Coming Rain (23 page)

She still wore the moleskins, stiff with the blood of the dogs. She had not changed
her clothing. The blood made monstrous patterns on her white shirt. She had not eaten
and the blanket had fallen behind her. When night came she simply fell sideways on
the bed and looked at the door until she slept.

Lewis was gone and she held his voice to her, I will be back Clara. She clenched
her hands into fists around the words that came through the walls and window to her.
The memory of his
voice was fine and rounded like a river stone smooth like skin
and soft and hard and wet…Him at Daybreak Springs and would he bring himself? Where
was Gwen? Daddy had become a monster when he stormed in through that door and began
shouting at her, have you been with him, is it true? Standing right there with that
very door open and yelling no until the saliva rolled out his mouth and he turned
and then soon enough after that the shooting started. Nothing making sense.

Jimmy hiding the baby roo in a broom cupboard and Mr Painter Hayes came running,
holding her and yelling at Jimmy to get a blanket and take her in the house. Hush
now Miss Clara, saying this as Jimmy with his arm around her took her in. She had
wet her pants, she remembered this too. And Mr Hayes saying it's all right, doesn't
matter. It's nothing.

Then she remembered carrying the dogs to the pit Mr Hayes had dug. Him sweating and
being so very kind to her, saying it's all right Miss Clara. It will be all right.
Everything passes. Even this and apologising for his mouth. And wanting teeth, the
old man gentle with the deaths for her. She said nothing but did not smile at him.
No. She said goodbye King and Swift. Oh Boofy you idiot. She could not say all their
names aloud but in her mind she did and knew they would know. Saw each of their faces
looking at her in adoration. Running with their love behind her, they would have
run themselves to death for her. But of course she would never let that happen.

Her father shot them. He shot them into pulp.

She felt a wetness between her legs, pushed her fingers into her pants, looked at
the blood. How her mother would have kissed her head with these bloody fingers, say
that's all right isn't
it and whisper,
Zorro est arrivé
. Her joking code for the
arrival of their menstrual cycle. Her voice. ‘Zorro came in through the window during
the night darling, with his sword in one hand and the curtains in the other. The
hero arrives and now there is blood everywhere.'
Zorro est arrivé
. The hilarity of
that. The immense toughness of that.

And then she began to sob. She did not think she would ever stop.

CHAPTER 59

The dingo watched from the cover of the brush as the old man began to cross to the
goat pen. His legs winding as he sang to the sky and staggered in a wide loop to
catch the nanny with the bell around its neck. Dragged her out of the pen and began
to dance about with her. Continued to sing, Abide With Me, as the goat tried to pull
her feet away from the old man. Sung this a thousand times in Belgium, know the fuckin'
words off by heart Eunice. The bell around her neck clanked and her udder was flopping
about between her back legs. For the boys. Abide with me fast falls the eventide,
the darkness deepens. Off by heart, the words, the boys.

The young red dingo stared and blinked, opened his mouth and began to pant; he too
had cried and despaired as he looked out at the havoc of the yate trees. They both
turned away.

When the two dingoes left the outskirts of the abandoned town and the house of the
old man, the bitch felt the heaviness of her belly. It was the first time since she
had known she was carrying the black dog's whelp that she was slowed by them.
Almost
milk come on and she was when she cleaned herself, coming on, the knowledge pressing.
She knew she would soon have to find a safe den; somewhere near water and away from
men who would shoot her. She lay down and waited in the mulga scrub of a gully they
were crossing. The young red dog's leg was strong enough now to carry most of his
weight and he had run ahead.

He stopped when he noticed her absence and ran back looking for her. He had smelled
the smoke, the fire in the scrub. Saw the rising white and grey smoke boiling ahead
of the flames, coming through the grass as fast as he could run and he had no idea
what to do.

