The Kangaroo Boy
Short fiction about the barriers between people
His brother died in a car crash. The accident occurred on one of those American roads with a number instead of a name: I-40, I-49, something in that range. That made the death feel cold somehow, like an expiration date. Better to die on Princes Highway or Wattletree Road, he figured. But his brother was American now, had been for decades.
Philip flew over for the service. At the wake, he and Nicole and their two girls were seated with his brother’s work associates. There was no arranged seating; that’s just how it worked out.
As Philip fiddled with his black tie, a regional manager—that’s how he introduced himself—explained how brilliant his brother was at work. ‘No one could wrangle that account, not even me,’ he said. ‘That’s good,’ said Philip. His girls were by the upright piano. The piano’s lid was closed for now, but they were dangerously close. Philip imagined them smashing all the keys at once, sending a shriek through the parlour, bringing the eyes of his brother’s life upon him. And Nicole was in the bathroom and the regional manager kept talking, so he sat and hoped. ‘The spreadsheets your brother made, my god. You’ve never seen anything like it—the fonts.’ ‘That’s good.’
Charlotte, his eldest, found a box next to the piano. She removed a candlestick and placed it in Rachel's hand. There was a discussion, and then Rachel held out the candlestick. She resembled a little air traffic controller in a black dress. Charlotte began circling her younger sister: twice on her left foot, once on her right, repeat. ‘One time we were held up at O’Hare after an optimisation conference and your brother ate two whole pies—not pie charts, real pies. You’ve never seen anything like it.’ This time Philip said nothing; his mind had wandered.
When Philip and James were boys, they lived with their parents on Wattletree Road. Every morning they played cricket in the backyard. One morning while Philip was batting, he slapped the ball into their mother’s garden. James disappeared among the ferns and overgrown weeds to search, and when he reappeared, he held a length of old rope instead of the ball. He displayed the rope proudly for his older brother. Then he flopped to the ground, wetting the seat of his school shorts on the grass, and looped the rope from his ankles to his knees. When he stood up, he hopped on the spot. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m a kangaroo. I’m the Kangaroo Boy.’
That afternoon their mother Susan received a call from the principal. ‘Your son is hopping around with rope tied around his legs. He’s calling himself the Kangaroo Boy.’ Susan was at work. She rushed to a breakroom. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Phil is struggling at the moment—puberty, some things at home.’
‘For once I’m talking about your son James,’ said the principal. ‘Heavensly College, as you know, is a school for young men, not hopping joeys.’ Their mother checked the breakroom doorknob, lowered her voice. ‘Can’t you just take the ropes away.’ The line fell silent. ‘No one can catch him.’
This was relayed to Philip later. His father Gary received the news from his mother while he too was at work. ‘The principal is talking suspension,’ she said. ‘He called it a gateway to bestiality. Bestiality, Gary. Our boys’ futures hang by a thread.’
Philip imagined his father seated behind his desk. His father was bolt-upright: a condemned man helping the executioner strap on the conductive hat. But instead of a viewing gallery before him, where the last of us that love can gather and bear witness, there were framed footballers, running. Those pictures were nailed to the grey walls of every day—old dreams his knees can’t abide. ‘Calm down. Leave it with me, Honey,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to James. Don’t worry. It will be fine. Everything is fine.’
The drive home that night was black and the blackness was a portal, like there was no time or space at all between the office and home. He could reach his tired arm out one door and through the next, to where his sons would not be waiting to welcome him, no matter the week, year or life he had endured—for them. Time, for adults, is not measured in days. It stretches on in an unbroken string, a lit and patient fuse.
Gary found the boys inches from the television—video games, always video games. In the doorway, he received no acknowledgement. He could have fired a shotgun into the ceiling. He could have brought the roof down, but his boys would just clear the rubble and return to the digital man, shooting, killing, running. ‘James, take off those damn ropes,’ he said. No response, like he was not there. A heat spread from his chest to his arms, and he tried to crush the doorknob into dust. ‘No son of mine,’ he said louder, ‘will be a kangaroo fucker.’
James dropped the controller. He was a gaunt child—frail and small, much like Gary as a boy. He could not hold his father’s stare for long, so his gaze soon fell to the safety of his ropes. Philip placed his hand on James’s back. Like braille, you could read the boy’s soul through the bumps of his spine. ‘Leave me alone,’ he was saying. ‘Let me be.’
Gary softened now he had their attention. He leaned against the open door and let his chin rest on the knuckles of his fist that held the doorknob. ‘Please take off those ropes,’ he said. ‘Your mother is worried sick.’
