The Seventh Day (24 page)

 

And they herded the field workers and the infants. And there was great pandemonium as those searchers who had left their craft came fast across the field, for their power-packs gave great mobility. Their weapons felled the males and stunned the females.

 

And they bound them, and they took the infant females, all that they found, and left the males to rot in the fields.

 

But the battle was long and the strapping and the loading of females laborious, and it continued long after the sun had left the sky. And in the night five searchers were felled, for the males of the settlement had great skill with their ancient weapons.

 

In the first raid, the searchers' harvest was fourteen females, both adult and infant. Those of breeding age were sent to the breeding stations to lay with the Chosen, while the infants were sent to the creche, where it was found they had no immunity to city disease. And they died.

 

Of the nine breeders taken in the first raid on the Morgan settlement, only two survived the first year.

 

They did not survive the second.

 

And the Chosen were not pleased by this waste. And it caused much debate and report-making.

Old cocky red rooster, crowing. No other sound. Is it the same grey day or a new day? I wait on my pillow, wait to hear Pa's morning cough, his spit onto the verandah. I wait for Lenny, wait for footsteps on the stairs and for my door to swing wide. The infant sleeps on my breast, its small mouth sucking while it dreams. It did not climb alone there. Did I place it there? Or did Lenny place it there while I slept?

I believe he came to me in the night, or to my dreams. It is as if my head is full of the strangest dreams, and so hard yet to know dream from reality, but I am awake now.

I do not much like to look at the infant's face, which appears badly bruised and scratched from brow to jaw. Its mouth sucks well enough, and when it is done with its meal, I place it on the bed and walk away, for I have a great need to use the chem-shed and my own belly tells me it wishes to be fed. A rough blanket as my only garment, I walk downstairs, surprised by my ease of movement.

There is too much blood coming from that place in me. Perhaps the birthing has done great damage and all my blood will leak away. But this is no time to fear the future; the present is more pressing, for when I return to my room, I find worse than blood again coming from the infant.

Lord. I am too weary for this.

We have the grey paper towels the city men bring, and I have brought the last of the pack up with me, but for my own needs. I take up one and rip it into four, using one section to absorb the infant's waste. And it is wet already, and will not remain in position.

Upstairs, downstairs. Downstairs, up. It is too much, but I need the small plasti-wraps. The corners cut from one enough to allow the tiny legs through, I ease it onto the squirming thing and hope it may hold the towel in place and also contain the moisture. I look then to my own needs. Downstairs I walk, where I eat a can of cornbeans, cold, and drink V-cola. And oh, Lord, that demanding wail! What a sound it is! It trembles, rising and falling, and so big for such a small thing. It will not be denied long.

Upstairs my legs carry me, and gladly I lie on my pillow while it sucks. I am close to sleep when I notice the odour. Is it the infant's wastes again? So many new smells have attached themselves to this being.

But, but there is about the air another scent.

The scent of . . . heavy.

The heavy scent of . . .

I think no more, except in dream.

How I have slept, and how heavy. That wail infiltrates my dreams long before it drags me from them. I silence it, pleased that the greedy thing likes my milk. It soothes the soreness in my breasts, certainly, but it also takes the thinking from my mind. Perhaps I have the instinct of the black cat. When this burden kicked at the lining of my belly, I did not believe the reality of it. During the time it fought for its freedom on the hill, I cursed it. Now it takes nourishment from me and I hold it and listen to the rain and think only of the rain. Outside my window the sky is low and grey; I know not if it is morning or afternoon. Ah, but time is a gift, and life is a gift and I will not question it.

When the greedy piglet is done with me, I wash myself well with much water then clothe myself in my golden overall. Such warmth it gives to me, such beautiful and instant warmth. These overalls, city things, are thin stuff, with
Everlast
written on the breast pocket. Many months have passed since I have worn this overall, and perhaps there remains upon it the lingering scent of the one who wore it last. She was a caged thing, the silent one who could fasten her overall at the breast. It fastens now. I think there is little left of me since the birthing and the walk down from the hill.

Lenny is not about but I will not think of it. I will not think how odd it is that he has not heard the wailing and come to view what he believes is of his making. I will think only that the hour is late and he has gone with the dogs about his business.

And Pa. I will think that he is sleeping.

Yes. He is sleeping.