The bitch was lying in some shaded sand, her back legs pushed out by the growing
bulk of her belly; her teats were beginning to swell and they itched. The young dog
stood and yawped at her. The bitch rose and watched with astonishment as he spun
around and began to sprint ahead of the encroaching flames, looking at her to follow
him. The smoke was thickening and she could feel the heat, the cracking and hissing
sounds as the scrub began to catch and burst. The fire came into the eastern end
of the small gully and began to roar as it came up towards her. She knew as her mothers
had shown her what to do and immediately ran until she saw a thinning in the flames.
Turned and ran directly into it.

In a moment she was through the fire front and was loping across the black burnt-clear
ground, the earth hot beneath her feet. She began to increase her speed until she
found a hollow where the fire had passed over. Stopped there and waited.

Then she heard the red pup's dismal howling. Dirging at his
loss of her. She listened
and crossed back through the swirling grass smoke to where he was. Somehow he had
survived, but his whiskers were burnt off and his fur was charred. He looked even
more stupid without whiskers. The charred fur on his body and cat-scratched face.

She ran to him, licked his face and he glanced at her and continued to howl. It was
as if he would not believe she was really there. She nudged and licked him again.
Put her mouth over his head to shut him up. Aware, always aware of other men, other
cars. The rifles in their hands.

CHAPTER 60

As Lew drove back towards Drysdale Downs he knew there was nothing to do but follow
Abraham's advice. To know and wait where she would return to. Best place to find
and kill her.

In just over two hours he saw the outcrop of shining red boulders that marked the
turn-off to Daybreak Springs. He drove to the south and found a gully in which to
park the Land Rover. Taking the rifle, he walked back to the fence boundary. He came
across the rotting body of a wombat and several traps that had been tripped. Came
across three more traps still set.

‘Jesus,' he whispered, sprang them and kept walking. He found yet another unsprung
trap and pushed a stick on the footplate. This trap shut with a savage snap, breaking
the stick. Lew looked for the poison baits but they had all gone. Eaten or washed
away in the rainstorm. He thought about old man Smith showing him the tracks in the
sand. How the horrors made his hands shake.

He opened the gates, left them open and cut around to the
south and climbed a small
ridge rising up to some flat boulder-strewn ground. He found what appeared to be
the highest point of the surrounding area above the springs themselves. Checked the
position of the sun and looked at the time. He went about clearing the area and using
fallen scrub to camouflage his position. As he finished, he took note of the wind
direction and, again, the time. Where the sun was in the sky. The shadows of the
trees and where she would come, if she came. He then backed out to the gates and
used a branch to cover his tracks. Within a day and a night, the wind would erase
any evidence of his being here.

He took the road to Drysdale Downs knowing he would have to return to Daybreak within
the week. The bitch should have whelped by then. Coming to the fork indicating the
homestead to the left and woolshed and shearers quarters to the right, he thought
for a moment how things had changed. He took the left-hand track and drove up to
the front of the homestead.

Jimmy was sitting with John Drysdale on the front veranda, leaning forward with a
spoon. He glanced at Lew, nodded to the old man before him and opened his mouth in
an encouraging manner, the way a mother would feed a baby in a high chair. Lew could
not hear what he was saying but he noticed John had a white napkin around his neck
and was opening his mouth in response to Jimmy.

Lew looked away as Jimmy quickly spooned in some mashed potatoes and gravy. Wiped
under the old man's bottom lip with the spoon and nodded towards him. ‘Good boy.'

Lew opened the door of the vehicle, got out and closed the
door. He saw old man John
turn his head slowly to look at him. Still with his mouth open.

‘Mr John,' Jimmy said, set the spoon down and stood. He raised his hand towards Lew.
‘Mr Lew,' he said and walked down to him.

‘Jimmy,' Lew said. ‘How's Clara?'

Jimmy looked back at the house and Lew saw her face behind her window. She smiled
and raised a hand. Then the curtain fell back.

‘She still getting over it.'

‘I should go to her,' Lew took a step towards the house.

Jimmy stepped in front of him. ‘Please Mr Lew, not now. Please. Too early too early.'
His eyes were downcast but he stood his ground.

Lew felt his eyes harden as he looked at Jimmy standing before him. He closed his
hands into fists. ‘Jimmy.'

‘Soon Mr Lew, but I have something to tell you first isn't it? I'm sorry.'

Lew nodding. He flicked a glance towards the veranda. ‘And him?'

‘No good Mr Lew.' Jimmy hesitated. ‘Like baby.'

Lew nodded. He took no pleasure in this.

‘But, I have also other things…news so sorry Mr Lew.'

‘What?'

‘Mr Painter is in hospital.'

‘Hospital?'

‘He go crazy too,
ayo
,
gila
in Gungurra, fight fight in the pub and fall down after.
Big to-do, they all say, he almost died, sorry but it was him most probably.'

‘Painter?' Lew leaned forward as he asked. ‘You sure?'

‘I am sure. Very sick for a while now, Mr Painter. Coughing all the time. You no
hear him?'

‘No,' Lew said, turned and walked away. He felt his mouth opening and no more words
coming out. He did not seem to know how to close it for a while.

CHAPTER 61

The terrible heaviness in her belly decided her. That urgent imperative and for some
unknown reason the smell of the sky. Perhaps it was the remembered insistence of
her mother to be certain. Become the silence of waiting and the knowing that will
come back to you. Little pieces of who you are will join, like a heart beating. Like
the blood from a wound. A wild dog does not think such things.

The wind had come and it was full of the growing foul stink of the white men from
the west country. It was heavy and coming from where the sun set every night; the
moon died there every morning. Her reluctance to go had come from the fear of leaving
the familiar country, the land she knew, but it had become unavoidable. The time
for backtracking and evasion had come, escaping into the desert country.

When the moon rose, she too rose and licked the young dog awake. They began to lope
towards the fine meeka rising. Black sky. Crisp horns of a quarter; an ancient weeping
for Venus in attendance.

They kept running until it was above them and then they stopped and rested for an
hour and rose and began to run again. Her thirst was testing her; the young red dog
ran beside her, his strength growing. The wound in his back leg all but healed. After
all it been just a grazing wound through the meat on the point of the buttock and
now he ran with almost full use of all his legs. Close now as he sensed her waning
strength; his shoulder to her shoulder to lift her up and continue on their way.

She snarled at him often but he was untroubled by her irritation. His devotion,
like his growing stamina, did not waver. His burnt whisker-less face, showing only
endurance. She glanced at the ugly blackened snout but saw he was there and he always
would be. She had begun to sense now he could run strong and sound. Soon, with luck,
he could also hunt. Become a male dog. She would mate with him.

They travelled through miles of mallee scrub and karrik smoke bush, blue bush and
bush heather. Through sand and gravel and stands of mulga and gimlet. They ran through
another emu-breached hole in the long fence and over ridges and salt pans. Along
rock-strewn ridges and through gullies. They passed dried waterholes and crossed
the tracks of emu and red kangaroo; the spoor of camels, brumbies, wild cattle and
once the wreckage of an ancient biplane, burnt and half-buried by drifting sand.
They ran and all they could hear was the desert wind and their own breathing and
the sound of their running.

At last they stopped; she lay and panted until her chin sagged into the sand. He
ran ahead and looked over the next rise. Far away, a campfire. Figures of the walking
people moving around and through the light. The great spiral and showers of
shooting
stars flashing through the black sky.

She watched his reaction, yipped alarm and lifted her head. She rose and crawled
forward to the edge of the ridge. Her nose raised and she smelled the walkers, the
look-away wanderers, part of the country like the bungurra and yonga. The rocks and
ground, the dust they covered themselves with. Older even than everything. The bitch
crawled back from the lip of the ridge and lay and began to try to sleep for a while.
Knew they must keep a wary distance, but follow their spoor. They would have to be
very careful because the walkers would sense them, and call out and allow them affinity
to bring them closer and seduce her and eat her fat pups. Laughing tricksters.

The red dog seemed worried by the desert mob and kept running to her and back to
the rise where he could see the far-off fire. Their flames blew west on the east
wind come out of the centre. Some bits of a chanting song.