Philip knew what came next. You never pressed Dad. You seized the offer of a polite resolution or be grounded. Now was no different, or so Philip thought.
James sprung to his feet and hopped to the window. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘I am the Kangaroo Boy.’ He unlocked the window latch, lifted the frame, and dived into the night. Outside, he cleared the front fence in a single bound and vanished.
Later that evening, Gary, Susan and Philip were still searching for the Kangaroo Boy. They had been driving since the traffic died, the restaurants closed.
Through the vertical lines of rain on the rear window, Philip checked behind passing bushes and commercial bins. He hoped to glimpse his brother in the streetlight. ‘Jesus Christ—what if he’s been taken?’ said Susan. ‘He hasn’t been taken,’ replied Gary, but he pressed the accelerator nonetheless. He unwound his window to see clearer. He let rain slap his face and soak his lap, while Susan, imagining hell in this world, pulled her coat lapels tight around her neck.
They found the Kangaroo Boy at the oval where the boys play cricket in the summer. He was on a wooden crossbeam at the edge of the carpark, hugging himself for warmth. In the headlights, his wet school shirt stuck to his meagre frame. Behind him the familiar oval seemed like another planet, a barren place with no life. As the car approached, James glared at the lights, red-eyed like a drowning rat.
Susan wept. The world had conspired to poison her son and where was she? Elsewhere, dealing with Philip, work. In her job as a mother, she had failed. Her weeping intensified. Gary rubbed her shoulder through the coat. He told her it would be okay and then turned to the headlight glow. ‘This fucking kid,’ he said, before ripping the handle and kicking the door open.
Through the windscreen and the rhythm of the wipers, Philip watched his father march into the light. His mother scrambled from her side a step behind. She reached her husband before he reached James and tugged at his sleeve so hard he spun. Their mouths moved, the wipers waved. Each wiped their face clear of the rain as they spoke. Then they approached James together.
Gary draped his jacket over his son’s twitching shoulders. Then he kissed his son’s forehead and scooped him off the wooden beam. Susan wrapped her arms around them both and nestled against James to warm the boy. She whispered something, and Gary laid his head on her soaking crown. In the car, the image of his family in the headlights carved itself in Philip’s mind: his father patting the boy’s ropes and the boy’s face coming alive and his mother smiling with relief and the rain and the night and everything was tinted yellow except the stretch of nothingness behind.
On the way home, they picked up McDonald’s and ate in the car. Later they watched a movie together and soon the boys were in bed. But Philip could not sleep. He stared at the vague grey lump on the other bed and wondered who was there. ‘Are you awake?’ he whispered. The lump shifted, so Philip flicked on his lamp.
‘Why are you wearing those ropes?’ he asked.
His brother climbed onto one elbow. “Because,” he whispered.
‘Because why? Why not just take them off? I don’t get it.’
‘Because,’ said James. ‘Now turn off the light.’
Philip stared at James’s pale face. That moment, he realised they were just brothers, not the same person, and when he flicked the light off, James disappeared.
As life would have it, he never learned why James wore those ropes. Three days later, James discarded the ropes of his own accord. He tossed them in the trash with yesterday’s scraps. He never mentioned them again either; the Kangaroo Boy was no more. And decades and heartbreaks, career milestones and marriages later, he was fixed in a box. Along with his body, the answer was buried.
‘I once saw your brother tell a client there was a terror threat on our building so he could delay a presentation. He rushed the clients into the elevator, made them cover their heads. He was yelling, “It’s finally happening; they got us.”’ The regional manager laughed. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it.’ Philip thought of the Kangaroo Boy. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said.
When Nicole returned, she ran her hand through Philip’s hair. ‘Why is she holding candlesticks?’ she asked. The girls had moved from the piano towards the lunch spread. Rachel now held two candlesticks out as far as her tiny arms could manage. Charlotte was still hopping on one leg, then both. She circled her sister in this curious step, just out of reach, and at random intervals Jessica would pivot, her arms shifting like the hands on a clock. ‘Next move,’ she was saying. ‘Next move…’
‘I have no idea what they’re doing,’ said Philip.
Nicole glanced at James’ family on the next table. His widow was reading the funeral program aloud to her elderly grandmother. They had not noticed the girls yet, but they soon would. ‘Girls,’ said Nicole, stepping in their direction.
Philip lunged to take her wrist. He caressed her hand and gestured with a smiling nod to their girls. ‘Let them play,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them to stop.’
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I wasn't quite prepared for this one. Beautifully done, but you didn't need to describe my frame as meagre.
Loved it