Noah's Park

By Michael Johnson

A bankrupt circus means death or zoos for the menagerie.
The owner secretes his beloved animals in a world famous National
Park.
The ecology, the politics, the enmeshed passions of the park's humans
and their impact on the animals; circus, native and feral, make for a
contemporary and slyly provocative fable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Johnson
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781925184488

Book preview

Chapter One

The Bank foreclosed on the elephant on a Tuesday afternoon, twenty minutes before the afternoon performance. The courier rapped at the flimsy door of the caravan, shaking the saucepans on their rickety shelving. Hugh Masson opened the door and blinked as a letter was thrust into his hands, with a laconic request for his signature.

He closed the door and thumbed open the envelope. He had expected the worst and here it was in print. Rose was to become the property of the Bank at noon on Friday together with the other 'assets'. The list itemized one lion, two lionesses, one tiger, a mule, assorted snakes, and two camels. The dog troupe was also listed. Forty year old Rose had been with his Circus from the first performance in Quirindi thirty years ago. Now her future was dubious to say the least and the Circus had no future. His horses were listed too, Masson's Stampede, as they were billed. Years of grinding training, patience and affection had been invested in them and showed in the dazzling choreography and the intricate routines. The horses charging across the circus ring, rearing at the last nervous moment, swiveling, snorting, twitching in their nervous excitement until they calmed at his gentle commands with lowered necks, kneeling to salute the applauding spectators.

He read further. The two giraffes, the Sun bear and the Kodiak, and the monkeys completed the list. Masson walked across to the fridge. The cold beer offered temporary relief, until he peered through the caravan window. The thin straggle of mothers and children lining at the ticket window measured the pathetic reality. Here, in the middle of the school holidays, and the final performance of Masson's International Circus on the open land across from the gigantic Global Shopping Centre would be lucky to attract twenty-five paying customers. The McDonalds in the Centre served at least as many as that in three minutes, every trading hour, every trading day. He watched enviously as the line of people edged forward until they were swallowed by the temptations of KFC and Pizza Hut.

His aging menagerie and his transient humans were being slaughtered by the competition from video games, DVDs, mobile phones, television and the Internet. Virtual reality was making the reality of his small showmanship impossible to survive. He and his animals were an embarrassing anachronism and shabby reminders of a simpler, naïve source of wonder and magic. He did not need to think this through, it showed in his slow reluctant movements as he pulled on his frayed white britches and tugged at the cracked black leather riding boots until they fitted tightly. The scarlet brass-buttoned tailcoat and a black top hat completed his transformation. Trailing his long whip he glanced around his dressing room, home and prison and locked the door behind him. Ringmaster incarnate and so bloody miserable he strode magnificently towards the bedraggled big top where the fluttering tattered pennants beckoned him for the last time.

The closure was inevitable. The country towns, which had supported the Circus in the past, were themselves sinking into oblivion. Businesses and banks were closing down, the young people moving off to the cities looking for work. The audiences, such as they were, abandoned puzzled faces floundering in the rural backwash and their numbers dwindling as each tenting circuit of the Circus revisited their empty lives. There was no future for the Circus in the cities where ground rentals were exorbitant and the competition for the customers' dollars was savage.

Masson took a deep breath as the taped fanfare saluted the animals, the Circus performers and the audience with an amplified shrug of resignation. There were no heroics. The past was on its way out and so what. All that crap about the show must go on. This show had just gone. Thirty years gone, to be thrown aside with the britches, boots, jacket, top hat and whip and to be stuffed into a plastic garbage bag. The audience had no idea that this was fadeout time for the Circus. The animals knew. They sensed the flat despair in Masson's voice and his preoccupied caresses at the end of each meticulous routine.

At this stage his staff didn't know and would not care. His acrobatic troupe 'Los Amigos' had already given notice, pissed off by unreliable pay-days and unpaid labouring, feeding the animals, cleaning the cages, erecting and dismantling the big-top, pasting up fliers and posters and keeping the ancient trucks on the road. 'Los Amigos' were returning to Sri Lanka. Old Jim was the only other employee. He had joined Masson at Quirindi when the Circus flourished. Jim Henehan was once a clown's clown at the top of his demanding obscure profession and had rejected many offers to join other Circuses. Now as he decayed into his seventies, his life had consumed his art. His drunken routines were successful because he was drunk. His shuffling gait was clown-perfect because he was crippled with arthritis. His pathos was authentic because he was a pathetic alcoholic old man. He now worked only for his bed and lodging. His next destination, with luck would be a seedy mildewed boarding house and his world in an empty room.

