Jaccob woke at the sound of the shot. He got out of the chair and went out into the grey afternoon light. He waited but there was nothing else. Before long he heard the bawl of a chainsaw and he relaxed a little.
Guns. Jaccob had a rifle of his own, a .22 repeater which the estate agent had given to him as a sign of goodwill when he handed the keys over. To Jaccob it seemed an odd gesture of goodwill, and he’d never even fitted the magazine to it. He kept it in his wardrobe.
Jaccob yawned. Strange, but he was bored. With someone else around all day, just being uselessly there, the day seemed truly long and pointless. He poked in all the sheds behind the house with their chaff and rodent and diesel smells. He fed his pullets and watched them scuffle and bluff. He pocketed eggs. He chopped wood in the hope the noise might wake the girl up and it would seem accidental that he should disturb her, so he chopped until his back ached and he felt like a complete dolt.
The light went. Jaccob slunk back into the house and showered. Then he resolved to be neighbourly and set about roasting the leg of lamb he’d been saving the past few days. A roast dinner, a bottle of red, that might do. He crept around in the kitchen, basting meat and peeling vegetables, mixing mustard and finding some mint for a sauce.
But the dinner cooked and the girl slept on.
Jaccob ate alone as always, only now with someone else in the house he felt more lonely than he’d felt in all his months here. Mostly he’d been alright here on his own. Only a couple of times, usually when drunk, he’d given in to sadness and taken out the photo albums and looked at the pictures of Marjorie and him, Marjorie and the baby. But not tonight; he was damned if he’d cave in tonight. He listened to the sounds of his cutlery. Oh, how the clink of knife and fork spoke its own language. Yes, he remembered those evenings at dinner after the shit had hit the fan, when they were still married but with nothing between them but grief and recrimination, when her scraping knife would say: it wasn’t my fault, so don’t look at me like that, and his fork would rattle and mutter: for Christ’s sake, leave it be.
Jaccob pulled his novel down from behind the old kitchenette and opened it beside his plate so he could read and make some normality. He took a mouthful of wine. The novels were Marjorie’s. She read serious books and listened to serious music, and late in the piece she didn’t even hide her contempt for his penny-dreadfuls and his country music. When they were packing to separate, he saw a brace of books she’d earmarked for the local op-shop. Some were by Leon Uris and Morris West, but there was a pile by a Thomas Wolfe with swaggering titles and plenty of exclamation marks, and he took them. Marjorie sneered. A bit much for you, I would have thought, darling. Though thick enough, maybe.
He took them anyway and tonight he kept up his assault on Look Homeward, Angel. As he read and ate he heard the girl snore in the next room.
And when the bells broke through the drowning winds at night, his demon rushed into his heart, bursting all cords that held him on the earth, promising him isolation and dominance over sea and land, inhabitation of the dark . . .
Sounded fine to him. He read on until he sensed that the fire in the next room needed wood, and when he got up and went in he found it all but out. As he was rekindling it, he heard the girl’s voice behind him.
‘What? The. The. What the fuck is this?’
He turned and saw her sitting up, breasts exposed, until she realized and opened her mouth in surprise before clawing the quilt around her. She was wild and angry-looking.
‘Oh.’ He straightened up, wiped his hands. ‘You’re awake.’
‘Yes, I am. What the hell is this? What’s happening here? What’ve you been doing?’
‘Listen, I —’
‘Where’s my clothes?’ Her nest of crumpled spiky hair made her look feisty and mean. Her face was smeared with mud and the warrior-look it gave her took him aback.
‘I’ll go get them.’
‘What’ve you done to them?’
‘Washed them.’
He went out into the black cold to the wash-house. It was quiet out there and he felt like staying, but he went across to the clothesline in the yard outside and unpegged her clothes. They were still wet.
‘You’ll have to dry them by the fire,’ he said when he went back in.
She looked hard at him. He backed some chairs up to the fire and draped her clothes across them, avoiding till the very last the pair of plain white panties. Then he added a few split lengths of jarrah to the fire and sat in his rocker.
‘Something to drink?’
‘No.’
With its turned posts and mirrors, the mantel glowed like an altar in the light of the fire.
‘Hungry?’
‘No.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ he said with a grin.
‘I don’t give a stuff what you believe.’
Jaccob shrugged. It stung alright. He left the room a moment and came back with a glass of wine for himself.
‘How did I get here?’
‘You’re asking me?’ He almost got up and stood over her, but he took a drink and tried to be calm. ‘Are you sick? You were delirious as far as I could tell. Found you down there across the road from my place. Lucky you didn’t go into the river.’
‘Ah. No, I’m not sick. I remember.’
She seemed to soften a moment, as though it wasn’t a good memory to have. And suddenly it was obvious to him.
‘Listen, I don’t know what you took, but it can’t be much good for you if you’ve gotta ask where you’ve been.’
Drugs. He didn’t know much about that business. It made him nervous, made him feel old.
‘Pass me the clothes, will you?’ She was abrupt. With one hand she pointed, with the other she held the quilt to herself.
‘Wet, you mean?’
‘Listen —’
‘Okay. Fine. Here.’
