Red Dog

by Louis de Bernières

  John never made it round the bend of the road. Perhaps he misjudged his speed, perhaps there was a stone in the road that made him skid, or perhaps the beer had affected his judgement more than he realised. Perhaps the cable on his accelerator jammed. It is just as likely that a wallaby suddenly hopped out in front of him, and he tried to swerve to avoid it.

  Whatever it was, John lost control of the motorbike, hit the kerb and went flying through the air. As bad luck and destiny would have it, he landed on a rock, which caved in his chest.

  No-one knows how long John lay dying on that freezing night, with no-one except Red Dog to realise that he was missing. John did try to crawl back to the roadside, and perhaps if he had reached it he might have been found in time. However, he was too weak and too greatly hurt. After a while that gentle animal-loving man, who was a friend to everyone, died all alone in a rocky patch of spinifex. Perhaps he dreamed about Red Dog as he faded away into that long last sleep, on such a cold and starry night.

  The next moming John did not appear for work and Peeto and Jocko and Vanno wondered what had happened to him.

  ‘I got a bad feeling,’ said Vanno, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s not like John,’ said Peeto. ‘He phones in if he’s not coming.’

  ‘Let’s give him ’til smoko, and if he’s still not here by then I’ll go out and look for him,’ said Jocko.

  John was not there by breaktime, and so Jocko went round to John’s hut. He found Red Dog waiting outside the door. The dog got to his feet and greeted Jocko with some relief. ‘Where’s your mate?’ asked Jocko, and Red Dog flattened his ears and wagged his tail. It always gave him pleasure when someone mentioned his mate.

  Jocko knocked again, and waited for a while. If John was there, he wouldn’t have locked his dog out. John’s Holden was parked outside, but there was no motorbike leaning against the wall round the back. With a sinking feeling in his heart, Jocko remembered that the previous night John had said that he was going out to eat with friends. Jocko went back to the depot and rang them up. ‘John left at elevenish,’ he was told. ‘Why? What’s up?’

  ‘Was he on his bike?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He never got home,’ said Jocko.

  Jocko borrowed a company ute and drove over to the friends’ house. He had a brief word, and then drove back in the direction of John’s accommodation. He thought about the time when he used to have a motorbike himself, and watched the road with the eye of experience. There were always places that were especially dangerous for motorcyclists, such as where there were potholes, or loose gravel, or places where kangaroos and wallabies crossed at night. When he came to the sharp bend, he stopped the car and got out. He wandered over to the other side and looked down into the hollow.

  It was a very small community back then, and everyone knew everyone else. John had been well liked, and for several days everybody felt a sense of shock and loss. People’s minds went numb. They didn’t want to have to talk. Everyday things seemed too trivial to discuss, and if somebody tried to make a joke, somebody else told him to shut up. John had been so young, much too young to die so suddenly and so senselessly.

  Now no-one would know what John might have achieved with his life, whether or not he might have started a business, whether he might have married and had children, or whether he might have gone back to New Zealand to start a new life with his pockets full of Hamersley cash. He had died with the best part of his life still to live, leaving behind him only his grieving friends, who would have fond memories of him for ever, and a devoted pet dog who had no idea what had occurred, and never would.

  Amid all the sadness and the arrangements for the funeral, everyone forgot about Red Dog, and it wasn’t until three days had passed that anyone noticed that he was still waiting outside John’s hut. John’s friends brought food, which Red Dog would eat, before lying down in the dust with a heavy sigh to wait once more, even sleeping there through the chilly nights, and waking in the dawn with his russet coat glistening with dew.

  After three weeks Red Dog came into the transport depot in case John was there. The drivers treated him as an old friend, and to begin with he spent half his time in the depot, and half his time waiting for John outside his empty hut.

  When John failed to appear, Red Dog could only think of one thing. No-one knows how much language a dog has, or exactly how it thinks, but Red Dog’s mind was full of a single great question: ‘Where is John?’