He staggered into the ring and the lumbering Rose chased him in the clumsy finale to his act. She was careful not to nudge him or lean against him. She seemed to be aware that an off-balance Jim would sprawl helpless into the sawdust, unable to rise to his feet. The circus ring was his personal skid row where he barely survived. The elephant swayed and carefully trod around him in a grotesque ballet as Jim ducked and weaved, milking thin streams of applause. He patted Rose on her flank and she raised her trunk in a graceful salute before she backed from the ring with cautious steps in a routine which she performed from memory.

The three lions and the tiger sprang and snarled their simulated defiance at Masson as he stood flicking his whip. Insulated from the audience by the high steel palisade they jumped over barrels and crouched on narrow stools, reaching towards him with their raking claws. Their roars were deafening and came on cue. They were old hands and had worked with Masson for many years. They had reached their use-by date like the rest of the Circus but their presence still had the power to enthrall and induce a terrified acknowledgement from the sparse spectators who breathed a collective sigh of relief when the animals finally padded along the narrow enclosed tunnel which took them out of the ring and into their cages. Masson bowed to each segment of the ring before he followed his charges into the darkness.

He reappeared to introduce 'Los Amigos' who grudgingly went through the motions of their acrobatic routines, offering glimpses of their brilliance momentarily as if to remind themselves of their prowess, then deliberately presenting their slipshod boredom and frustration in missed grips and falls into the safety net. They were oblivious to the tentative chorus of booing from children slurping ice creams or sucking lollies. 'Los Amigos' had nothing to prove and their pride had long since evaporated along the dreary meanderings of the Circus. They were going home.

The grand finale came and went. The animals ambled around the perimeter of the ring. The lions and the tiger roared their obligatory roars from off-stage. The clown and the acrobats executed lazy somersaults and back-flips in the centre of the ring as Masson strode around cracking his whip in approximate synchronization with the taped music as it reached a brassy climax. The last performance was over. The mothers scooped up their various children and wandered away from the scene.

In a final reluctant gesture 'Los Amigos' dismantled the big top and stowed it into one of the shabby trucks. They took their termination pay in cash, shook Masson's hand and walked off with their bags towards the railway station, the airport and the escape from futility. Even the uncertainty of Sri Lanka was preferable. There were no good-byes.

Jim slumped down at the side of Masson's caravan, cradling a bottle of Marsala. He still wore his clown costume, and his palsied white-powdered face was puckered in anticipation. Rose loomed over him. She rocked gently from side to side shielding him from the world. Jim tipped the bottle to his mouth and bleary-eyed, watched as Hugh Masson fed the animals before bedding them down. Three bales of lucerne for Rose who was always fed first, then more lucerne for the horses and the mule. The lions and the tiger were fed from an ancient galvanized iron tub filled with gobbets of meat and bones and the dogs gulped at the remnants. There was fruit and rotting bananas for the monkeys and the bears. The sounds of their feeding crunched and slurped in the jostling cages. Masson repeated the feeding routine and to Jim, even in his sodden stupor, this was unusual. Jim shrugged and drank again, the liquid trickling down his stubbled chin, smudging his powdered skin. The grunts, growls and barks clamoured then faded into a sated silence. This night the food was laced with a little Valium to sooth and settle them. Circus-docile and dormant the animals sprawled slackly in their cages.

Masson knew that the food supplies were now finished and he had neither cash nor credit to buy more. The sparse takings at this last performance had gone towards paying off 'Los Amigos'. He took from his pocket the Bank's letter and read the fine print. The future for his animals was bleak. If they were lucky, very lucky, a small zoo might bid for them. No other Circus would be interested, since all of his animals had been trained by him and after years of his scrupulous care would represent a shaky investment for a new trainer. All the Circuses were struggling apart from Circus Oz and Fruitfly and the Canadian originated Cirque du Soleil and they did not include any animal acts. The Bank would sell to the highest bidder, any bidder, probably an abattoir where Hugh Masson's dreams would be processed into petfood.

