The Best Australian Stories 2014 (25 page)

He let me in and kissed me. I remembered the crossword, the clue about the love handle, and thought about the thing he liked to call me when he was taking off my clothes. He led me to the living room – he never liked to have sex in the bedroom – and poured me a tumbler of whiskey. He watched me drink it, then reached for me again, a sudden movement that caught me off guard, and I lost my grip on the glass. It fell to the floor and hit the carpet with a thump, spilling whiskey on his shoes.

‘Sorry,' I said, and knelt to retrieve the tumbler. He made an irritated noise. The moment my knees touched the carpet I knew he'd done it deliberately, made me drop the glass so that I would have to pick it up like this. I mutinied for a second, and wanted to stand up, leave the glass and the spilt drink, walk out forever. He touched the back of my head.

I stayed where I was. He took a handful of hair and began to pull, not hard. I stayed on my knees and lowered my mouth to his shoe, the one where the whiskey had spilled. He let go of my hair. His shoe was wet and shiny, and the air was sharp with alcohol and the damp animal smell of the wool rug. I touched my tongue to the leather and licked, short strokes of the kind that he liked on his body. He moved after a second or two, shifting his weight as if about to step away, but I gripped his ankle and held it, and stopped only when the taste of whiskey was gone.

When I lifted my head to meet his eyes, I was surprised to see how unsettled he seemed.

‘Call me that name,' I said.

I waited for him to speak, to lift me up, to tell me what to do next.

‘Get up,' he told me.

I felt almost ashamed for a moment. He looked at me with faint disgust, his desire apparently gone. I thought about Tamara, the suburban girl who lived like a dog, and felt a surge of anger towards her, a harsh version of the feeling the woman sitting next to me on the bus had voiced.

The carpet was soft under my hands but I knew it would burn my knees if I stayed there, and my wrists would begin to ache. I wondered how Tamara handled that aspect of her lifestyle. I wondered whether she was allowed to sleep in a bed, and whether she slept under the covers with Tony, or curled up at his feet. My feelings towards her softened. Did I envy her? I remembered the strange combination of dignity and comedy in her straight-backed stance, the quietly proud way she carried herself. I tried not to think about the banal things she'd said to the newspaper; I preferred to think of her as I'd imagined her before, with all the sophistication and irony I'd ascribed to her, the fiercely perverse look she had wiped from her face as they left the bus.

‘Okay, then,' Max said. He knelt in front of me and placed his hands on my shoulders, and slid the straps and the top of my dress down to my waist. He smiled, a broad grin. ‘Roll over.' He pushed me onto my back, and I felt the wet patch of spilled whiskey under my bare shoulder. Something like a growl sounded in his throat. ‘Stay.'

Blood and Bone

Lisa Jacobson

It was winter, a week before his twentieth birthday, when Joel's dad phoned to say he was needed at the farm. Duke the arthritic blue heeler was sixteen years old and needed shooting, and there was no one else to do it except the old man himself. Joel's dad said his hand was still bung from when one of the bulls had crushed it in the stocks. Joel knew that was a crock of shit but there was no good saying it. Joel had seen his father shoot his prize heifer point-blank without flinching. He'd seen him put kittens in a sack weighed down with bricks and throw it in the dam before heading indoors for tea.

Joel's father had no trouble dispensing with the last of the other farm dogs either when they grew too old to work the herd of Angus cattle that still grazed on the family farm. But with Duke he just couldn't face it, and both of them knew it. So next afternoon Joel skipped his university lectures and caught the train to Leongatha.

When the train pulled in to the station, his dad was waiting for him in the ute, motor still running. Joel yanked open the door and slid onto the vinyl seat amidst empty Coke cans and newspapers.

Train was on time, eh? said his dad.

Yep, Joel said.

You eaten?

Nah. Just a pie on the way.

I've got dinner back home.

Yeah, that'd be good.

It was dark when they arrived at the farmhouse. No moon lit up the stubbled paddocks that flanked the driveway, only a mess of stars from which light leaked. Three hundred hectares of land stretched out around them in the darkness, tenanted by trees and cattle.

Joel waited until his father went into the house to cook dinner, took out a pack of Dunhills and lit up. Already he could feel the city's hard energy retreating, his thoughts coming slower now and thicker as he walked through the yard, kicking a tin dish that lay in his path. The black mass of a cat arched back into shadow. Chooks clucked in mild admonishment from the safety of their henhouse. On a mat outside the door, Duke the blue heeler sat wheezing. Joel exhaled smoke, stubbed his cigarette out in the dirt and bent to scratch the old dog's ears, its dry nose reaching towards him.