But I listen at his closed door and I do not hear his snore. And there is an odour. Yes. Yes. Lenny slaughtered the yearling bullock and Pa has scraped its hide. Quickly then I turn away from the door and walk to the kitchen.

So cold it is. Why is the stove not burning? Perhaps there is no wood and the rain has kept Lenny from the dead trees that supply it.

There is no sense in that thought. Fire cooks food and Lenny likes to eat.

And what is the odour that hangs in pockets? I smell it as I walk from the kitchen. It is stronger in the passage.

And this silence. It continues until it hurts my ears. I have never known such prolonged silence. Even the rain on the roof has become a gentle patter.

My filthy overall and the half-dress I had worn to the cave, I pick up, study. There is only one thing to do with the defiled stuff. I am on my way to the dump-hole when I hear squealing from the sow's sty, and it is a huge relief to hear that noise. So Lenny is down with the pigs. So he has decided to slaughter a pig today.

I can not see him.

I walk towards the sty, my eyes searching for Lenny, my boots skating across the mire. Only the old sow eyes me over the gate that should have held back eleven, the sow and her ten piglets, which had been separated from the males for their safety only days before I left. The piglets have not been safe. One lone small head, its mouth still open in a shocked squeal, gives mute evidence to the sow's recent cannibalism.

Quickly I step back from the sty wall, my eyes sweeping the yard.

‘Lenny!' I call. My voice is loud. ‘Lenny.'

The sow grunts her reply from the carnage of her pen.

‘Lenny!' I try again. Lord. There is a wrongness about this place. Slowly then I approach the house, the soiled clothing still in my arms. I scan the land, the buildings, listening for the dogs. And from a distance I sight them, sleeping in the doorway of the old barn where they are always tied.

All is well. All is well. This fear in me has been brought on by my struggle of the last days and by exhaustion.

‘Lenny!'

Only the cluck-clucking of a hen answers my call. The dogs do not move. They are as rocks of sandstone and white clay.

My heart pounding in throat and ears I run back to the house, flinging the soiled clothing down, flinging doors wide. Lenny's room is empty. I run to the chem-tub, to the cellar, calling all the while. He is not there. He is not anywhere. And I know why. The grey men have taken him and Pa.

I am alone here.

Afraid now, I approach Pa's room, open his door, and a wave of fetid air greets me. Reflexes fling me back. Reflex movement causes my hand to go to my mouth, my nose, to cover them. Having not expected to find him in bed, I am bewildered by the huddle of bedding and his white hair on the pillow.

‘You are sick with the aches, Pa?' I speak from the passage, from behind my hands. He does not reply. I creep in to the mound of bedding, prod it with an index finger. ‘Pa.' He moves, a little, and I sigh out a long-held breath then return quickly to the passage to replace it. ‘I can not find Lenny,' I say.

Again the mound moves. Then the slick black bodies of two rats glide from beneath the bedding and scuttle to the corner, and through the rotting wall.

I scream. I scream and run from that place, slamming the door behind me, locking the rats in with their ungodly feast.

Pa is dead and Lenny has gone. Pa is dead and Lenny is gone. Backing away. Backing away. I near fall from the verandah, then I swing around and run to the barn, running blind, running to nowhere. Nowhere to run.

Except to the dogs. They are from the same litter, they eat, play, hunt together. Now they wait to die together.

But they are not yet dead. The female lifts her thick head from her paws, sensing my approach. Loyal to the end, she will guard her master's property. She recognises me and her head droops back to her paws, while glazed eyes beckon me to her side.

‘Pa is dead,' I say to her. ‘Pa is dead.' I cry on her but I do not think she cares, so close she is to following her master to that place. And the other one. He does not lift his head.

I half fill a bucket from the water tank, surprised at a weight I would have carried easily on the day I gave water to the sowman, and I pour a measure into the food containers and move them within reach of the brutes. The female whimpers her gratitude, then laps spasmodically at the bowl, slowly building a rhythm. The male has gone beyond that place. Using my hands as a cup, I trickle water over his muzzle, once, twice, then I see his tongue reach for it. I fill my cupped hands with water and hold them to the brute's mouth. He licks and his eyes thank me. He lifts a snake-like tail a bare millimetre then allows it to fall.

‘Poor dog.' My finger smooths his scarred nose. ‘Good dog. I will find you eggs if the hens have been laying. Pa is dead and Lenny is gone. Poor dog. Good dog. We are alone here. But you are here and I am here so we are not alone, eh?'