He placed the letter carefully into his wallet and wandered across to his transport fleet, the six shabby trucks and the single sagging flatbed. It was time to implement his evacuation plan. He decanted diesel into the tanks of each truck and checked the engines, tyres, and suspension of each one with methodical intensity.

Faces from the past flickered across his mind as he poured the vomit-smelly diesel. The faces of children oblivious to the reality of a down at heels circus rusting towards disaster. Faces, that saw the magic, spangled spectacle and were enraptured. Faces from so many performances. The fumes from the diesel oil flooded the memories and erased them. He emptied the last jerrycan.

Forty years of tenting, raising and lowering the big top and moving from town to town, state to state as the Circus followed the seasons, was foreclosed on this bleak windswept suburban space. Now the ultimate act required meticulous planning. He heaved Jim to his feet and confiscated the bottle. Taking the old man by the arm he drew him into the caravan and poured cup after cup of raw hot black coffee into him before taking him into his confidence. Jim sucked at a cigarette and shook his head in bewilderment until the coffee sobered him and he accepted that for the first time in many years there was an important role for him to play. His muddied eyes blinked a puzzled understanding. He nodded his agreement. They walked across to the trucks and started every engine, listening to the throbbing clamour of the worn machinery. They ran each truck for five minutes or so and then switched them off.

The animals were aware of changing routines. They were soothed by familiar voices as Hugh and Jim moved among them. The Valium helped. The men talked to the animals in soft repeated phrases, the usual preamble to bedding them down each night. Rose, the elephant, swayed to her own rhythms as she transferred wisps of lucerne into her mouth with delicate dabs of her trunk. Masson reached up to scratch behind her fanning ear. She raised her trunk in her delight at her favourite caress. She closed her eyes and clanked her restraining leg-chain as she stretched forward towards him, her mouth still chewing at the last of her feed.

The snail-crawl of commuter traffic edging homewards skirted the desolate circus enclosure. The camels raised their heads and gazed soulfully towards the distraction as they chewed their cud with ruminative jaws. Their extravagant lashes fluttered over empty eyes. Ice cream wrappers and sagging empty paper bags dandruffed the scuffed stained grass. The outline of the circus ring tattooed a rapidly faded memory into the surface of the paddock. The huddled animals and the two men, one crumpled and subdued, the other tall, lean and full of purpose blended into the drab landscape. Lights flickered in the Shopping Centre, chasing the darkness towards them.

Hugh Masson waited with Jim Henehan until the traffic cleared and the road was empty. They drank a final cup of coffee and lingered over the last drags of their cigarettes. It was now comfortingly dark and time for action. They stamped the stubs of their cigarettes into the dampening ground. Hugh walked over to the flatbed truck and clambering into the cab he turned the key in the ignition. He waited for the diesel to warm up and switched on the engine. The rattling roar signalled the start of their anarchy. Leaving the engine running he climbed down and led Rose to the lowered ramp at the rear of the low-slung platform. She walked calmly, ponderously, up the ramp and onto the flatbed, which sank down on its protesting suspension. Rose had played this routine so often that there was never a problem. She stood swaying on the platform as Masson secured each of her legs to the corners of the flatbed with heavy links of chain. He prepared the seasoned traveler for yet another journey and as he backed down the ramp he patted the elephant on her rump. He walked around the truck to satisfy himself that everything was as it should be and kicked the tyres for luck.

