by Black Inc.
‘I’m ready,’ he finally said.
‘You’ll need to lift him out,’ Meg said.
He took the towelling bundle from her and carried it around into the headlights, keeping the dog’s head towards the ute, not wanting him to see the stand of gums, or the gaping hole – although Nigger surely knew exactly where he was.
He set the dog on the ground and, as Meg knelt and fondled his ears again, walked back to the cabin of the ute for the loaded gun. He checked the breech as Meg tugged a corner of the robe over the condemned dog’s eyes. Nigger licked her hand once, but as she stood back, the right side of his body, the working side, began trembling, violently.
‘He’s scared,’ she whispered, hoarsely. ‘He knows. Do it quickly, Ben.’
Not too quickly, he reminded himself as he aimed the gun with more deliberate care at the masked head. He squeezed the trigger slowly, and with such forced concentration that he barely noticed the hard, bruising kickback of the stock against his shoulder, or the explosion of the shot itself.
Meg’s gasp of horror was barely audible to his deafened ears; she had already turned away to lean against the bonnet of the ute as he lowered the gun. He could look no longer than a second himself. He leaned the gun against the wheel of the ute and dragged the dead dog by the hind legs to the edge of the hole, keeping his face averted.
Then he took the spade and cleaned up the fragments of shattered bone and brains, still trying only to look out of the corner of his eye. He had scraped two small mounds of dirt and remains into the hole when nausea overcame him.
‘Here,’ Meg was saying somewhere, far off, although apparently close enough to take the spade from his hands. He squatted on his heels, with his head between his knees till he stopped feeling faint. He could hear her working somewhere, and by the time he felt safe to rise to his feet again she was banging down the earth on top of the grave.
‘You OK, Ben?’
‘Getting there. And you?’
A long silence. ‘Do you think we’re cut out for this?’
‘I think you are,’ he said, and she offered up the glimmer of a smile.
They drove back to the house as they had driven out, in silence. Blue was waiting at the grid, prick-eared, pacing relentlessly about. As they climbed out, he was already looking past them from the tray to the cabin and back again. Ben left the shotgun in the cabin, but tossed the spade into the toolshed and closed the door; he would hose it down later. Blue followed Meg up the steps onto the veranda, searching her face for a sign, looking back at Ben’s face, looking past them out into the night, looking and searching everywhere.
At the door Meg turned, and spoke to him. ‘No, Blue. Stay.’
She held the door for her husband to step through, then closed it in the dog’s face, slowly but firmly.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE
CHRIS WOMERSLEY
Once, when I was about nine years old, I was kicking a football around in the back garden late in the afternoon. I was alone, as usual – or thought I was – and the day was nearly over. It was late autumn. The air was still blue and smoky from the piles of burning leaves in the neighbourhood gutters. Shooting for goal from an impossible angle, my football bounced into a tangle of bushes beside the high wooden fence that bordered our neighbour’s house and when I crawled in to retrieve it, I discovered a woman crouching there, damp leaves stuck to her hair like a crown. She clutched her knees, which were bare and knobbly where her dress had ridden up. I was too stunned to say a word.
‘You must be Nick,’ she said.
I nodded. My scuffed football was just behind her.
‘How did you know?’ I said when at last I found my voice.
She glanced up at the old house, at the lighted lounge-room window warm as a lozenge in the failing light. Soon one of my sisters would draw the curtains and the house would be absorbed into the falling night, safe and sound against the cold and dark. Realising I was clearly not the sort of child to run screaming upon finding a stranger in his backyard, she took a few seconds to adjust her position, which must have been quite uncomfortable.
‘Oh, I know lots of interesting things about you.’
I heard Mrs Thomson singing to herself in her kitchen next door, the chink of cutlery being taken from a drawer. Having stopped running around, I was getting cold and a graze on my elbow where I had fallen over on the bricks began to sting.
‘I know that you love football,’ the woman went on, looking around as if assembling the information from the nearby air. ‘Aaaaand that you love Star Wars, that you’ve got lots of Star Wars toys and things. Little figurines, I guess you’d call them.’
This was true. I’d seen Star Wars four times, once with my dad and then with my friend Shaun and then twice at other kids’ birthday parties. In addition, I had a book of Star Wars, a model of an X-Wing Fighter, comics and several posters on my wall. The distant planet of Tattooine – with its twin suns, where Luke Skywalker had grown up – was more real to me than Darwin or the Amazon.
I inspected the stranger more closely in the fading light. She was pretty, with long hair and freckles across her nose. She wasn’t as old as my mum, but maybe a bit older than my teacher at school, Miss Dillinger.
It didn’t seem right that this woman was sneaking about in our garden and I was mentally preparing to say something to that effect when she leaned forward, whispering, her red mouth suddenly so close I felt her breath on my ear.
‘I also know that it was you who broke Mr Miller’s window last month.’
A chill seeped through me. Several weeks ago, Shaun and I were hitting a tennis ball around in his grassy garden when we discovered a much more interesting game; by employing the tennis rackets we could launch unripe lemons vast distances. Green lemons the size of golf balls were the best and, if struck correctly, would travel across several houses – maybe even as far as a kilometre, or so we imagined. With no one around – who knew where Shaun’s parents were? – we amused ourselves in this fashion until the predictable happened and we heard the smash of a distant window, followed by furious shouting that went on for several minutes. Terrified, we stashed the tennis rackets back in the shed, cleaned up the lemons and scurried inside to watch television and listen out for sirens or the blunt knock of a policeman at the front door. We heard later that the police were indeed summoned, but no one thought to question us about the damage because it happened so far from our houses and who would have dreamed we could throw lemons so far? Nothing was ever proved and he vehemently denied any involvement, but blame was sheeted home to an older kid called Glen Taylor, who lived closer to the Millers and was known to be a troublemaker. Our apparent escape didn’t stop me from dwelling on our crime most days and even now, weeks later, the sight of a police car filled me with dread, with terrifying visions of handcuffs and juvenile detention.
The stranger sat back on her haunches, evidently satisfied. I felt the shameful heat of incipient tears. ‘Are you the police?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Then who are you?’
She coughed once into her fist and looked around again, as if she were unsure herself. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said at last. ‘It’s all right, I won’t hurt you. My name is … Anne.’
I wiped my nose. ‘But what are you doing hiding in our garden?’
A fresh pause, another glance towards my house. ‘I’m not hiding, thank you very much. I’m always here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m waiting for my turn on the throne.’ The woman looked at me again, and it seemed to me her mouth had tightened. ‘Princess Anne, waiting to enter the castle as queen at last.’
By now it was almost dark. The woman’s dress was indistinguishable from the foliage surrounding us, so that only her pale face was visible, the deep pools of her eyes. She jumped when my mother called out for me to come inside for dinner – looked set to run off, in fact – before relaxing again at the sound of retreating footsteps and the screen door slapping shut.<
br />
‘Yell out you’re coming,’ she whispered.
Succumbing to the innate authority adults wield over children, I did as I was told.
‘Smells delicious,’ she said a few seconds later. ‘Like lamb.’
I nodded.
‘I hear your mother is a good little cook.’
I was suffused with filial pride. ‘She is. She makes a beautiful apple crumble, too.’
‘Keeps a nice house. Tucks you in, reads you stories, makes biscuits.’
My mum didn’t make biscuits. The curious woman didn’t even seem to be addressing me but, rather, talking out loud to herself.
‘That’s very nice,’ she continued, as if I had agreed with her summation of my mother’s housekeeping capabilities. ‘Why don’t you bring me back some of that lamb later. Wrap a few slices in some wax paper or something. Let me try this famous lamb.’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Go on, be a sport. And one of your father’s cigarettes.’
‘He gave up.’
