‘Anyway, you know that track to the pool is pretty rough, so we drove away slowly, like you do, and then after a while we realised that Red was trotting along beside the car, still asking for a lift, so we told him to go away, but he still wouldn’t give up.
‘Finally we stopped the car, and we said, “OK, Red, we give in, but you’re not coming in here unless you leave the cat alone.” So Red jumped in, and he sat there as good as gold, with his head out of the window, all the way back to Dampier, without giving the cat any gyp at all. And the funny thing is, the cat wasn’t bothered a bit.’
‘He was obstinate all right,’ said Patsy. ‘I remember one time Red missed the bus into Dampier, so he ran out in front of the car and stopped me instead. I thought I’d take him back to my place, but when we got there, he wouldn’t get out. Just sat there looking at me sideways, with the whites of his eyes showing. So I got back in and chased after that bus, and I caught it near the terminal. I told Red to get out, but he wouldn’t. I suppose he wanted me to take him all the way to the mess. Anyway, I went up to the bus and knocked on the window, and I said to that driver, “Do me a favour, I’ve chased you all the way from Karratha, and I’ve got a meal to cook. Can you get that dog out of my car?”
‘The driver put his hand in his mouth and whistled, and Red jumped out, good as gold, and went and sat behind him in the bus, and that was the last I saw of him until nine o’clock that night, when there’s a scratching at the door. You guessed; after all that trouble, he only decided to come and stay with me after all.’
‘I picked him up once,’ said Ellen. ‘It was two in the morning, ’cause I was picking my girl up from the disco. He wouldn’t get out at Poon’s Camp, and then he wouldn’t get out at Dampier mess, and we were getting pretty tired and fed up, I can tell you. Finally we took him to Hamersley Iron single-quarters, and he hopped out. As he jumped out, he did a really filthy smell, like it was some kind of a thank-you!’
‘His guts were always a liability,’ said Peeto. ‘You know, once when he tried to pull that cadging-lifts trick on me, we put him in the boss’s ute and just left him there. The boss still don’t know who did it. He wasn’t too pleased with that stink when he opened the door.’
‘I remember,’ said Bill, ‘when he used to come in the patrol car when we were testing it out for speed after a service. He didn’t care how fast I went. He just stuck his head out of the window as normal, with the wind whistling through his ears.’
‘Yeah, but he wasn’t stupid,’ said Vanno. ‘One day I see this drunk driving along, weaving all over the road, with Red in the passenger seat, and the drunk stops for a leak, you know, he does it in public ’cause he’s so far gone he doesn’t care, and Red just jumps out of the window and trots into the bush. Then he comes out and begs another lift from the car coming after. That’s one bright dog.’
‘Everyone’s got a Red Dog story,’ said Jocko. ‘Someone ought to write them down.’
They all sat in silence for a while, taking it in turns to control Red Dog’s lashing and shaking. By the time the vet arrived the following morning, they were all hollow-eyed with exhaustion and pity.
The vet listened to Red’s heart through a stethoscope and shook his head. ‘It’s strychnine,’ he said, confirming Bill’s diagnosis. ‘I guess he must have eaten dingo bait.’
‘There aren’t any dingoes here,’ said Peeto. ‘Leastways, I’ve never seen one.’
‘People leave out poison anyway,’ said the vet, sighing. ‘The stationmen blame wild dogs and dingoes for just about everything, and nowadays you’ve even got people who put out poison for cats, ’cause they’re not a native species. It makes me sick. It’s me who has to cope with the consequences.’
‘Yeah, well,’ reflected Peeto, ‘None of us is a native species either.’
The vet looked sadly down at his old mate on the table, and Patsy asked, ‘Are you going to put him down?’