Jim waved them away and then, as they had agreed, he kept an eye on the other animals and the equipment. He carried a heavy crowbar which he used as a support as he slouched among the cages and the remaining trucks, pacifying the animals with his voice. The first stage of the maverick plan trundled out of the gate then hesitated before easing down the hill towards the highway under the dubious brakes, applied with the gentle pressure of experience. Masson took the turn to the right and drove for some six kilometres until he saw a signposted exit to the left. National Park reflected in the dull yellowish beam of his headlights. Heavy vegetation crowded the narrow road and angophora trees launched their ghostly limbs into the darkness. He drove slowly with care. His hulking cargo swayed to the memories of her own music. Every bend and steep gradient of the twisting road took them deeper into the silence of the Park. The old truck coughed at every hill and wheezed its asthmatic climb. Masson nursed it along as he changed down through the gears to haul Rose precariously up the slopes with the temperature gauge needling towards red disaster. They topped a rise and stopped to cool down the overheated engine. The elephant shuffled and stretched in the coolness of the night air. Masson rechecked her leg chains and the strange entourage moved on. Wallabies stood up on their haunches to peer from the shelter of roadside bushes. A rusa deer ghosted across the road alert to the alien scent. Suddenly the rear offside wheels of the flatbed slammed into a deep pothole and wrenched the steering wheel from Masson's hands. He corrected instinctively to counterbalance Rose's mass and the truck shuddered and straightened thanks to a technique which had been perfected over thousands of kilometres of bush roads. Rose settled. The Park was tranquil and so far there was no other traffic.

A floating moon shone white on the ocean as Hugh Masson negotiated the unraveling road. Suburban lights filtered behind him and across the water to his front were the hovering glints from Sydney's city skyline. Clouds scudded across the face of the moon and isolated the man, the elephant and the ocean. The road was now more level, more sympathetic to the straining truck. He lit a cigarette and Rose waved her trunk at the sea breeze. Twin pinpoints of light moved towards them. The car drew rapidly closer. The truck chugged along and Masson wiped his smeared cracked windscreen with a cloth. He was dazzled and momentarily blinded by the undimmed glare from the approaching vehicle. The car yawed in front of him, clawing at the surface of the road as its tyres screamed in protest. The driver with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching a can of beer close enough for Masson to read the label hurled the can out of the car window. It bounced against the bull-bar of Masson's truck and ricocheted into the undergrowth. The driver's hand reached for another can from the carton at his side and tipped it to his mouth. Oblivious to the elephant, the truck and Masson the hoon accelerated into the darkness. Rose turned her ponderous head as the stranger sped past. He was preoccupied. Beer, more beer, booming music and his foot jammed on the accelerator pedal drenched his space. He did not see her.

They did not meet any other cars. Masson drove slowly along a softly lit street into the sleeping village. He was aware from frequent weekend visits over many years that the road led to a turn-off, which gave access to the Park where it surrounded a row of scattered houses. He stopped at the end of the turn-off where a row of sturdy wooden posts prevented vehicles from accessing the bracken-covered slope, which was maintained as a firebreak. Trees and low bushes stretched towards the sea where the dark waves preened silver in the moonlight. A beer bottle rolled under Masson's foot as he climbed down from the truck. It rolled away down the slope and chinked against a nest of its fellows in a reflective mockery of the recent 'Clean Up Australia' campaign. He glanced around and clambered back into the truck, which he reversed towards the wooden posts. He doused the lights and switched off the engine. The houses dotted along the ridge slept on in the moonlight. The ramp was lowered noiselessly. He had greased the hinges in his preparations. He loosened the leg chains and Rose stepped back precisely, daintily, raising and lowering one leg at a time. Well rehearsed, she backed down the ramp and stood motionless. A pair of night-hunting tawny frogmouths fluttering along the fencelines flew over her looming bulk. A frog chorus croaked and barked in the lagoons deep in the Park. Rose's ears fanned as she tuned in to the night sounds.

Masson always used a specific signal to alert his animals when threatened by an emergency. The signal was used to minimize the risk of panic or stampede or injury. The signal varied according to the size, species and temperament of each animal. In Rose's case a sudden tug on her short hairy tail was infallible. Masson faced her towards the bushland and offered a wisp of lucerne. As she champed, Masson moved to her hindquarters and yanked at her tail. She was startled into a brisk heavy trot and soon vanished into the treeline. He knew that Rose would not retrace her steps until she heard his summoning whistle. Only he knew the precise sound. He jumped into the truck, gunned the engine and headed back towards the remnants of his Circus. Encouraged by his initial success he was determined to complete his own version of Operation Noah and frustrate the Bank.

