All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  I thought to myself, Rats, there’s rats in the walls or mice, the smaller ones with the soft little brown bodies, that is all it is, or a bit of old timber releasing air, or cracking, the temperature outside has dropped in the night, it is making it crack and the mice are scurrying around, scratching about, or it is the Rayburn’s pipe, doing its thing – the wind has changed direction.

  An underwater stillness, no wind or rain, not even a small owl, just a thick blanket of silence. I shut my eyes, and felt the mattress creak as Dog loped up on it, and weaved himself between my feet. The room settled and I counted heartbeats. There was a quiet crackle then silence again.

  And then a sound like someone driving a car into a tree, a crack and a slam that echoed, and then like hands slapping fast on the wall, and I stood up on my bed and lowed like a bull, clutching a pillow in front of me, and holding the hammer up as if there was someone to hit with it. Dog snapped at the air around him like it was full of flies.

  In the quiet that followed, Dog started to howl. I lumped off the bed and hit the light switch. The door was now open, flush with the wall like someone had stood there, blocking the doorway, observing. The corridor beyond it was dark and longer than I remembered it.

  ‘Fuck! You!’ I shouted into the corridor, breathing deep between each word, and around the words I thought I could hear a whisper of someone speaking back to me. Dog stopped howling, let out a moan and ran into the darkness of the hallway. Nothing showed up at the end of the hall, just the window, and outside, the night. I took my jeans from the floor and pulled them on as I moved down the corridor to the stairway.

  The light switch at the top of the stairs was not where it should have been, so I ploughed into the dark and down to the kitchen where I found the light already on and Dog sitting under the table with drool coming out of him and puddling on the floor.

  We went out the door and got into the car, started the engine, and I drove with my hands shaking against the steering wheel. I was going to drive straight into town, straight to the police station and bang on the door, but as my heart slowed down, so did my driving, and I parked in the driveway of a field in sight of the lights of town, turned the engine off. Dog curled in the footwell of the passenger seat and shook, his eyes black and round. I rested my head on the steering wheel and breathed in and out until the still and the quiet became natural and Dog crawled from his footwell and let me rub his ears. ‘We’ll be okay,’ I said to him and he looked at me. ‘We’ve got options. We’re smart – right? Right?’

  We watched the light draw through the sky and a barn owl on her final patrol who broke up the dawn, a lone swimmer in an empty sea.

  Back home, the kitchen was just the same, the stove bleating out when the wind flew over its pipes. Standing at the door of my bedroom, my bed was normal. There was no bad smell, there was no bad nothing.

  I pulled the bed sheets straight and laid the blanket over the top. Just on the edge of the white coverlet was a black mark, like I’d trailed it in the ashes of a fire. I wiped at the smudge with the flat of my hand and it faded. The wall above the bedhead also had a smudge but this one was more of a print. I must have leant against it when I was standing and yelling, and left a handprint clear and black with the fingers spread so that the webs of skin between them must have pulled and ached. But the hand was smaller than my own; I rubbed it off with toilet paper and spit.

  4

  There is a moment that I see things change with Greg. Waking up with him in my bed becomes something that happens, and the small time we have before work is as important as the rest of it. We do not watch each other sleep like they do in the movies; if one of us wakes first, we wake the other with a rough shake, ‘Hey, wake up.’

  This is not the time for sleeping. We don’t lie in silence and stare at each other either – we talk like magpies, gabbling out the words like we’re in competition with each other. I do push-ups while he talks; he rests his feet on my shoulders, and I move them up and down for him. He tells me about his father, who is dead, but who could eat a whole watermelon with just a spoon and the top cut off like a boiled egg. ‘Heh, he was the fattest fucker. And proud of it – some doctor tried to tell him to lose weight, and he said, “What would I be then? I would just be Joe, I wouldn’t be Fat Joe any more, and who would care when I died?” Heh. Fat fucker.’

  And when it’s my turn, I do sit-ups, which are easier to talk around, and Greg plants his feet on mine to spot me. He never mentions it is strange, he never says, Careful you’ll get too manly. I tell him the in-between bits of my life, the bits that are available. Learning to shear, my friend Karen, and further back, the sharks, the bush.

  In the morning, Sid finds out weevils have made it into the flour.

  ‘I don’t particularly mind,’ he says. ‘I’m just saying in case anyone has an aversion to having the buggers in the bread.’ There is silence while the table takes this in, and it is broken by a shout from Alan by the side of the woolshed.

  Something has taken a bite out the side of one of the rams. He’s not dead, just looks like someone tore past him and took a chunk out. Flies swarm the wound. Connor shoots the ram, while we all stand around. The animal twitches.

  ‘Just nerves firing,’ Denis says to me, like I am a hysterical woman who needs comforting. But I’m thinking how quick it was and what a mercy. One second horribly wounded, feeling flies lay their eggs in your flesh and watching the currawong circle, and the next, in a flash, all is safe. I will learn to fire a gun, I think, they are the answer.

  Alan stands next to me. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ll have a drive around, see if we can find a feral dog or something.’ Connor and Clare move the ram’s body out of the pen, the rest of the sheep look on. There is no way of telling what they think.

  In the truck I’m alone with Alan. This has not happened before, and he’s got something he wants to say. He keeps coughing into his fist and then looking over at me. There is nothing for miles, nothing but that desert heat-wobble, and now and then a rabbit, which Alan picks off and we scoop up as we drive past. It’s not silent exactly in the truck, but all we say are things like, ‘Over there,’ and ‘Bloody got him,’ and ‘A little bit bloody closer.’

  After an hour, when I’m thinking about how much time is wasting and how far ahead of me the rest of the team will be, Alan tips the bullets out of the rifle and sighs.

  ‘There’s nothing bloody else out here,’ he says and then he turns to me. ‘I don’t normally bloody interfere in anyone’s business,’ he says, and I grip the wheel. ‘But I’ve been meaning to say, I think it’s not a bad thing you and Greg.’ I wait for but . . . and it doesn’t come. ‘You’re both good bloody blokes, and the thing is that I’ve known Greg a while and he’s a good bloke.’ The truck is heating up and I wonder if I should start to drive home or if starting the engine now would be rude. ‘And you’re a good bloke, and I reckon together, two good blokes is a good thing.’ Alan is red in the face and I wonder why he is putting us through this. ‘Thing is, what I’m bloody getting at, is that you gotta ignore the bloody loonies in life, and listen there are one or two of them in the team. Not bad blokes all in all, but . . . lonely blokes maybe.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Listen, just don’t be bothered by Clare is what I’m bloody getting at. He’s a lunatic, a good bloke, but a lunatic, and he’s messed himself up with the business with the kid . . .’ Alan shakes his head. ‘Arthur’s mum sent a letter – he’s trying to learn to write with the other hand – lot of good that’ll do him, kid can barely read. Anyhow.’

  ‘Has he said something?’

  ‘Look, it’s not even about that.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I keep my voice steady and my eyes on the heat-wobble in the distance.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ says Alan. ‘Look, I’m not interested in what my team have done before. Hell, I’ve bloody got a past, we’ve all got pasts – you want to find one of us who chooses to be out here without a past, I�
��d bloody pay to see that. Denis – he’s been doing this his whole bloody life – fifty years of this. You think there isn’t something he’s getting away from?’

  He looks at me and I can tell he wants me to know something, and for a second I think, What did you do, Alan?

  ‘What I’m saying is,’ he carries on, ‘Clare can be a whinging bitch. He’s a good bloke, but a whinging bitch. And I don’t take any notice of him or of the past. Let’s not forget Clare and Greg are best mates. He’s just acting like a prick because he’s jealous, but he can’t admit to that because, well – he’s a prick. It’s been hard on him being roustabout. But what I’m saying is maybe talk to Greg about it – get him to go out for a night with Clare, just the two of them. Might quieten him down a bit. Clare’ll be off for a week soon – that’ll help too.’

  ‘I’m not forcing Greg to hang out with me,’ I say. My face is hot and there’s an anger I wasn’t expecting.