  There is only one thing worse than losing the one you love the most, and that is losing them without knowing why. If you are a dog, then your master is like a god to you, and the pain of losing him is greater still. Red Dog’s heart was sick with longing, he had only one desire, and he had only one plan. He went to every place that he and John had ever visited together, and sniffed in every corner to find a trace of his master. When the scents faded he looked up into the face of each person he met, hoping that somehow they might divine his trouble and lead him out of it. If he could have spoken, he would have said over and over again, ‘Has anyone seen John?’

  It was from this time that Red Dog became the Pilbara Wanderer, the Dog of the North-West, who belonged to everyone because he couldn’t find the one he loved the most, and wouldn’t settle for less.

  PART TWO

  The Dog of the North-West

  LOOKING FOR JOHN

  Red Dog had his greatest adventures after John’s death. He had always enjoyed his freedom, but he had always had John to return to. Now he took absolute liberty, and refused to give it up. He would have given it up, no doubt, only if he had been able to find his master. Being such a well-loved and well-known local character meant that almost every week somebody tried to adopt him, to make him comfortable, and to feed him up so that he would settle down and stay. Red Dog liked these people, and if their children were sick he would even wait patiently by the bed until they were better. Then one day they would come out of their house and find Red Dog by the car, waiting to be driven away on his next great quest. With sadness in their hearts, the people who had hoped to own him would drop him off wherever it was that he wanted to go, and it might be months until one evening there would come that imperious scratching at the door, signalling his temporary return. Red Dog simply treated people as people treat their friends, dropping in, and then passing on.

  Red Dog travelled as usual on the Hamersley Iron buses, in their utes, and in the train to Mt Tom Price. Keenly he looked at everyone they passed. People noticed that he still seemed to be searching.

  Red Dog travelled the 900 kilometres to Broome, a magical tropical town where there are tata lizards that wave to you every few seconds, where there is Cable Beach, whose waters in the summer are as warm as a bath, where the raindrops are as big as plums, where divers bring pearls from the bottom of the sea, and where there are salt-water crocodiles in the mangrove swamps, who like nothing so much as to swallow a nice plump dog.

  Red Dog went there with a road train, and stayed for two weeks, eating every night at the local hotel. He looked everywhere, but couldn’t find John, and so he came back very slowly in an ancient car crammed to the brim with a large family of aborigines.

  One day he happened to be outside her caravan when Patsy was loading up her car for her holiday. It was midsummer, and the tropical heat was unbearable for many of the folk of the Dampier Archipelago. The March flies were stinging anyone who went outdoors, and warnings were being issued about not letting the sun shine directly onto fuel tanks. They had been known to explode, with fatal consequences. Patsy had made friends with Ellen, the unfortunate lady who had made the mistake about Red Dog’s ticks, and these two had planned to go to Perth with Nancy Grey, because Perth is 3,000 kilometres to the south and is cooler and breezier. Because Ellen had come from Perth originally, they were planning to stay with her relatives, and anyway, sometimes women like to go off and have fun together, without being inhibited by men.

  ‘Hello, Red,’ said Patsy, and he gave her his dog
’s version of a smile. ‘Got nothing to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Why don’t we take him with us?’ suggested Ellen. ‘He might enjoy it.’

  ‘Want to come to Perth?’ asked Nancy. ‘If you’re lucky, we might even take you to Freo.’ She patted the seat beside her, and the dog jumped into the back. Women smelled nice, and often gave you sweet things to eat, so it struck him as a good idea to go on a trip with them. It was because of women that he had acquired a taste for chocolate.

  The three had clean forgotten that Red Dog was not necessarily very good company in a confined space, and they spent the two days’ drive making disgusted expressions and exclaiming, ‘Pooee! Pooee! Oh, my God, I can’t believe it! Not another one!’ The dog stuck his head out of the window to enjoy the breeze in his face and to make it easier to keep an eye open for John, so he had no idea of the torture endured by the three women, who would remember this trip for the rest of their lives, and not just because of the smells.