How's it going, old fella? That's a good boy, he said, stroking the coarse hair caked with mud. The dog's breath reeked, as if some part inside of it were already decaying, already dead.

When Joel entered the kitchen his dad was at the stove in shorts and work boots, standing over a sizzling frypan. Beneath the blue-check shirt he was broad-shouldered and thickset but his legs were thin, the muscles around his bones grown slack and loose, strength leaching out of them. When Joel's dad heard the screen door open, he turned down the gas, wiped his hands on his shorts.

Want a beer? he said.

Yeah, said Joel. He pulled two stubbies from the fridge and they drank for a bit, watching the chops spit in the pan.

You seen Duke, then? said Joel's dad.

Yeah, he doesn't look good.

Poor old bugger.

Joel's dad doled out chops, tomatoes and mash onto the chipped plates that had been in this house for as long as Joel could remember. They chewed solidly, pulling meat from the bones. Not much was said over dinner. Not much was ever said between them.

It was an arrangement that had until recently suited them both; this muted dialogue that seemed not to require much care or effort. It had been that way ever since Joel's mother died, three years ago now, leaving the farmer and his teenage son alone. For Joel's older brother had got out of Leongatha as soon as he could, landing a job in finance and moving to Sydney. But somehow Joel managed to finish high school with grades that surprised even himself and, in his first year at university, found more words in his head than he knew what to do with. He just wished, on occasion, he could share them with his father.

A residue of misgiving clung to Joel for leaving his father to work the farm alone. He still felt it, even now, when he returned to this small town where time moved so slowly he found himself walking too fast in the main street. Many locals in Leongatha had known Joel since he was born.

Hope you're learning something useful at that fancy school of yours, said Marg in her bloody apron when he dropped by the butcher's to get bacon.

Have they taught you how to turn a breech calf then? asked Jake at the supermarket, stacking tins of tomato soup on the shelves as carefully as if they were eggs.

Whenever Joel phoned from uni on his mobile the conversations were corrugated with small talk, his father too anxious about the cost of the call to speak of much else. Joel was now in his second year, studying things he no longer tried to make his father understand.

This must be costing you a fortune, son, he'd say. You'd better go.

But despite all of this, the town's clucking disapproval and his father's taciturn phone manner, some filament of respect still held fast between them, a thread of deep affection.

His dad had always had Duke for company – the only dog on the property now his cattle dogs had been replaced by farmhands on motorbikes. Duke had never been a real working dog anyway but the runt of a litter Joel's mother took pity on when Joel was about five. Unlike the other farm dogs, Duke had the run of the house, chewing everyone's shoes and leaving puddles everywhere.

That bloody dog! his father would say, holding up the ruins of a work boot.

Don't you dare! said his mother. Whatever you're thinking of, don't!

I'm not thinking anything! Throwing the boot to one side, softened by her laugher and the puppy playing tug of war with his boys on a bit of rope.

In the months before the doctors diagnosed cancer, it was Duke who began nosing at his mother's left breast, making the kind of gestures he used to bury a bone.

What on earth is he doing? she'd say, pushing him off. Stupid dog.

For weeks after she died he sniffed at his food but would not eat, cocked his leg on the furniture until the house reeked of dog piss. Duke was the only dog Joel's dad had ever taken to the vet, who put him on a drip until he started eating again.

*

After dinner, Joel's dad scraped the plates and washed up while Joel dried with a faded, blue-check tea towel he recalled his mother using to lift casseroles from the oven. Joel was accustomed to such memories intruding without warning. Some things, like the tea towel and the chipped plates, were inextricably bound up with his mother although recently he had trouble recalling her face. For this reason he kept a photo of her tucked behind the student card in his wallet.

When the kitchen was tidy Joel went out to the verandah and brought Duke into the lounge where his dad was stoking the heater with wood. He placed the dog between them on the couch where it lay at an awkward angle, nose resting on the farmer's lap. The three of them sat there then, watching cop shows on telly until Joel's dad, yawning, lifted Duke's head from his knee.

Think I'll be off to bed, he said.

Okay, said Joel.

You'll be up early, then?

Yeah, reckon.

I was thinking Arthur's Hill'd be the place.

I'll need the ute, said Joel, his gaze on the telly.

Alright. Shovel's in it.

Yep, saw it in there.

Well, g'nite then.

Yeah, g'nite.

Stiffly, the farmer stood up and leant over Duke.

That's a good dog, he said. You've always been such a good dog.