He pulled into the Circus ground after a slow uneventful drive. Jim greeted him with a laconic wave. The coffee, the cool night air and the enormity of the challenge sobered the clown. Ahab the mule, the horses and the ponies were loaded into their box trailer. Halters were clipped to the cross-rails as hooves stamped a fretful query. It was Jim's turn to drive away this time and engine roaring in protest the truck lumbered away. He was instructed to head further south along the Park road past the turn-off to the village. The horses stamped and lurched with the sway of the wagon as it skittered on the corrugated surface of the gravel roads deep in the Park. It was an uneventful drive, a piece of cake. Jim stopped, dipped his lights and shuddered to a halt. The airbrakes hissed. The horses snickered their response. To them it was business as usual, yet another journey. He lowered the tailgate and led Ahab down the ramp. Wherever the mule led the others would follow. Ahab, ever-alert nuzzled in Jim's pockets for a carrot, parroting his twenty-year ring routine where in the 'Gold Rush' act he would stand centre ring with Jim as the palominos and the Shetland careered around the perimeter in a contrived stampede. Jim slipped the carrot to the mule and then slapped him twice on the neck. He watched Ahab trot off into the bush gloom. The horses filed out led by their halter ropes. He slipped each halter and fed each palomino with a sugar lump and a carrot, whispering their names before slapping their necks and farewelling them into the wooded scrub. The Shetland was fractious as always and much harder to handle, tossing his head as he lunged and tugged at the halter rope, His fat little belly brushed the bracken as he cavorted on his stumpy legs, with his ears laid back and teeth bared. Jim calmed him down with soft words before releasing the little stallion who plunged away into the thickets in pursuit of the other horses. Jim was pretty sure that the group would head for the open grassy spaces, which fringed the coastline, where there would be plenty of feed. The noise of their hooves faded into the night in a muffled clatter and Jim sat for some time in the cab of the truck gazing at the moon. All the silence was shattered by the aching cry of a male koel, which had flown on his annual migration from Papua New Guinea for the breeding season and was anxious for the arrival of the female birds. Jim was disturbed by the birdcall and, ill at ease, stubbed his cigarette on the steering wheel. The plaintive koel moved further off and all was quiet. The truck reversed along the track and half an hour later Jim was sharing a beer with Masson. One beer and two trips completed with many more to go.

They worked through the night to evacuate the entire Circus and met neither curiosity nor traffic on the web of roads and firetrails, which criss-crossed the Park wilderness. They chose the most suitable areas of the Park for each of their animals, where vegetation and landscape would ensure survival and concealment. The old trucks were running hot, their radiators boiling on the steep hills then cooling in the chill night air on the winding descents. The weather was in their favour with clouds filtering moonlight. There was no rain, no mud to bog them down on the bush tracks.

Masson and Jim combined to transport the two giraffes, since they were the most difficult to move. Overhanging trees threatened to smash against their towering necks, which telescoped from the open trailer, compounding the difficulty. They survived the slow, swaying journey with only minor scratches and retained their equilibrium. Released, they meandered stiff-legged into the heathland. Attracted by tall acacia trees they paused for a snack and were timid in the unaccountable freedom of open space.

The men bedded down each species in scrupulous order, making sure that all the grass-eating animals were released and wandering freely in their separate areas before they attempted to relocate the lions and the tiger. They came last and were loaded into a cage mounted inside a covered truck. The monkeys, the dog troupe and the snakes found room on the floor of the cabin or behind the driver's seat. This was how they normally traveled. The final journey came close to upsetting the entire evacuation. The lions were to blame. The male and the two lionesses and the tiger were loosed along an earth track, which fronted a row of houses on the high ridge overlooking the village. The path descended to a network of deep caves, which scoured into the cliff-face and was a perfect location. As he padded along the track submissive to his trainer's signal Nero, the aging male lion opened his jaws and yawned and then, displaced and disorientated, rumbled a gravelly roar. A light came on in a nearby house and then a torch tracked a section of the fenceline briefly. A voice called from the house and the holder of the torch switched it off, obeying his querulous wife. Nero slunk under the protection of thick bushes and followed the others in silence. The householders wrapped themselves back into their comfortable bed. Masson and Jim froze. Jim then whispered that Nero's teeth must be the problem, that his toothache made him irritable. The truck was out of range of the torch beam and as the lights were extinguished they shook hands in panicked relief. They waited for twenty minutes checking the silence. The time and the silence held without voices or alarms.

Between the two of them they had stocked the Park with one lion, two lionesses, a tiger, eight monkeys, nine assorted dogs, sundry