The woman sniggered. ‘Like hell he did. Look in his study. There’s a green volume of Dickens on the top shelf of his bookcase. Great Expectations, naturally. It’s hollowed out and there’s a packet of Marlboros hidden in there. Bring me a couple. Don’t forget the matches.’
I didn’t ask how she knew this. I had become unaccountably afraid in the past minute or so and stood up as best I could beneath the low branches to leave. At school they advised us not to talk to strangers in the street or at the park, but no one said anything about finding one in your own garden.
‘I suppose you want your ball.’
‘Yes, please.’
She slung me the football. ‘Nice manners. Don’t forget to bring me those cigarettes after dinner. I’ll be right here.’
‘OK.’
‘Don’t smoke them all yourself, will you, now you know where they’re hidden? They’re for grown-ups.’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Good boy. It was nice meeting you at last. You can’t tell anyone you saw me, though. Remember what I know about you and those lemons. A certain broken window. Don’t want your mum to find out, do you? Or the police. Tell anyone you saw me here and I’ll blow your whole house down. Just like whatshername, Princess Leia.’
I didn’t bother to correct her version of who Princess Leia was or what she might be capable of and went inside for dinner. Afterwards, when everyone was watching TV, I went into my dad’s study and found the cigarettes exactly where she said they were. I stood there a long time staring at them before lifting the packet out of the miniature grave carved into the book. The smell of dry tobacco was both familiar and exotic, full of dark promise. On the calendar stuck on our kitchen wall were marked the months since my father had smoked his last cigarette and the money his hard-won abstinence was saving our family. The ways of adults were as mysterious to me as a forest; they spoke often in their own unintelligible tongue. In the other room my family laughed at M*A*S*H, even though they were all repeats.
Without really knowing what I was doing – much less why – I withdrew a cigarette from the packet, put it between my lips and lit it. The flavour was strong and terrible. Smoke wafted into my eyes. My immediate coughing fit brought my two older sisters running to the study doorway, where they stood giggling with disbelief after calling out for our mum.
When she arrived, my mother slapped the cigarette away and demanded to know what the hell I was doing. My father was the last to arrive on the scene and he weathered my mother’s tirade with his gaze fixed not on the book with its cigarette packet-shaped hole that my mother brandished at him as evidence of his flagrant dishonesty, but on the curtained window, as if expecting to see something unwelcome step in from outside.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
MURRAY BAIL’S ‘Camouflage’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2001 and The Best Australian Stories: A Ten-Year Collection, and as the title story in his collection Camouflage.
TONY BIRCH’S ‘China’ appeared in Island 133 and The Best Australian Stories 2013.
JAMES BRADLEY’S ‘The Inconvenient Dead’ appeared in Overland 206 and The Best Australian Stories 2012.
J.M. COETZEE’S ‘As a Woman Grows Older’ appeared in the New York Review of Books and The Best Australian Stories 2004.
PATRICK CULLEN’S ‘Mauve’ first appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2005 and this revised version was published in his collection What Came Between.
LIAM DAVISON’S ‘Sandtrap’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2003.
PETER GOLDSWORTHY’S ‘Shooting the Dog’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2006, The Best Australian Stories: A Ten-Year Collection, and his collection Gravel.
RODNEY HALL’S ‘Silence 1945’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2011.
PATRICK HOLLAND’S ‘Flamebugs on the Sixth Island’ appeared in the Griffith Review and The Best Australian Stories 2006.
NAM LE’S ‘The Yarra’ was excerpted in The Age and Ventiquattro Magazine, and appeared in Asia Literary Review 13, Brothers and Sisters and The Best Australian Stories 2010.
SHANE MALONEY’S ‘I See Red’ appeared in the Big Issue and The Best Australian Stories 2007.
DAVID MALOUF’S ‘Mrs Porter and the Rock’ appeared in Every Move You Make and The Best Australian Stories 2007.
ALEX MILLER’S ‘Ringroad’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2012.
FRANK MOORHOUSE’S ‘I So Do Not Want to Be Having This Conversation’ appeared in The Best Australian Stories 2006.
RYAN O’NEILL’S ‘July the Firsts’ appeared in Westerly and The Best Australian Stories 2007.
A.S. PATRIC’S ‘Guns ’N Coffee’ appeared in fourW twenty-two, Las Vegas for Vegans and The Best Australian Stories 2012.
D.B.C. PIERRE’S ‘Suddenly Doctor Cox’ appeared in Ox-Tales: Air and The Best Australian Stories 2009.
KIM SCOTT’S ‘A Refreshing Sleep’ appeared in Westerly and The Best Australian Stories 2009.
TIM WINTON’S ‘Aquifer’ appeared in Granta and The Best Australian Stories 2001 and The Best Australian Stories: A Ten-Year Collection.
CHRIS WOMERSLEY’S ‘Where There’s Smoke’ appeared in the Big Issue and The Best Australian Stories 2011.
CONTRIBUTORS
MURRAY BAIL’s novels include Eucalyptus (which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1999), The Pages and The Voyage.
TONY BIRCH’S books include Shadowboxing (2006), Father’s Day (2009), Blood (2011), shortlisted for the Miles Franklin literary award, and The Promise (2014). His new novel, Ghost River, will be published in October 2015. He is currently the the inaugural Bruce McGuinness Research Fellow within the Moondani Balluk Centre at Victoria University.
JAMES BRADLEY is a novelist and critic. His books include four novels, Clade, Wrack, The Deep Field and The Resurrectionist; a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus; and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. He writes and reviews for a wide range of newspapers and magazines in Australia and internationally, and blogs at cityoftongues.com.
J.M. COETZEE was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes the novels Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, both of which won the Booker Prize. His most recent novel is The Childhood of Jesus. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and is now a resident of Australia.
PATRICK CULLEN’S short stories have appeared in many anthologies and have been broadcast on ABC Radio National. He lives in Newcastle with his wife and two children. His first book, What Came Between, was published in 2009.
LIAM DAVISON published four novels: The Velodrome, Soundings, The White Woman and The Betrayal, as well as two collections of short stories. His work was shortlisted for numerous major literary prizes and he won the National Book Council’s Banjo Award for Soundings.
PETER GOLDSWORTHY’S short-story collections include Little Deaths (short-listed for the Christina Stead Award), and Gravel (shortlisted for the ASL Gold Medal). A Collected Stories was published in 2
006. His much-anthologised story ‘The Kiss’ is also available in a separate Penguin Specials edition; Ashlee Page’s film adaptation of it won numerous awards, including both the Dendy and AFI awards for best short feature.
RODNEY HALL has twice won both the Miles Franklin Award, for Just Relations and The Grisly Wife, and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, for The Second Bridegroom and The Day We Had Hitler Home. His most recent book, Silence, was published in 2011.
PATRICK HOLLAND lives between Brisbane, Saigon and Beijing. His stories have been published and broadcast in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Japan, Canada, the USA and Italy. His novels include The Darkest Little Room, a thriller set in Saigon, and The Mary Smokes Boys, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year. His most recent novel is Navigatio.
NAM LE is the author of The Boat, which won over a dozen major awards and was selected for over thirty ‘best books of the year’ lists internationally. He currently divides his time between Melbourne and overseas.
DAVID MALOUF is the author of poems, fiction, libretti and essays. In 1996, his novel Remembering Babylon was awarded the first International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His 1998 Boyer Lectures were published as A Spirit of Play: The Making of Australian Consciousness. His most recent novel is Ransom.
SHANE MALONEY is one of Australia’s most popular novelists and a winner of the Ned Kelly Prize for Crime Fiction.
ALEX MILLER has twice been awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award, for The Ancestor Game and Journey to the Stone Country. He has also won the Age Book of the Year Award, for Lovesong, and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, for Coal Creek. He has been an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and in 2012 he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature.