The Last Tiger

Chapter 3

At dock the friendly bosun shook our hands. Father reached out to him, placing a small item in the bosun’s pocket, but it was removed and returned to him. My mother kissed the bosun’s face sending him back to the decks of the ship which had carried us across the oceans, to what we did not know.

On the shore of our new land hoists lowered boxes of possessions onto the docks, but we had nothing. People flowed like oats from a cut bag towards the township, broad men in oilskins and pale women clutching their bonnets in the heat of the shadeless day.

Carts came to carry off grog barrels and the road was churned up with lazy wheel tracks as clouds of dry red dust rose all around. Caged chooks squawked and worried at the pins holding them. Everywhere, the sunburnt faces of the Tasmanians stared on, mouths wide to the air like fresh-landed cod.

“Myko, what is the matter?” said Mother. “Why are you so nervous?”

I shifted from side to side, all the while turning back to check what was behind me. “It’s nothing,” I said. I tried to reassure my mother: “It’s just all so new, that’s all.”

The men leaned against walls, the heels of their sturdy boots digging into the ground like dung forks. Some filled pipes from snout bags and some merely rested with thumbs in dusty waistcoats, hostile black eyes creeping beneath their hat brims.

Mother turned her attentions from me to wipe my father’s shoulders with her open hand. “Where has all this dust come from?” she said.

“It’s the sun,” said Father, “it dries everything and when the people move about it goes up in the air.” My father knelt down and took up some dry soil in his fingers. As the grey soil drained from his fist, the small grains crumbled to dust.

Father stood up and wiped his hands together. He looked ready to speak but said nothing, he merely squinted at the sun as it laced into his brows, and sighed.

“We must eat, we are all hungry,” said Mother.

Father looked about him, towards the town, and once more to the ship we had just left. His mouth remained tightly shut as he dug in his pocket and looked at his timepiece. “We will have to find a*****e,” he said. His gaze stayed on the pocket watch as he went.

“Not the timepiece,” said Mother.

“We must eat,” said Father.

Mother faltered. “But …”

“We must eat.”

Father held tight to the pocket watch as the hanging chain leapt at his side. Mother and I followed behind as Father guided the way, his steps long and purposeful, making me run to keep up.

Sand-coloured buildings shimmered around us as we passed through town; the yellow stones looked like they might wash away with the rain. I reached out to touch them – they stood warm in the sun, but felt coarse and rough-hewn.

“This will do,” said Father, stopping outside a*****e.

I looked up towards the shop’s sign. “What is it?”

No one answered me. My mother and father stood staring at each other for a long time and then I spoke again. “What is this place?”

Father turned to face me. “It is a pawnbroker’s shop, Myko.”

The shop’s sign fluttered as the shore breeze swept around the door jamb. A bell clanged as we entered. Inside a corridor ran to the back porch where the pawnbroker rested in a rope hammock. “Just a minute,” he called out. Loud rasping coughs followed his words. Standing up, the pawnbroker put his hands to his back and pressed in his lumbar like he was easing into a tight girdle. “Just coming, won’t be more than a few moments.”

On the store shelves I spied a row of stout jugs and kegs behind the counter. Canned goods and flannel shirts sat on a table, while heavy horse blankets lay underneath. Tin cups and frying pans hung on pot hooks everywhere and fancy goods, silver buttons and knife blades, shone from behind glass-fronted showcases.

“Good day,” called out the pawnbroker. His dark and shiny skin showed the sun’s hammering, deep furrows cut into his nose and around his eyes. “Now, how can I be of assistance?”

My father held out his pocket watch; even indoors it shone brightly. No markings showed on the timepiece when the pawnbroker raised it to his eye.

“Hmnn.” Two rows of dark crescents appeared on either side of the pawnbroker’s darkly freckled face.

I turned away to paw at bolts of cloth and square-toed boots, but my gaze was yanked to the wall behind the counter. An animal skin hung proud of the store’s goods; it was not large, about the size of a farm dog. I counted thirteen dark black stripes down the back of the olive-brown skin. There had been cuts made, the ears and paws removed. It was an unfortunate beast, its thirteen stripes had proven unlucky indeed.

I wanted to take down the animal skin, to stroke the pelt and feel what was once a real creature. The pawnbroker caught me looking and put down Father’s pocket watch. “Like it, boy?”

I did not speak. I still did not want to look at the little man.

“Shot it myself,” he said, swiping away a blowfly with the back of his bony hand. “Do you know what it is?”

I turned to face the pawnbroker, clenching my jaw and bringing a dry copper taste to my mouth. I wanted to fly at him with my fists. Why did he kill this beast? What harm had it done him?

“Myko,” said Mother. I did not want to see her frown at me – I turned to face the pawnbroker and shook my head.

“Tiger!” he said. His face brightened. “It’s a bounty kill, that’s why the ears and paws are cut off, so it can’t be claimed on twice.”

A hot coil twisted through me. How could such an animal, which had once roamed free, be cut down like this?

“Yes, that’s a Thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger all right,” said the pawnbroker.

I moved closer to the tiger skin, the bosun’s words running in my ears again. I had seen my first Tasmanian tiger, but it was nothing like the fearsome creature he’d described.

I willed the tiger to live but it was gone forever. I wanted to see it come alive, to right the wrong which had been done to it. I hoped the bosun’s words were true – that this island was the tigers’ – and that I would soon see them wherever they roamed.

I turned to see the pawnbroker remove his eyeglass. He counted out loud, touching the fingers of his left hand with his right forefinger, and then he announced loudly, “Five. I’ll pay five pounds for the timepiece.”

Father did not seem to understand.

“Five,” said the pawnbroker again, raising up five fingers to show what his offer was. The pawnbroker counted the money to my father, dark brown freckles moving on his hairless head. It was a small head, narrow and flat; did it ever hold any dreams other than the counting of money?

When he finished dropping the last of the trickle of coins into Father’s hand the pawnbroker spoke. “Have you just arrived?”

Father turned to me, as I took up our new language quickly, and I pointed back to the ship. “Yes,” I said. My voice was strong now, I had the pawnbroker’s measure. “We are from the ship.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbow on the counter. “Well, have you people any place to stay?”

His words were the same as the bosun’s but he formed them in a different way and I had to listen carefully to understand.

I turned to my father. “He wants to know where we will be staying.”

Father shrugged his heavy shoulders and we turned back to the pawnbroker.

“Well, that’s just grand,” he said.

Was the pawnbroker about to welcome us to the island as a friend? Mother and Father would have done this for strangers in their own home, but I saw their smiles fade.

The pawnbroker snatched back the coins from Father’s hand and dropped them inside his chamois pouch, fastening it tightly. “Yes, sir, that’s just grand. I’m in a position to assist you good folks to find your way, being as I am what you might call well connected hereabouts.”

The pawnbroker leaned over the counter and grasped my father’s hand tightly. My father looked confused as his arm was shaken up and down. Only the pawnbroker was pleased as he grinned widely, showing teeth like black-rotten fence staves, before dancing off to swipe again at blowflies with his ledger.