  ‘I’m not saying that – I’m just saying if we’re all living together like we are – might be the . . . political thing to do.’ He sniffs loudly. This has gone further than he wanted it to.

  In the silence he holds the rabbits up by the ears, out the open window of the truck. Each of them is cleanly done behind the shoulder. He holds them high in the air, breathing through an open mouth and watching beads of thick blood drop from them onto the orange dirt.

  ‘Was thinking to take ’em back for Sid, thinking he might make a bloody casserole or something.’ A fly settles on the wound of one of the rabbits. He leans back and throws the dead rabbits in a high arc away from the truck. ‘He’d only make ’em taste of bloody arseholes anyway,’ he says, and we drive back to the station. I itch to get back to work.

  ‘Catch a shark?’ Greg asks and I smile at him. I don’t feel like speaking. Clare keeps his back to me.

  At smoko, Sid comes in, bright red and snarling. ‘Right, which one of you useless fucktards did it?’ he says, standing at the top of the table. I look down the line of men, trying to work out what has been done and who has done it. Clare is smirking behind his moustache.

  ‘What’s the bloody drama now?’ asks Alan, who has just come in. Sid drags his glare away from the table.

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ he says and when he moves to the back where the kitchen is set up, we all stand up and follow. Everyone crowds around the flour barrel, and when Sid takes the lid off, there’s a bum print there.

  ‘It’s not fucking funny!’ shouts Sid above everyone’s honking laughter. Greg doubles over like he’s in pain.

  ‘Well, we can rule one person out,’ says Alan, wiping his eyes. He points to the edge of the bum print, where you can make out another print. ‘Culprit’s got balls at least.’

  ‘Up to Boonderie next week,’ Alan announces at tea. ‘Hot as a bloody dog’s gut up there.’

  It’s as far north as I’ve been since leaving, but the people of Hedland won’t mix with the people of Boonderie. Still, my mouth goes dry and I scull a beer to dampen myself down.

  Sid makes bread out of the weevily bum flour, and it sits, turning to rock, in the centre of the table. No one will touch it, not even Stuart, not even with a fork.

  The light is out and Greg has his large thumbs in the dips of my pelvis, and the shed is hot and dry. I feel out of myself tonight, like my bones have become too heavy for my flesh. The heat gets itself in under the metal roof during the day and it stays there at night, making the spiders sleepy. I loop my fingers in Greg’s hair, to let him know I’m still paying attention and to try and remind myself to keep focused. A frog is creaking outside, and so maybe soon there’ll be rain hammering the roof. Sometimes when it rains, which is not often, it feels like the drumming will knock the spiders off and onto my bed.

  The frog stops, and there is a cool breeze that swims into the shed, like the kind of wind rain makes when it’s on its way down. Greg sighs, I remember where I am, and grasp harder at his hair. Something large and black darts in the doorway, skitters along the far wall and under the workbench, and I bounce up in bed, knocking Greg in the face with my groin and taking a clump of his hair with me. ‘The fuck?’ he says, holding his face with both hands.

  ‘There’s something in here,’ I whisper, though whispering is pointless against Greg’s noise.

  ‘What something?’ He examines his palm for blood from his nose and then feels for the spot I ripped his hair from. ‘Fuckin’ needed that,’ he says.

  ‘Under the workbench, something big.’ He looks up at me, his expression changes.

  ‘How big?’

  I’m feeling under the bed for the hammer. I can’t find it in the dark. Greg lifts himself off the bed and gives his head a small shake to clear it. He goes lightly over to the switch and turns it on. The strobing of the strip light does nothing but throw shadows.

  ‘Like a big dog.’

