one to hold me. He hadn’t been at the hospital for Robby’s borning, but times had changed – it was 1980, after all, said Mum – so he was there for mine. Mum told me I was pre-nup. She was too tired to lift her head; it stayed on the pillow, and Dad held his out hands instead. The nurse said, No, no, not yet, Mr Flick, but Dad said, Pass him to me. So the nurse, who was young, passed me, the baby, to him and because my skin was so raw and untamed I could feel the imprint of his hands on every part of myself. The nurse said, Please, Mr Flick, but my dad took no notice. He raised me to his face and because I was still so new, not yet obstructed by pollution, I had vision, and with it I could see through his eyes, past his thoughts, to his core. It was shining and there was a Jimmy-sized place for me inside it. My dad kissed my forehead and his lips imprinted on my intelligence. The nurse said, Mr Flick, please, and slowly, without wanting to, he passed me back.

I heard the back door open and Dad come inside. I heard him go into the sitting room.

I went out to where Mum was pushing the mower into the toolshed behind Dad’s garage. She couldn’t close the door; the fat black bottom of the mower was in the way. She pushed and pushed, then she leaned against it so the door had no choice and dragged the lock across. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. She turned around. Her face was damp with sweat from her effort. It evaporated from the hotplates under her pores.

‘Come inside, Jimmy. Come on,’ she said, holding out her hand. It was shaking. Dad’s blood was on her fingers.

‘What about Dad, Mum? What about your other half? Mum? What about Dad?’

‘I know you didn’t mean it, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘So does your dad.’

I followed her into the kitchen where she got out eggs and a saucepan. She dropped the saucepan onto the floor as she reached for the tap. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. Mum picked up the pot and filled it with water, then she put it on the stove. The tentacles in her air ducts began to wave as they tried ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• PART THREE
• PART FOUR
• PART FIVE
• PART SIX
• EPILOGUE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS