Etiquette for a Dinner Party (4 page)

She drew blood. It oozed out of the wound, which was shaped like the point of her beak. It was surprisingly deep. I dropped her; Jack quickly scooped her up and put her in the loft. 'Jesus, Sandy, be careful.'

'She bloody bit me.'

'Well, you were probably squeezing her or something.'

'I wasn't. I was holding her just like you do. I've probably got some disease now. What do they get, these birds? Rabies?'

'Don't be stupid,' he said. He stayed outside, watching the bird strut around its new home, while I went inside and found a sticking plaster. I waited a bit, thinking Jack would probably come in and check I was okay. But he didn't.

Velocity and I quickly reached an understanding. I fed her; she attacked me. I didn't like her. It's hard to like something that wants to kill you.

The weird thing was, after that first time she behaved herself with me when Jack was around. He would give her to me, and she would sit quietly in my cupped hands, little black beady eye in its yellow ring sussing me out.

'See,' Jack would say, 'she's fine with you. My two girls.' His face would glow with a love that appeared to be divided equally between me and Velocity.

The night before Velocity's first race, Jack and I took her to the pigeon club and put her on the pigeon truck going south. The guy driving this truck was called the Liberator. Imagine that. Like some kind of superhero.

Anyway. Off the Liberator went, da da da into the night with a truck full of pigeons. To Christchurch, where he would set them all free to fly home. Jack was beside himself, seeing her off. I was quite excited about it all too. Christchurch, I thought. Across Cook Strait and its howling storms. All that way.

Jack had calculated how long it would take her to fly back — ten hours, he reckoned, seeing as she would be flying into a head wind. The birds were due to be released at dawn. That meant we had most of the next day to ourselves.

'I've arranged something special for us,' I told Jack on the way home. 'Tomorrow morning. We're going through to Hamilton. We'll have a look at some new furniture, then have lunch somewhere nice.'

'You're joking.' The disbelief in Jack's voice twisted it, gave it an ugly, high-pitched tone I had never heard before. When he turned towards me he was frowning and laughing at the same time.

'No, what's wrong with that?'

'We can't go anywhere. We have to wait for Velocity.'

'Yeah, but she's not due back until four in the afternoon. We'll be back well before then.'

'Yeah, but she'll probably get back early. She's a bloody champion flyer, you know, Sandy.' His whine sounded stressed now, like a truck being driven too fast in low gear.

'What — so we have to sit around all day and wait for her?'

'Yep.'

'Well, I'm not spending all day waiting for that fucking bird.'

'Suit yourself. Though I thought you might care how she got on, in her first race.'

The rest of the drive home was one of those quiet, uncomfortable, stuffy ones, where you can't get enough air circulating, even with all the windows down. .

I won't bore you with the details of the pigeon racing season. I'll just say that Velocity lived up to her champion reputation, and Jack spent a hell of a lot of time feeding, training and exercising her.

We argued a lot that winter — usually about the need for us to hang around home every weekend, waiting for the bird to arrive back from other places. When we weren't arguing about that, we found other things to disagree on. Anything, really. Jack laughed at me a lot, accused me of being jealous of a bird. A bird! and he'd crack up laughing in that new whiney voice of his.

Well, yeah, maybe I was a bit jealous. But it seemed to me that the magic Jack had — that power, the strength — was disappearing day by day, leaking out the ends of his lovely fingers every time he handled Velocity. She'd sit in his hands, looking at him and me at the same time, and she soaked up every little bit of that magic for herself. The bits left over for me were the dregs. .

It was early afternoon, a beauty of a spring day, still and warm. I was biking up the driveway on my way home from the delivery run when I heard tyres spitting stones, a vehicle coming up behind me. I turned around and it was Charlie. He followed me up to the house, driving slowly all the way.

He got out of his truck and I asked him which animal he'd come to pick up, seeing as he didn't have the horse float.

'The crossbreed bitch in the kennels,' he said.

'You mean Jessie.'

Charlie laughed. 'Is that her name?'

I asked him if I could have a ride back into town with him. I had a doctor's appointment and I'd planned to meet Jack later at the pub.

'Sure,' he said.

So there we were. Me and Charlie in the front of the truck, Jessie in the back.

'Where are you dropping her off?' I asked.

Charlie looked at me. He's got big hairy eyebrows, Charlie, and dark stubble all the time, even first thing in the morning.

'What do you mean, dropping her off?'

'Who owns her?'

'No one. She's a stray, a mongrel.'

'So we're off to the pound.'

Charlie was looking at me hard.

'The pound.' He laughed. 'Shit no. They don't want her back. She came from the bloody pound. Came into the clinic with an abscess on her leg. No, what happened was, the pound thought they'd found a new home for her, so I treated her. Assumed the new owners would pay. But the new home's fallen through. I'm putting her down, Sandy.'

We pulled out onto the main road, both of us staring straight ahead. I didn't ask about the other animals. All the sick, sad beasts that had been in our front paddocks. And the times Charlie had turned up with his horse float and taken one away. We drove to town in silence.

Just before we got to the clinic Charlie asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.

'Is Jack there?' I asked.

'No, he's out all afternoon.'

'When are you doing it?'

'Right now. While he's out.'

We sat there for a minute, me and Charlie. Not saying anything. Not looking at each other either. We just sat and I understood some things about Charlie and Jack, about how it worked for them. One putting sick animals out of their misery, the other prolonging it. How this had never come between them.

'Can I watch?' I asked Charlie.

Charlie kept looking out the front of the truck, at some invisible spot on the windscreen. 'Sure,' he said. .

I stood under the harsh light over the vet's table, patting the dog. The place was clean and white like a hospital. Charlie had gone out the back and I could hear doors opening and shutting as he moved through the building. I heard cats meowing, other dogs barking, but the dog on the table didn't stir. After a moment Charlie returned.

I patted her head — long, even strokes: her eyes closed each time. They would open again when the stroke stopped. She was a perfectly healthy dog.

Charlie disappeared again, returned with a syringe and a long needle. He stroked the dog gently on its side, then inserted the needle and slowly pumped the liquid into the skin under her back leg.

I watched Charlie's face, looking for some kind of emotion. Sadness, or even pleasure — cruelty — as he killed the dog. There was nothing there. He was just doing his job.

'Bye, Jessie,' he said. The dog gave one long final sigh and then she was gone.

'That's it, Sandy That's what happens.' Charlie put the syringe back on the counter behind him. The dead dog farted, expelling the last of its air: last laugh to her.

'It doesn't matter, you know,' Charlie said. 'Doesn't matter that he can't bring himself to do it.'

I didn't know what to say to that. .

I asked Jack whether he wanted to move out, or whether I should go. Jack said he wasn't leaving — how could he, with Velocity at the peak of her racing season and all those other animals in the paddocks to care for?

Fair enough, Jack, I replied. Fair enough. It didn't take me long to pack. .

Jack and Velocity did very well. I kept track of them through the newspaper. Ribbons, cups, cash prizes. Then Jack turned up in Tirau one day and told me, over a cup of tea, that there was a problem between him and Velocity.

'Oh?' I said.

I confess, I'd already heard. Charlie calls in from time to time too, and he'd told me. But I wanted to hear Jack tell the story.

Jack had had enough of pigeon racing, he said. But the problem was, Velocity had not had enough. Of racing, or of Jack.

He'd tried to sell the bird, then give her away. But she'd attack anyone else who came near her.

'Really?' I said. Then, just because I couldn't help myself, 'Maybe Roly might take her back.'

'Huh,' said Jack.

So there he was, in a bit of a fix about things.

Now, you'd have to agree, there was an obvious way of dealing with this problem, having exhausted other options.

But instead, Jack entered Velocity in a race that started in Invercargill. There was no race scheduled for Stewart Island, otherwise he would have sent her off there, he said. So he entered her in this race, and then he went out and bought that ugly Lilliput caravan.