The wet jeans fell in a dollop on her head. The blouse and parka landed nearby, and the panties fell well short.
‘You gonna watch me dress as well?’
Jaccob left the room. He sat in the kitchen and bit a cold potato. Anger was slow in him these days, but he was beginning to simmer. Should have thrown her out the moment she opened her bloody mouth, he thought.
When he went back, she was shivering and lacing her newly polished boots. He put Marty Robbins back on the turntable and set the plough into the furrow. She looked up and wrinkled her nose at the first bars of ‘White Sport Coat’.
He suddenly saw it. ‘You’re pregnant.’
‘Bye.’ She walked out. She was back in a moment. ‘Where’s the fucken door?’
Jaccob pointed. She went down the hall and was gone.
RONNIE WALKED out against that big slab of dark cold. The sky was starless and without a moon. Her feet were dead in the wet boots. She felt as though her bones were constricting in the chill. Her clothes moulded to her flesh. She couldn’t even see her own house across the dark. She had no torch. She sensed a quavering, a faintness. She was hungry. Her teeth ached. Of course I’m bloody pregnant, she thought; what did you think it was, you dumb old prick, a pillow?
She thought of the way he’d handled her panties. No, he was safe enough, nothing had happened. Stoned, Ronnie, you were wrecked. You idiot! She started to shake. A hard cold rammed her cheek. The house behind sloped away at an angle and a blade of dewy grass ran across her nose. It took a moment to know she had fallen. Oh, shit, what a mess.
She got herself up and went back in to the lighted house.
I left the .243 leaning against the wardrobe and got into bed. Ida’s buttocks were cold against me. I knew I wouldn’t sleep for a while; every nerve seemed alive and awake tonight. I was surprised to feel Ida turn and move to me. I felt her lips against my throat. She rose from beneath the fug of the blankets and her long breasts fell against me, and, strangely, I thought of our daughters, and their daughters. Women. Strangers. But soon my mind was swept clean of any thought but the grip we had on each other, the con
figuration we made in the dark, and I knew I was alive and my blood moved in me.
Jaccob watched her eat in silence. His old sweater was too big for her by half, and she felt like trash, scoffing and gulping the way she did. She wiped up congealed gravy with a potato, looked at him no more than a second.
‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘How pregnant are you?’
Their chins came up in unison.
Ronnie wondered about him. He had a look about him, like he was someone in need of kindness. That defeated air might have attracted her once. He was old and burnt; the sun-wrinkles in his face were like dry creekbeds. His mouth was small and set, and he had a permanent squint. Jeans fifteen years out of date, elastic-sided boots, flannel shirt, the whole thing. He looked like the sort of bloke who delivered your firewood in the city. But she liked the way he seemed perpetually embarrassed. He was always shifting his hands about.
‘Sorry I hit you.’
She regarded him with surprise.
‘You were going berserk down by the road.’
‘How come you live here on your own?’
He smiled patiently and she squirmed. Yeah, he thought she was rubbish alright. She gulped some wine and spluttered. He laughed.
‘I’ll drive you home.’
She fisted up inside again. To hell with him.
In his small car she could smell him, and it made her think of her father. The smell of wood, linseed oil, some-damn-thing.
‘Why are you driving me? It’s only five hundred metres.’
‘I’m being polite and neighbourly. It’s cold and you’re not well. Why, do you wanna get out?’
The headlights showed rising mist as they drove along the river before heading uphill along her gravel drive. The place looked lonely tonight. In the hard lights of the car, the house was sad and rickety, just too pathetic for words.
‘Where’s your friend?’ he said, pulling in and swinging the car round in the yard.
‘S’pose you wanna come in now?’
‘Gawd no. Just be careful, alright?’
‘What?’ She got out and glared at him, saw his face green in the dash lights. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The baby.’
She clapped the door shut and walked away.
Later that night Ida slept in the crook of my arm as I lay awake and waited for my pulse to ease off. Outside, something coughed. A cow? A starter motor? I felt full of blood, bursting with it as my heart kept at it. Pretty soon something from a long while ago came to me. Blood.
Blood comes hot out of a boy’s face. Two brothers carry him across sloping pasture in the twilight, the crash of the shotgun still in their ears. Their pockets are stuffed with apples from the orchard and the crazy old woman is shouting from her place up the hill. She’s framed in the doorway of the big white limestone house, waving her fists. The boy moans: can’t see . . . can’t see. The brothers lift him across the fence, hear the wire ping away in the gloom. Stars are coming out. They get him onto the kitchen table and in the lamplight see the blood in his eyes and the pieces of shot. Their father does not look surprised. He sees the bulges in their pockets. He pulls an apple out of one boy’s pants and squeezes juice from the pock-holes. He sits down and looks into the fire. The boy weeps blood. It seems a long time before the father goes out to the truck . . .
History. Yes, that was when history started in on me. The day after the dog was taken, the day Jaccob found Ronnie half-crazed down by the river. If only we hadn’t had so many things to hide, so many opportunities for fear to get us. You can keep it all firm and tidy in you for a time, but, Godalmighty, when the continents begin to shift in you, you can’t tell tomorrow from yesterday, you run just like that herd of pigs, over the cliff and into the water.
