Breakfast for Barry

If Jake had been in other circumstances, this might have been a wonderful perch from which to admire the view. The two of them had managed to climb so high up in the red gum tree that they could see over the tops of the smaller trees that lined the river edge. They could see all the way past the dark green tramlines of vegetation into the brown scrub beyond, and further still into the featureless, rocky expanse which formed the essence of north Queensland.

‘You OK there, Kier? Stay with me, boy. We’re in this together.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Jakey.’

Kieran’s deep voice rumbled low beneath the rolling river. He was lodged in a gap between two thick, round branches, forming a V shape, which supported his backside, but his bare white shoulders and arms, wrapped around smaller branches, seemed to be absorbing most of his weight. Even now, Jake thought, Kieran looked in control. Because of their predicament, and Jake’s own position, sat on a thicker branch with his legs dangling either side, talking to Kieran was now life’s only remaining hope.

‘You sure you’ve not got anything in your pockets, Kier?’

‘I’ve told you thirty times already, Jake, everything was in the pack, and the pack’s at the bottom of the fucking river. There’s nothing we can do until this bastard goes away. We just have to sit it out.’

Jake looked down, as he was unafraid to do, and beyond his bare calf and foot, the crocodile lay still. Every now and then it would open its jaws, rock its head back a little, and produce an awful, prehistoric sound, like a dog barking through a chainsaw. It was such a massive beast, over four metres long, that Jake could hardly believe that it hadn’t managed to grab one of them before they’d managed to scramble out of the water and up into the branches of this red gum tree. The crocodile guarded the base of the trunk, half in the water and half on soggy land, reeds scarcely dividing the two.

The cackle of a mean-spirited bird cut across the silence. Jake had had to throw his wet t-shirt into the river. Kieran had said they were best off disposing of their wet shirts so their bodies didn’t need to use up so much energy trying to warm up, and so they’d both thrown their tops away, and now only the branches of the red gum tree came between their torsos, the sun and the flies. Kieran’s ancient Scottish ancestry meant he turned a little pink in the sun, but for eighteen he was strong and muscular, as one would have expected from a kid who now spent so much of his holiday time up here working on his father’s farm.

‘Why won’t he just fuck off, Kier?’

‘He wants his breakfast, you idiot.’

‘Can’t he go and eat a fish, or a sheep, or something?’

Kieran looked at him.

‘Would you go and swim underwater for twenty miles on the off chance of finding a fish or a sheep if you were sat underneath a tree containing two plates of lasagne? We’re the ones in the wrong here, Jakey boy. We’ve come onto his territory and we’re fair game as far as he’s concerned.’

‘We’re not plates of lasagne. They’re not supposed to attack people.’

‘They can attack whoever they bloody well want,’ said Kieran, quietly. ‘A species doesn’t survive for three million years by following a shitty code of conduct. I guess we’re not lasagne, then. You’re more of a fine dining option, the prettiest plate of food going. I’m, like, some burger and chips from a roadside diner. He doesn’t give a shit either way.’

Jake failed to find the analogy reassuring.

‘You said there were no crocs down here.’

‘Yeah, well, looks like I was wrong.’

Jake told himself not to whine, because it was pointless, but he didn’t know what else he could do. The ticking minutes had lost their meaning.

‘Kier,’ said Jake, breaking yet another silence, ‘I’m in love with Zoe.’

Kieran laughed, and it was the first laugh since the camp fire the night before.

‘You should have said before, Jakey. Old Barry down there doesn’t eat people who are in love.’

‘Barry?’

‘That’s his name.’

‘Crocodiles don’t have names.’

‘Barry does. So you’re in love with Zoe, are you? Have you told her?’

‘No, mate,’ said Jake, sheepishly. ‘I was too scared. Now I bloody wish I had. Least I’d have known what she thought, one way or the other.’

Kieran sniffed. His fingers tapped rhythmically on the branches. A dragonfly fizzed along the top of his dark hair, but he was oblivious.

‘I dunno, mate. You weren’t to know that old Barry down there was going to come along and ruin our holidays.’ He spat down towards Barry, who was now more submerged than before, his eyes and snout poking above water as he continued to hold fort at the foot of their red gum tree. ‘We only do what we think is right at the time.’

‘I guess,’ said Jake, ‘but she’s gorgeous, and she’s kind to me when she doesn’t need to be, and I never even got to kiss her.’

‘You will do yet, mate. You’ll be Jake the croc slayer, and she’ll fall all over you.’

Jake looked down at the beast.

‘How are you planning on slaying that?’

‘I’m not planning on anything, Jakey. You’re the guy with the ideas. I just carry the pack, row the boat and get shit done. The boat’s upside down somewhere, the pack’s sunk to the bottom and I’m up a fucking tree. I’m as useless as you are, if not more so, because at least you can dream.’