  What happened was that they went to Cottesloe beach, a long beautiful stretch of sand, opposite Rottnest Island, where people like to go for walks, to do their exercise, and to take a swim after work. Some people get up early and have breakfast in one of the cafés overlooking the sea. Sometimes friendships spring up because one meets the same folk over and over again, and dog owners get to know each other’s pets first, and only after that do they get to know each other.

  Patsy, Ellen and Nancy were sunning themselves on the beach after a swim in the surf. Red Dog loved the surf, and devoted much time and energy to trying to round it up, as if he were a sheepdog and the waves were some very strange and difficult variety of sheep. He had also pounced on the shadows of lots of seagulls, and had caused much distress in one small boy by mistaking his model aeroplane for a bird. By the time he had jumped on it and given it a good biting, it was too late to repair the mistake. He had joined in with one game of frisbee, another of volleyball, and another of beach cricket, in which he had briefly confiscated the ball, forcing the cricketers to chase him up the beach.

  The three women dried themselves after their swim, and lay down in the sunshine. In those days nobody bothered much about whether or not the sun was bad for your skin, and so they were planning to get as suntanned as possible before they went home, where just now it would be too hot to lie in the sun at all. They frequently compared forearms in order to see who was getting the brownest.

  ‘Let’s go to Rotto tomorrow,’ suggested Nancy.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ exclaimed Patsy. ‘I’m dying to see the quokkas. They’re supposed to be really sweet.’

  ‘Well, they are,’ said Ellen, who had seen them many times before, ‘but they’re not exactly bright. Sweet and stupid, that’s what they are.’

  ‘They don’t allow dogs, do they?’ said Nancy. ‘What’ll we do with Red?’

  Ellen suddenly sat up; ‘Where is he anyway?’

  They searched up and down the beach, and they asked everybody they saw, particularly those with dogs. No-one had seen Red Dog at all. They whistled and called, and then they enquired in the local cafés and hotels, in case he was busy befriending the chefs. They went into Fremantle, and they searched Mosman Park.

  ‘You know what we’ve done?’ asked Patsy. ‘We’ve only gone and lost the most famous dog in Western Australia.’

  ‘In all of Australia, probably,’ corrected Ellen.

  ‘When we get home, they’re going to kill us,’ moaned Nancy. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Just imagine,’ said Ellen, wide-eyed, ‘Jocko and Peeto and Vanno, and the other drivers, they’ll go crazy.’

  The holiday was ruined. They went to see the quokkas, but it wasn’t enough to cheer them up. They went to the best fish restaurants at the water’s edge, but found that they couldn’t eat. They shopped for souvenirs, but didn’t find anything that they really liked.

  They cut their holiday short and drove home. It took them another two days, taking turns at the driving, and they hardly said a word. They remembered Red Dog, with his head out of the window, and the awful smells he made, and they felt completely miserable.

  When at last they reached home, late at night, they found Red Dog waiting for them outside Patsy’s caravan. He had hitched a lift home from a truck-driver who recognised him. He hadn’t liked Perth all that much, with its bottle-brush and peppermint trees, its pretty yellow sourgrass, its military-looking Norfolk Island pines, and its shiny modern buildings. He preferred the tougher life up north, with its poverty bushes, its Brahminy kites, its silvery river gums, its rock wallabies, its Ruby Saltbush, and its deep red stones. Besides, he had been to Perth before, with John, to that very same beach, but this time there had been no sign of him at all.

  The three women fussed over him and fed him, with a sense of relief such as they had seldom experienced before, and after that they told him off for ruining their holiday and causing them so much guilt and worry. Then Nancy pointed out that they had a few days of their holiday left and suggested, ‘Why don’t we make the most of it, and go to Exmouth?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ agreed the other two. They looked over at Red Dog, and Ellen said, ‘Are we taking Red?’

  ‘No chance,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Not on your life,’ confirmed Patsy.

  In the morning they piled back into the car and with light hearts headed south once more on the North West Coastal Highway.