AS I STUMBLED into the light-shafted bathroom, I came upon Ida before the mirror with the make-up box on the basin and her face half painted. She had on her dark woollen suit, her pearls and a pair of stockings. Her hair had that hard sprayed look I hated. Before I could even open my mouth, I saw her eyes in the mirror and I knew to shut up. She was going to church. She hadn’t been to church since Christmas, and only then because Jennifer, the most pious of our daughters, was visiting to diminish the joy of the season.
I knew Ida believed in something – she was a convent girl after all – but church on a Sunday?
‘There’s a cup of tea on the stove,’ she said.
‘Can I’ve a shower?’
‘You’ll fog up the mirror.’
I slapped her on the arse and got a pained look. I went for my cup of tea.
The morning was cool and bright with the sky blue from one rim to the other. In the yard, the red circular blocks of jarrah I’d sawn yesterday lay steamy in the light. Hens, magpies, insects moved out there.
‘You want to come?’ Ida said, clacking in on her heels.
I shook my head.
‘I’ll have the car. What’ll you do?’
‘Oh, maybe go down the river.’
‘Fishing?’ She laughed.
‘Well, you’re going to church.’ Somehow I couldn’t meet her gaze as she kissed my brow and went out tinkling the car keys.
The Sink is the kind of place that’s always failed to deliver. Soldiers came to this wet little valley thinking it might do good by them, all hidden away, but nothing came of their visions. Before the soldiers, before the wars, my father bought our side of the valley and he saw families come and go. In the end there were only three properties, though. Us, the Minchinburys, and the place across the valley where some hopeful always seemed to be setting up for a fall.
I’ve always lived here. When we married, Ida and me lived with the old man. My brother lived with us too, but he died a year after we married. He didn’t have much to live for anyway. We used to string lines out in the yard for him to walk along. He was a strange sight, feeling his way along, him and his black eye-patches. He just died in his sleep one night as though he’d decided enough was enough. The old man stayed around a few years more. He wasn’t hard to live with – he hardly even spoke anymore. He moved out to the truck shed after Billy died. Then he was sick a long time and he died in the district hospital. I never knew my mother.
By the time the farm had become my own, my second brother was a big success in the wheatbelt, and he wasn’t interested in this place. So I stayed. I had no other ideas. Ida was expecting a baby. We’d worked hard here. I didn’t think to leave. Now I can’t and poor Ida never will.
That Sunday morning I walked down the pastured slopes to the river. Paperbarks dunked their heads into the water all along the bank amid long grass and rooty tangles where insects hummed. I walked along to the bridge where I sat and watched the water roll slowly under. Caused a lot of trouble, that fancy little bridge. Old Doctor Minchinbury built it when I was a boy, and he wanted us to pay half, but we didn’t have that sort of money. The rich think everybody’s rich. That’s their sin, forgetfulness. Oh, how I hated them, the Minchinburys, them and their fancy city talk, the cars and the parties, and the sight of the fruit dropping to rot on the ground up there by that big white house. By the time I was a teenager, there was only the daughter left. She always seemed old and terrifying, but she can’t have been more than thirty, maybe forty. She was mad, at least we thought she was. Good God, maybe she had dreams too. I can’t even think of it.
Sitting on that bridge, I had the feeling that I’d somehow missed my chance. Thirty years living like a hillbilly in your father’s house. I got bitter thinking about it.
It was still only nine in the morning. Jaccob was back in his dream. He twisted and buckled beneath the blankets, and in the dream the cat springs up silent, settles in against the baby, that warm bundle to purr against. The little girl-child shifts. Pastoral scene, pretty moment for calendars. But now look. That little petal mouth against the fur as the cat snuggles closer. Ticklish. She breathes it deep, dark-thick, giggly a moment in slumber, then stifling. The family cat purrs. The only chi
ld smothers without even time to wake and cry. To wake and shriek. Wake-up! Wake!
Jaccob heard the crash at the door and he came to. He knifed out of bed and stood in his room a moment, naked and hot with panic from the dream. He pulled some jeans on and went down.
He threw the door back and saw it was the girl, his neighbour. She looked sallow and sick. Yes, she was obviously an addict; he wished he’d never come across her. She could do what she bloody-well liked. She could rant and bellow and he couldn’t care less. He’d have nothing to do with her from this second onwards and he stepped back to close the door, but she seized him by the arm. He felt her fingers in his flesh. It was cool out here. He wrenched his arm away.
‘Please?’
‘What? Why’nt you just —’
‘Listen to me. Everything’s dead.’
‘Yeah, I know, God is dead and so are Mum and Dad. The answer is blowing in the wind.’ He laughed.
Then he saw the blood she’d left on his arms. It was on her hands, on her jeans.
The girl’s yard was full of carcasses and they were stiff. White ducks and geese lay in drifts, like the remnants of an alpine thaw. Jaccob wandered amongst them, gingerly feeling their necks, finding some punctured, most broken. Many had open abdomens. Their shit and guts and gore all over. The girl took him behind the shed and showed him the disemboweled goat. It lay buckled and open-eyed, as though still being pursued.