‘Why can’t you dream?’

‘Don’t have the imagination. I’m not in love with anyone, either. I’ve just got to be content with looking at your pretty face, and our new mate Barry.’

As if he had heard his own name, Barry stirred, producing his mechanical roar once again, and beat a vicious circle around the bottom of the tree.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jake, closing his eyes, ‘it’s like Jurassic Park. Tell me if we both go to sleep we’ll wake up back at the farm, and the dog’ll come and lick my face, and your mum will make us breakfast and ask me how college is going, and tell you to stop being lazy. Please tell me we will.’

‘Maybe we will, mate,’ said Kieran. ‘But I doubt it.’

The sun continued to assault them through the gaps in the branches, and Barry paced around the bottom of the red gum tree, and there seemed to be no way out.

‘Kier,’ said Jake, nervously. His friend had closed his eyes, and leaned back so far as he could, supported by two branches. ‘Kier, are you still with me?’

‘I’m with you,’ said Kieran, not moving.

‘Kier, we’ve got to make some plan or something. We can’t stay up here forever, or we’ll die of thirst. We have to find a way of getting round him.’

Kieran pulled his head up, opened his eyes, and looked at Jake.

‘I know, mate. I know. Patience. We’ve just got to wait for him to get bored and go away. Then we get the hell down from this tree and go inland on foot. I know I said there are no crocs down here, and I was wrong, but there are definitely no crocs over there.’ He nodded his head towards the great expanse of level scrubland behind them, which stretched far away. ‘We’ll be alright for water once night falls and we get dew on the leaves.’

‘How long have we waited already? The sun’s getting lower, it must have been eight hours, or ten hours, or something silly.’

‘About that,’ said Kieran, ‘but it doesn’t matter. Until Barry goes, there’s nothing we can do. The more we accept that, the easier it’ll be for us.’

‘There must be something we can do,’ Jake said, his hands running back through his hair. ‘Like, distract him, or something.’

‘How? We’re two teenagers in a tree, Jakey. We have a pair of shorts each and that’s about it. Barry doesn’t give a shit about noises we can make, he doesn’t give a shit about us breaking twigs off and throwing them. The only thing Barry gives a shit about is how he can fucking kill us.’

‘Don’t say it like that,’ said Jake, shuddering. ‘It doesn’t sound good.’

‘It’s true,’ said Kieran, unapologetically. ‘Actually, you know what? There is one thing we can do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘One of us can sacrifice ourselves, step up and be breakfast for Barry. That’ll distract him well enough, and the other one of us can escape.’

Jake gasped, and was shocked that the thought had even crossed Kieran’s mind.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re in this together.’

‘That we are,’ said Kieran, looking away, ‘but isn’t one dead bloke better than two?’

A welcome gust of wind blew through the red gum tree, but Barry was unmoved.

‘Wait, you’re not serious, are you?’ said Jake.

‘I don’t know, really. Would you do it for me?’

Jake looked at him, dumbstruck, but unable to look anywhere else. Would he die for his best mate? He had never imagined that he would have needed to, and he could think of more romantic methods of sacrifice than being torn to pieces by a crocodile, but if it came to it, he thought he would.

‘Yeah, I mean, yeah, I would,’ said Jake. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, though.’

‘I’d do it for you,’ said Kieran, without hesitation, and Jake’s eyes began to fill with tears.

‘Don’t say that,’ said Jake. ‘I couldn’t go on after that, knowing that my best mate had sacrificed himself. No, don’t do it, I forbid you.’

‘And I forbid you,’ said Kieran. ‘I took us down here, I said there were no crocs, I panicked when Barry attacked us. I shouldn’t have let the boat capsize. I should be the one to take the hit.’

‘You’re being stupid. You also dragged me up here when I’d lost all my bearings. Five more seconds and he would have had me. As for the boat capsizing, we didn’t stand a chance. He’s a fucking big beast, look at him.’

‘I don’t suppose it matters now,’ said Kieran. ‘So if we both forbid the other to die so we might live, and we both stay up here and die of thirst, then there’ll be two grieving mothers instead of one, two wasted kids instead of one. The tragedy will be double.’

‘No,’ said Jake, his mind clearing. ‘I couldn’t let you do that. I’d live in guilt for the rest of my life. I’d walk around everywhere knowing that I was only here because my mate had given his life. It would be horrible. It would, you know, it’d just eat me up.’

Kieran’s face was blank.

‘Nah, mate, it’d eat me up.’

Jake had not been ready for humour, and it took a while before it sank in, but once it did, he could barely regulate his laughter.

‘Careful, Jakey, I know I’m a funny bloke, but you don’t want to fall off that branch and die laughing.’

‘Is there any better way to die?’

Kieran raised his eyebrows in resignation.

‘I guess not.’

Barry had submerged again as dusk fell, but he was still there waiting for them, and if his yellow eyes above the waterline did not remind them enough of his presence, every so often he would swim right up to the red gum tree and repeat his horrifying sound. Kieran was right about the dew on the eucalyptus leaves, but even when he had sucked the dew out of all the leaves he could reach, Jakefelt weak and weary. There was no chance of being able to sleep up in the red gum tree. There was nowhere for his head to rest, and he could not drop off sat on a branch anyway, not when he might fall into Barry’s jaws at any moment. His buttocks had long since numbed, but trying to move into a more comfortable position was impossible.

‘Jakey?’

The timbre of Kieran’s voice differed from its normal aloof confidence. Now, it was racked with uncertainty.

‘I’m here, Kier.’

‘Can you tell me a story?’

‘A what?’ Jake was taken aback.

‘A story. I need to hear something apart from these fucking grasshoppers, and I need to think about something apart from Barry. Can you just tell me a story? Or just make something up. My head’s going crazy and I feel like I’m going to be sick.’

Jake racked his brains. He wanted to slide along the branch and put his arm around Kieran, and make him feel better, but he was feeling at least as bad himself, and besides, it was too dangerous.

‘OK,’ said Jake, his voice croaking. ‘I’ll tell you a story. Here we go. Once upon a time, there was a boy. A prince, in fact, he was a prince. He lived in a big castle, and the king, who’s his old man, had a massive Kingdom.’

‘Fucking yes,’ groaned Kieran. ‘I used to love this fairy tale shit. Make it a long one.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Jake. ‘But this is no fairy tale. So the prince lived in this castle, but the king and queen, you know, it was a marriage of convenience. They didn’t get on, and after a while, the queen decided that having that whole kingdom, all the jewels and the robes and everything, wasn’t really worth it for having to live with the bastard king all the time.’

‘Did she bump him off?’

‘No, Kier, course not. He’s the king, you can’t just bump him off, and anyway, she thought that one day her little prince was going to have to be the king himself, so he’s got to be there to watch and learn in the interim, hasn’t he. You know, learn the ropes.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Anyway, that carried on for a good while, and the prince got a little older, and she realised he was a little ripper of a prince, but the king carried on being a knob, until finally he did something that was too much to handle.’

‘What did he do?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, it was the last straw, and the queen decided to give it all up. All the jewels, the servants, the cosseted luxury of living in that castle and ruling over those lands, she decided it just wasn’t worth it. She took the prince and they escaped in the middle of the night, disguised as servants. They legged it out of the whole castle grounds and away into the countryside, and eventually they got to the town. The queen didn’t have any money, or know anyone, or anything like that, but she got by, because she loved her little prince, and she’d do anything for him.’

The river water rippled below them as Barry swam nearer.

‘The prince didn’t know quite what was going on, of course, because you don’t when you’re young. That’s the beauty of being young. So he just got on with life and adapted to being just another penniless kid in the shittiest part of town. He went to school, like all the other kids, and when he was at school he met a poor kid. An orphan, and he made friends with the orphan, and they did everything together.’

Jake felt all the blood rush away from his stomach.

‘The orphan, bless him, thought the prince was just any old kid who had moved into the neighbourhood, but even though he didn’t know the full story, soon he realised the prince was a bit different. The prince was tough, because you would be tough after all the prince had gone through, but he was also kind and generous and funny, and for the first time in his life, he made the orphan feel like he mattered, and that somebody gave a shit about him.’

‘Where did the orphan live?’

‘With his uncle.’

‘Right. I get you. So what happened after that? Did they live happily ever after, and start an import-export business, or what?’ Kieran wiggled his toes.

‘Not exactly,’ said Jake. ‘The prince was happy, and the queen was happier too, but just as they finally settled down into their new life, the king came and found them.’

‘No shit.’

‘The king said he knew why they’d left the castle, and he was sorry for what he’d done to the queen, but he wished they would come back.’

‘And the queen told him to stick it.’

‘The queen told him to stick it, because she was a great woman and she had suffered enough, and the king kind of accepted it, in his own way. The only trouble was, the king was getting a bit older, by now, and even though his son had been taken away from him, he still wanted to know that he would take over when he was gone. So he talked to the prince, but the prince knew how much the king had hurt his mother, and she mattered to him more than anything.’

‘Can I pick the story up from here?’

‘Sure, buddy.’ Jake closed his eyes, glad to rest his voice.

‘The prince didn’t have a bloody clue what to do, because he hated the king’s guts, but he also knew that he’d stand to benefit in the long term from being the one to succeed him, and that it might be his best chance in life. So the prince had a bit of a dilemma, and he was only sixteen, which is a pretty young age to start having dilemmas. So all he could do was ask the two people who he trusted the most: the queen, and the orphan.’