‘I damn well ought to,’ said the vet. ‘He’s a strong old dog, though, and I’m going to give him a chance. You know something? I’m going to miss him if he dies. I went right out into the middle of nowhere once, to deal with a sick old brumby, and when I got there, there was Red sitting next to it on the straw. He always knew where the action was.’ He paused and then said, ‘I’m going to have to ask four of you to hold him still while I give him an injection. He mustn’t move at all. I can’t have the needle breaking off. Understood?’
It was almost impossible to keep the animal immobile, but finally the vet jabbed the needle into him and quickly pressed down on the plunger. Red Dog’s friends watched with bated breath as his twitching and shaking gradually subsided, until finally he lay still. ‘Hey, doc,’ said Vanno, in a hushed and admiring voice. ‘It’s a bloody miracle.’
‘It’s an anti-convulsant,’ said the vet. ‘I ought to have made him sick first, to get the rest of the poison out, but I think it would have killed him.’ He looked round at Red Dog’s friends and said, ‘You guys look pretty tired. You must have put in some damn hard yakka. You may as well take time out. I’m going to keep him under until the convulsions wear off, and it could be a couple of days.’
The vet kept Red Dog unconscious for two and half days, administering small doses of anti-convulsant every time that the shaking and writhing began to start up again, and after that it took Red another twelve hours to get to his feet. In the meantime a rumour had gone round the shire that Red Dog was dead, and the local paper printed a story reporting the poisoning, but saying that Red had made a recovery.
Certainly, that was how it seemed. He was clumsy and unsteady, but he emptied his bowl of food, wagged his tail when his well-wishers called in, and even escaped for a while to the Walkabout Hotel, where he knew there were people who were generous with tasty titbits. The effort of going there was too much for him, however, and the vet came round to fetch him back.
Everyone was elated at Red Dog’s recovery, and he began to receive cards at the vet’s surgery, but the vet had a bad feeling about it all, and was not altogether surprised when Red Dog’s clumsiness began to get worse. He was walking into the furniture, falling over sideways and then struggling valiantly but hopelessly to get up. He still had his appetite, but finally that was all that he did have left. The vet rang around his friends.
‘He’s been falling over, and now he can’t get up at all. It’s obvious that he’s got brain damage. He’s not himself, and he’s never going to be. You know, you can look in an animal’s eyes, and when the light goes out, you know it’s time to give in. I’m really sorry. We tried, but now we’ve got to finish. Anything else would be too unkind.’
Patsy, Ellen, Nancy, Bill, the ranger and some of the boys from Dampier Salt and Hamersley Iron all called in to say goodbye to Red Dog. The men tried not to show their feelings, because that’s how Aussie men are, but their throats were so choked with sorrow that none of them could speak. They patted Red where he lay, unable to get up, and ruffled his ears for the last time. Silently they filed out, unwilling to look each other in the eye in case they lost control. Only Vanno cried, because he was Italian, and that was all right in Italy, so no-one could lay any blame. Between his tears Vanno swore that if he ever found out who it was that had poisoned Red Dog, there was going to be hell to pay, and that’s for sure.
The women came in and kissed Red Dog on the top of his head, stroking his neck and weeping. One by one they knelt down and hugged him, feeling as sad and desolate as if they had lost a child. When they had left, the vet came in with a syringe full of morphine, and shaved a small patch on Red’s right foreleg. He made his own private farewells to this character who had been so much a part of his life since he had arrived in this hard and captivating part of Australia. He thought about how much the place had changed in the few years of Red Dog’s life. Now there were houses instead of caravans, and tarmac in the place of stones. It was as if the passing of Red Dog symbolised the passing of old Roebourne Shire.
He thought about how he u
sed to think that Red was lots of different dogs that all looked the same, about how many times he had dealt with Red Dog’s accidents and emergencies, and how few times he had ever actually been paid for it. He thought about how much he would miss this obstinate, valiant soul, who seemed such a typical Western Australian, even though he was only a dog. He looked into Red’s sad, tired and pained eyes, stroked his head and said, ‘Time to go, old mate, time to go.’ He breathed deeply a couple of times in order to overcome his regret and steady his mind, and then he performed the lethal injection. He watched as Red Dog’s eyes glazed over. Then he lowered Red’s body gently as he slumped sideways on the table and drifted off to his last long sleep.