  The strobe settles, but there are still shadows and places to hide. The workbench is covered by a blue oilcloth which hangs down and hides the space under it. Greg picks up the metal pipe that leans against the wall. I’m glad that he kept his underwear on – I think, This would be so much worse if he was naked. I have made his nose bleed, but he ignores it, lets it flow down on to his lip, while he holds the pole with both hands like a cricket bat. He treads carefully and slowly towards the workbench, his eyes dart around finding new shadows. The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I try not to think of Kelly, or picture Otto outside holding a gun, watching. Holding his cut-throat. He will shoot Greg then he will do me slowly; Kelly will snap at the air by my face as she watches me die. He will cut off my hand and give it to her as a prize. Kelly is dead, I think, but the thought is not a comfort.

  I take the corner of the oilskin in my fingers, look to Greg who raises his arms, ready to strike if something runs out. He tells me with a nod of three to lift it, and I make my own countdown and jerk the cover up. Under the workbench, there is nothing. Greg lets his arms fall at his sides and the metal pipe clangs on the floor.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘if you weren’t in the mood you just had to say.’

  I look at him to see if this is a joke, but I can’t tell.

  Later, when he sleeps next to me, I get up out of bed and, careful not to wake him, I pull on a shirt and some shorts, and leave the shed. It is cooler out; I concentrate on breathing, sucking the cool air in, blowing the hot air out. The night sky is crisp with stars and I sit on the fence, listening to the cicadas and the night birds, the bandicoots and rats and all the live things that are out there, breathing with me. Not far away, the sheep are a dense and silent cluster. I feel the pull of being alone, of answering to no one, the safety of being unknown and far away. I sense a small movement behind me and turn just in time to see a shadow in the doorway of the shed. But it’s Greg, I know his shape, and he doesn’t want me to have seen him, and I don’t want him to have seen me, and when I get back to bed an hour later, he feigns sleep and I feign sleep too and soon we are both asleep. In the morning he looks closely at my face.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘you look like you’ve been plugged in both eyes.’

  5

  Inside, the police station smelled of tomato soup. A ponytailed policewoman stood behind the reception desk beaming.

  ‘Hello and how may I help you today, madam?’ she said, and then flushed a bit. I’d parked opposite the police station, thinking I’d sit for a while and figure out what I was going to say, but once I’d put the handbrake on, faces appeared at the window of the station. I tried not to look at them, tried to move in the same way and at the same speed I would have if no one was watching, but I’d forgotten how. My arms felt overly long, and as I crossed the empty road, my bum had more control over my legs than it normally did, and I sashayed stupidly up the steps to the entrance.

  I thought about the evidence I had. I would be calm and clear. I reran the day before in my head looking for things to report when I was asked, Had you noticed anything unusual?

  It had
been forecast to snow by the early evening, but my sheep had been unmoved by the news, standing against each other, eyeing me as I moved between them and sprayed their feet for rot. By the time I’d finished, say 3.30, Dog had rolled in goose shit and the wind had picked up, throwing pebbles of water at my face. I walked down the hill into the sea wind, due south. It was cold, a few dead leaves clung to the beech trees. Dog barrelled ahead of me at the perimeter of the woods, black even against the matt darkness of the trees, his ears pricked; he was swallowed by it, sending up a fire of blackbirds, who called loudly and then resettled in other trees, ruffling their feathers and shaking their heads. It would be an early hare, and Dog would have no chance at catching it, would appear back in ten minutes pink-tongued and tired, with a mudded undercarriage.

  I looked for strange prints and droppings or hair caught on fences, but all I found was a collection of buzzard pellets. I put my hands in my pockets and felt the grit of them, like compact animals themselves, their leg bones folded into their grey feathery bodies, and my fingers worried them to dust as I walked.

  I had stopped at the stile that led onto the bridleway, in the shelter of the hawthorn shrubs that separated the top field from the bottom, and which stretched all the way down to the coastal path. If you stood on the stile you could see the woods in the bottom field, and my cottage, its two storeys looking squat against the slope of the downs. I smoked a cigarette. Down in the bottom field, one of the ewes ate from where the grass was still darkened from the dead sheep. They didn’t hold a grudge, sheep.

  On the ground at the foot of the stile was a scattering of cigarette butts. Not the kind I smoked – these ones were filterless and the ends had been chewed until they were flat and mulched. I counted seven of them at my feet.