It is well that I have need to move, to function, to fill my eyes with images of starving dog and hen – though the hens and the crowing red rooster have fared well. Unpenned, they have foraged for their own food and water.

I find four eggs in the red hen's nest, and as I hold them in my hands, they make me aware of time. If that hen had laid every day, then her eggs had not been collected for four days, but that red hen is old. She does not lay every day.

How long had I been in the cave before the infant burst free? It had seemed like an eternity, but time, as my mind, had become lost in that nightmare. I remember the light from the grey men's machine on the night I had gone to the cave. The dogs were never tied when they came. If the city men had taken Lenny, he would not have gone willingly, so why are the dogs tied?

With my mind again making questions, I toss corn to the fowl and break their eggs for the dogs. The female licks the hand that feeds her, then head down she laps in time with her tail's thump-thump. The male needs encouragement; I hold the container to his mouth, feed him egg from my fingers. He licks, and soon works at the bowl alone, but his eyes never leave me. I think, if we live, these two will become my protectors for the rest of their lives.

Although I do not want to return to the house, the rain is still falling. My overall is not so warm now and my hair grown wet, my feet chilled. I stop beside the woodpile and collect as much as I can carry.

I will not think of Pa. Not now. I will not weep for him. Not now. He is dead, and I must live. I will think only of fire and stove and warmth and food. Lenny has gone off searching for me; the kettle will be boiling when he returns. This is what I will think.

But he tied the dogs. He tied the dogs. Why are they not with him if he searches for me?

In the kitchen I look down at the garments I had thought to throw away. Perhaps they might be cleaned. I move them from my path with a muddy boot. I stir them, striving to still the circling of my mind, to give it focus, and a pathway it may follow from this circle of Pa and dogs, of Lenny – and this fear.

When the generator thumps the air-tub cleanses the most foul of Lenny's overalls. When we have the chem-wash powder, we add it to the air-tub, and it has near washed the blue flowers from my half-dress, and the yellow one it has turned to white. Thus, my mind wanders off to a safer dreaming place, to the long white garments the grey men brought for me, to the wet wood on the floor and back to my defiled clothing beside it.

I pick up the brown cloak I had worn to the cave. It is still wet and smells of wet dog. I hang it behind the door, beside Pa's cape.

Lenny's hide cape is not there. It is not there. So, he
has
gone to the hills to search for me, and has fallen, as Jonjan fell. And the dogs came home, and Pa tied them, for the rain was too heavy for him to search for Lenny. And in the night Pa died – of natural causes and . . . Yes, that is why the dogs are tied . . . it is possible. Tomorrow I will go to the hills with the dogs and search for Lenny.

But I do not think the dogs will walk far tomorrow.

I make a slow beginning. The stove is lit with newsprint and a small portion of a used black wax-light. Saturated wood takes long to catch, but catch it does. I fill the kettle and set it over the flame. Soon I will have hot water and heat. Soon I will make my legs carry me to the black hen's nest. There will be eggs there. Perhaps I will dare to count them for she is young and lays every day.

I think much time has passed since I left, perhaps a week in the birthing and the days beyond it, and my days in coming down and my sleeping when I returned, and for all of this time Lenny has been lying out in the rain.

This thought disturbs me. I shiver. All thought disturbs me, but I can not stop doing it, or shivering.

Standing before the stove, watching the fire's flicking flames, I think of Aaron's mother who used
matches
to begin these flames. Granny never allowed the fire to die, for if it died in the night, she had only the old circular glass we must hold to the sun and guide its magnified light to dry bark until it made a flame. If there was no sun, then there was no fire. I must find that glass. I must look for it. Since the grey men brought the flick-flames we have not worried much about the making of fire.

Flick-flames do not last forever.

My hand reaches to the shelf over the stove. The glass is there. As it was in Granny's time. Safe there I leave it.

I take up my overall, stained with blood. I pick up my half-dress, then slowly walk with them across the hall where I load both into the air-tub. Tomorrow I will try to make the generator go. And if I can not? For many years I lived in this house without the air-tub, without the city machines. We cleansed our garments in water – or did not clean them.

Away with my circles of thinking, when I hear noise from upstairs, for a moment I think the sound is from Granny's ghost come to talk at me of rabbits. It is not her voice I hear, but the infant's wail. I had forgotten it. In truth, I had forgotten it, and wish even now to forget it. Do I not have too much already to think of?