Joel's dad opened the door into the corridor and paused. He paused for so long Joel assumed he had left the room until he heard an odd, strangled sound that took some time to recognise as sobbing. Joel had only ever seen his father cry once before. That was at his mother's funeral, his head bowed quietly in the church pew, and done with as quickly as it had begun, the farmer sitting upright once again before the coffin. But this sobbing was different, almost solid as it rose up out of his father's throat and slammed back down like an axe cleaving wood. Joel feared it would never stop.

I dunno, said the farmer, scraping at tears. I dunno what I'm gonna do.

He leant with one arm against the portal, the other hanging loose. The bulk of his body took up most of the doorway. Joel forced himself to stand, felt dinner sitting solid in his gut, thinking, Shit, what would Mum do? He reached out with an uncertain hand and put it on his dad's shoulder until he assumed his usual solidity.

It's alright, said his dad, inhaling gulps of the cold air flowing invisibly from the corridor. It's alright. I'll be alright.

Then he turned and disappeared into darkness.

Joel flicked the TV off and waited for a bit with Duke beneath the lamp's dull light. He sat while the taps in the bathroom complained as the farmer turned them on and off. He sat until the bedroom door shut with a thud, and the springs of his dad's mattress groaned as he got into bed. He sat until he sensed the rhythms of sleep descend on the house, until Duke's hoarse breath was the only sound in an otherwise silent night. Then he went to the cupboard where the guns were kept.

The cupboard, when he opened it, smelt of linseed and old wood. Joel slid his dad's .22 out of its rack and leant it beside the door. He gave the old heeler a final scratch behind its torn ear and left it on the couch. Undressing in the room he once shared with his brother, he fell into bed and a dreamless sleep.

*

It was early when Joel woke, too early for birds. He pulled on clothes and went into the lounge. Duke lay on the couch in exactly the same position he had left him, eyes closed, motionless. Joel reached out a hand, hoping that the job he had come all this way to do would be unnecessary, that the dog had died in the night, that it was stiff and cold and long gone. But at the touch of his hand, the old heeler tried to get up, fell back, tried again. Something too tender rose up in Joel then. He pushed it down again into some deep recess where he'd retrieve it later, but not now.

He hoisted the dog up and carried it into the yard's half-dark, the .22 slung over one shoulder. He felt the gun's barrel jut against his hip as he walked, the dog's dull weight in his arms. He put Duke onto the front seat of the ute on a stack of newspapers, coaxed the motor and swung down the drive.

To the right was a track edged with stringybarks leading to a belt of uncultivated land where he and Duke used to spend hours mucking about, forging through bush and creeks. For a moment he considered taking the dog there one last time, but headed instead as planned up the rutted path leading to the top of Arthur's Hill.

It was a cold morning, and still. A weak sun had just lifted itself over the horizon to reveal the hill's summit, matted with grass and bald dirt, the smaller slopes tilting down into flatlands. Joel killed the engine and sat in the ute, listening to the faint rasp of Duke's breath, the engine ticking as it cooled. He sat there until the long shafts of gold light had reached the paddocks below and pale cow-shaped islands appeared through the mist.

The dog, when he held it, was warm as bread. Joel settled Duke on the ground, gave him one last scratch behind the ears, brushed his lips against the top of the dog's head. And as he did so, the full force of his first grief surged up, without warning as always, threatening to engulf this other, impending loss: the death of his mother's dog. And for how long? he thought. And will it ever go?

Joel had not used a rifle since the last time he went rabbit shooting with his dad, over two years ago now before he left for uni, though the gun felt familiar in his hands. The barrel gave a satisfying click as he loaded it. Still he waited, for a sign perhaps, that Duke understood. He stood beside the dog for what felt like a very long time, trying to think only of the mechanics of the act.

Finally, resolutely, he raised the gun, aimed it down at Duke's grizzled temple and released the trigger. At that moment the dog inclined its head towards him and Joel thought the bullet had missed completely. But Duke gave out a small shudder and slumped forward into the dirt.

A great sob rose out of Joel then, though he forced himself to turn back to the ute, to think only of practical things like where to bury the animal and how deep the hole ought to be. It was only when he returned with the shovel he noticed it: Duke's flanks pulsing faintly. Steam rose from a bullet-hole in the side of his head, fringed with blood. He raised the gun and fired a second shot. The dog didn't move again.

When he got back to the house his dad was already out in the south paddock driving the tractor, cutting a swathe through the soil in preparation for spring. Joel washed the muck from his hands, went out to the verandah, lit up a smoke. He followed the tractor's arcs until his hands stopped shaking and he lost himself in the machine's steady rhythms, finding in this some small measure of grace and reason. He watched until the hardness in his chest dispersed into his blood, into his bones, felt it diminish and dissolve until for now, anyway, he could scarcely feel it at all.

The Age