Who knows what went through Red Dog’s dreams as he lay dying? Perhaps he was young again, galloping back from the airfield in Paraburdoo. Perhaps he was chasing the shadows of birds on the oval, or out in the bush chasing wallabies, or in the caravan park, watching the scarlet sunset with Red Cat. After half a lifetime of looking for John, perhaps in that final dream he found him.
Bill and the vet buried Red Dog in a simple grave in the bush between Roebourne and Cossack. They laid him in that stony red earth and covered him over. It was a hot day, a day when Red might otherwise have been lounging in the air-conditioned mall at Dampier, or taking the ore train to Mt Tom Price. There is no-one now who remembers where that grave was, and no headstone was ever placed above it. His friends eventually raised a bronze monument to him in Dampier, but otherwise there is nothing left of Red Dog but the stories, and his collar, whose tag reads ‘Red Dog – Bluey’ on one side, and ‘I’ve been everywhere, mate’ on the other.
GLOSSARY OF AUSTRALIANISMS
Akubra: kind of brimmed hat popular in Australia.
Barbie: barbecue.
Bathers: swimsuit.
Bilby: small marsupial, somewhat similar to a rabbit.
Blotto on Rotto: getting drunk on Rottnest Island, a holiday island and nature reserve off Fremantle, famous for its colony of quokkas.
Bludging: scrounging.
Blue: a violent dispute.
Bombs: farts.
Brumby: wild horse.
Bundy: Bundaberg rum, a popular Australian rum. Every Aussie gets horribly drunk on it at least once in a lifetime.
Crinkled cassia: plant common in the Pilbara.
Dag: someone revolting.
Daggy: revolting.
Damper: crude bread made without yeast, much relied on by the early pioneers.
Dingbat: fool.
Dingo: Australian wild dog that is supposed to have arrived with the aborigines.
Drongo: slow-witted person.
Dunny: lavatory.
Emu: very large flightless bird. Also a popular brand of beer.
Esky: insulated plastic hamper for keeping food and drink cool when you are travelling.
Freo: Fremantle, a pretty town on the Swan River that serves as the port to Perth.
Going bush: disappearing on your own.
Gum trees: eucalyptus trees. Australia has an amazing number of different kinds.
Holden: Australian car manufacturer.
Kelpie: Australian breed of sheepdog.
Kookaburra: large bird of the kingfisher family, with a loud call that is often thought to resemble raucous laughter.
Mall: enclosed shopping centre.
Middy: beer.
Pigsnout sandwich: enormous sandwich suitable for a really greedy person.
Pilbara: mining region in Western Australia.
Quokka: marsupial that looks rather like a very big rat. There is a large colony of them on Rottnest Island.
Quoll: small marsupial, somewhat like a mouse.
Road-train: enormous lorry that tows two or more large trailers behind it.
Roo-trail: track left in vegetation when used regularly by kangaroos.
Servo: garage, petrol or service station.
Sheila: woman or girlfriend.
Shout: turn to buy the drinks.
Smoko: tea-break.
Snaggers: sausages.
Spinifex: prickly undergrowth.
Stairway to the moon: when the moon is very low on the sea at Pretty Pool, near Port Hedland, the glow of moonlight on the wavelets looks like a staircase with the moon at the top of it.
Stubbie: can of beer.
Swag: kind of bedroll used by Australians for sleeping rough.
Tops: excellent.
Trusty: an Aussie dogfood.
Tucker: food.
Ute: pick-up truck.
Walkabout: a wander in the wilderness. Originally part of the initiation of young aborigines.
Wallaroos: medium-sized animals very similar to wallabies and kangaroos.
Yakka: work.
Louis de Bernières, Red Dog
(Series: # )
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