  Red Dog called in on the new vet in Roebourne, and then he went to Point Samson and Cossack. He visited Jocko, Peeto and Vanno at Hamersley Iron, and afterwards he went and stayed for a night at the Walkabout Hotel in Karratha, where the chef was one of his providers. Finally, he surprised and astonished the three women by turning up in Exmouth three days later. They spotted him walking by when they were all having a milkshake at a café. He seemed pleased to see them, but by the next morning he had hitched a lift to Onslow.

  RED DOG AND RED CAT

  Red Dog used to call in quite frequently on the caravan park where Nancy, Patsy, and Ellen were living whilst the new houses were being built. It was a pleasant enough place, with tubs of flowers set out on either side of the pathways, and people’s washing hanging on lines.

  The only thing wrong with it was that there was a rule that stated NO DOGS, and a caretaker who not only did not like dogs, but was determined to enforce the rule. His name was Mr. Cribbage, and whenever he saw Red Dog he tried to shoo him away. Later on Red Dog was to cause Mr Cribbage a considerable amount of trouble, but right from the start he also caused some trouble for Red Cat.

  Red Cat definitely approved of the rule about NO DOGS. In fact, Red Cat hated dogs so much that if he had been dictator of Australia, he would probably have had all the dogs executed. There was no rule forbidding cats in the caravan park, and so Red Cat very much liked it there. Red Cat was the boss of all the cats in Dampier.

  He was a ginger tom, big, muscly and mean. He had green eyes and tatty ears, he had a slantways scar on his nose, he had a white bib on his chest, and a tail that was barred in lighter and darker shades. He had great big paws, and when he stretched them out, the claws would spring from their sheaths like curved swords. When he sat on your lap and purred, you could feel the vibration shaking the bones in your head. When you dangled a string in front of him to make him play, you made very sure that your fingers were out of his reach. When he caught a rat, you could hear the crunch of its bones as Red Cat munched it up. When he yowled and wauled at night to attract the lady cats who were the mothers of his kittens, it sounded as though a baby was being tortured to death. When he ate his dinner, he could, if he chose, wolf it almost as fast as Red Dog. Red Cat had never lost a fight.

  If Red Cat saw a dog, his policy was to jump on its back, dig his claws in, and ride it around the caravan park until it was too tired and terrified to run any more. Then Red Cat would jump off and swipe it across the nose, leaving four parallel scratches that trickled with blood. Then, when the dog rolled over and surrendered with its paws in the air, Red Ca
t would parade proudly away, the tip of his tale waving with self-satisfaction. More often than not, the dog would not come back to risk this treatment again.

  Red Dog liked chasing cats, and had plenty of rake-marks on his snout to prove it. He was a cleverer dog than most, but like most dogs he had never really managed to learn that a dog always loses a fight with a cat, because eventually the cat will turn round and lash out. Red Dog was an optimist, and he sincerely believed that just because a cat runs away to begin with, then he must already be the winner. Anyway, it was such fun doing the chasing that, as far as he was concerned, it was worth getting scratched for it later.

  When Red Dog explored the caravan park for the first time, he walked around the back of Nancy’s allotment, and came face to face with Red Cat. Red Dog was overcome with excitement, and leaped forward to give chase.

  He stopped a fraction of a second later, however, because Red Cat did not turn and run. He sat quite still, and opened his mouth and hissed. Red Dog was impressed by the pink tongue and the two rows of shiny white teeth.

  He pounced again, but still Red Cat did not run. This time he flattened his ears and hissed again, even louder. Red Dog began to have doubts, but he couldn’t resist having another try. Red Cat stood up, arched his back, flattened his ears and hissed, even more loudly. Red Dog sat back on his haunches, puzzled by this unusually valiant cat, but something made him have another try. Red Cat bushed up his tail, made the fur stand up on his back, flattened his ears, hissed, and hit out so quickly that Red Dog didn’t even know what had happened until his nose began to sting and drip with blood.

  Just as Red Cat wasn’t going to be frightened by Red Dog, neither was Red Dog going to be frightened by Red Cat. He bared his teeth and growled. Red Cat bared his teeth and hissed. Red Dog barked in anger. Red Cat spat.