‘What did the queen say?’

‘The queen said that she couldn’t have anything more to do with the king, because of what he’d done to her, but she said the prince had to make his own decision and whatever it was, she would support him.’

‘And what did the orphan say?’

Something dropped off a tree upstream, and the splash cut through the still night air.

‘You see, it was a little bit difficult for the prince to tell the orphan, because the orphan was his best mate, and he loved him like a brother. He didn’t want to have to tell him everything, about his childhood in the castle, and about what the king used to do to the queen, and what he used to do to him. Eventually, though, he was so beaten up inside that he realised he had to tell the orphan, because he had nowhere else to turn. So he told the orphan everything, about the king, and the queen, and why they’d run away from the castle, and about the dilemma he faced now that the king was back on the scene. He thought the orphan was going to hate him, because he’d lied to him about everything all the time they’d known each other.’

Jake felt a tear trickle onto his left cheek as Kieran continued.

‘But the orphan didn’t hate him. He said ‘good on you, mate’, and he gave him his honest opinion, which was that the prince should tell the king to fuck off. The prince thought long and hard, and he thought about what the orphan said, because he respected the orphan so much.’

‘But then the prince did the opposite.’

‘That was the best part,’ said Kieran, ‘because I thought that when I did that, ignored everything you’d said, that I’d taken the selfish option and I would lose you. I was wrong. That was when you swung behind me and backed me up more than ever before, convinced me against your own better judgement to come back up here as soon as I could, to visit Dad, to make up with him, and spend time on the farm, because you knew that deep down that was what I knew I needed to do for my future. You cast everything aside and you were loyal, and you were there for me when I needed you. I’ll never forget that, even if I only live another ten minutes, and that’s what I’ll spend the rest of my days trying to repay.’

Jake could only sob into his own forearm. After a long time, he croaked up again.

‘I never knew you felt like that, Kier.’

‘That’s the problem us blokes have, Jakey. The only time we ever have the balls to thank people is when Barry’s at the bottom of the tree.’

Once the sun rose, and the outcrops of north Queensland were lit up again by the sun. The barren, reddish-brown earth, the dry shrubs and the scattered rocks had never looked quite so inviting as now. Every time Jake opened his eyes, he prayed for Barry to have departed the scene, but Barry remained.

‘Kier?’

Kieran only had the strength to grunt. His head was bowed, his black hair hanging in front of his pale torso.

‘Do you reckon we can both attack him at the same time, and fight him off?’

‘No chance.’

Jake let the quiet bluntness of Kieran’s response sit in the air between them.

‘Are you sure? What if we both poked him in the eyes? That’s what you’re meant to do, isn’t it?’

‘He wouldn’t let us. If we both went down there at once, he’d just bite whoever went within his range first and drag them under. I’ve told you, mate, our only option is to wait.’

‘But what if he doesn’t go? He’s been there for a fucking day, and we’re both weak, and thirsty. We have to do something, Kier, we have to. I’d rather die down there than die up here.’

Kieran brushed a fly off his face.

‘OK,’ he said.

Jake’s heart skipped a beat.

‘What?’

‘I said OK. We’ll do it.’

‘Are you sure? You just said we had no chance.’

‘Wait for him to swim into his spot in the middle of the river. We can’t do it when he’s right under the tree. Climb onto that branch over there, I’ll follow you over once I’ve remembered which leg is which, and then you wait for him to be as far away as possible. You get over the driest bit of ground you can see, you drop down off that branch, you land on your two feet, and you fucking run away from that river, and I’ll be right behind you. If he bites you, I’ll try and get you out.’

Jake looked down at Barry, who, for now, was right below them. He tried to take in the size of his jaws, and the explosive power of his bite, and the sort of damage he could do, and how quickly he could do it. Jake was a slender kid, and he assumed that a croc of Barry’s size could probably bite him clean in half, or rip one of his legs off, or worse.

‘We have to do it, Kier,’ said Jake, and for the first time in hours, he pulled himself along the branch he was sat on, and closer to his friend. ‘Come on, let’s get into position.’

Once they had moved onto the same branch, which hung over the driest of the ground beneath the tree and was furthest from the river, they crouched next to each other, looking straight down at Barry, who was still well aware of them.

‘When do we go?’ asked Jake. ‘Shall we go for it?’

Kieran carefully placed his hand on Jake’s knee, and squeezed.

‘Mate, you go when you need to go. I have no better idea than you about this. All you’ve got to know is that whenever you go, I’ll be right behind you. There’s no one of us without the other. Not anymore. Not after what we’ve been through.’

‘You will?’

‘I will.’