All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  ‘See what? I’m bleeding! Jesus Christ. I said we were too drunk to drive.’

  I stood at the edge of the woods looking hard into the silence, with the snow falling and my heart beating and the engine running. It had looked at me, looked right at me before it disappeared and it was large and dark and its eyes were yellow.

  14

  Shortland Street is on twice a day and we watch it either in the afternoon or the evening, but sometimes we watch both. There are always drinks that are left on tables, undrunk. Coffee or beer, ordered and then sometimes not even lifted to the lips before the actor storms off, or slopes away with a sad look. Through the whole thing, Otto explains bits to me.

  ‘See that one, he’s got a history of playing around – an’ that’s his ex-wife, but really he’s fallen in love with this one over here. But she’s after his money.’ And, ‘He’s referring to the big fire that happened. That’s where his father was killed.’ And I nod and watch the drinks being wasted. By the end I’m thirsty and sad but I think of my last cigarette, hidden where Otto will not look. I’ve put it on top of my wardrobe and I’ve been checking on it now and then to make sure nothing has started to eat it or steal the tobacco for a nest. Suddenly though it doesn’t matter if a clutch of spiders have made it their home, I’m going to smoke it.

  I sneak out to the dunny. I’d thought I’d smoke it in there, but the heat has made the drop toilet even worse than usual, and I think, Balls to it, I’ll just stand behind. Kelly is under the house panting in the dirt and she doesn’t give me a second glance for once, and I feel like a hero lighting the match behind the dunny shed, taking that first deep draw which makes me smile and sends my head into a spin. I don’t know how long it’s been. Months. Maybe half a year. The smoke gets rid of the flies around my face. A terrorist confidence gets into me and I sneak a look around the corner, and Kelly’s back is to me, heaving away under the shadow of the house, and the side wall which faces me has no window, so I come around the front of the shed and stand like anyone else would stand, smoking a cigarette, without anything being the matter, without it being the bad thing to do and without the slightest worry. Underneath the house the dirt is lumpy from Kelly’s digging. I’ve seen her before dragging some animal’s stinking carcass out of the paddock and starting to bury it there. If she catches me looking she stops, out-stares me and waits for me to leave so she can dig in secrecy. Like she’s stocking a larder.

  The sun is at that moment not an unbearable sting on my eyes, but a clean memory of being a kid, and of having got one over the olds. I close my eyes and think of the smell of eucalypt in the heat. It could be the hit from the cigarette, but I feel good. I open my eyes because there’s a noise, and I hold the smoke I’ve sucked in deep in my lungs. Otto has come out of the house and is unbuttoning himself at the veranda. He is facing me, there’s no way he can’t see me, but he doesn’t. Don’t move, The human eye senses movement before all else. I don’t move, I don’t blink or exhale, and Otto pisses a long stretch of yellow out over the veranda. It lands not too far from where Kelly is lying heaving in the dirt, and she whips her head around and looks at the mud puddle it makes on the ground, ears up. I can see that between her paws is a woman’s shoe, hot pink and to fit a very small foot. She has chewed the heel off it, the toe is sharp and pointed. Kelly is unimpressed by the urine and goes back to staring into the dark. Otto cracks off a fart and sighs. My hand trembles but I still it. He shakes his little cock off once, twice, then stuffs it back in his pants, singing a song of his own invention which goes Doodle dee doodle doo, as he turns around and walks back into the house, the fly-screen smashing behind him.

  Otto’s in a good mood today and so I get a driving lesson – my first in months. It all comes together much more easily. I’m smoother, and Otto shows me how to reverse, and it gives me no problems at all. I get up a bit of speed, and the air comes in sweet through the window. Otto chuckles less this time, and when we get back to the house his mood’s changed. Quiet, like there’s something on his mind.

  ‘You okay, baby?’ I ask him, hanging my arms around his shoulders. I want to be good so that he lets me drive more. His face darkens a little.

  ‘Don’t use that slut talk with me,’ he says and moves my arms away so they fall at my sides. He can get cranky when he’s hungry, so I fix him some sandwiches made with cold lamb and yellow mustard. He eats them but doesn’t look at me, instead he’s looking out at the truck while he licks his fingers.

  A couple of days pass and when I ask him about having another go, he laughs. ‘Why do you need to learn? You want to take Kelly on a date?’ He laughs so much at this that by the end I have trouble holding my smile. I don’t ask again for a couple of days until I’ve thought up a reason.

  ‘What if something happens to you? All the way out here, I’d need to get you to a doctor.’

  He is annoyed, and he waves me away. ‘I’m not going in any bloody hospital,’ he says and that’s that. I don’t ask what would happen to me, left here with Kelly, if I couldn’t drive myself out – left like those sheep after Carole had gone.

  I shear the sheep alone in the following days. By the third day I’m getting fast at it, the flies don’t bother me any more. I slow down because once they’re shorn there will be no excuse to be out here all day. I take breaks in between each sheep and dig antlions out of their holes with a stalk of grass, watching them attack it and then burrow away backwards. I find a horned lizard that thinks I can’t see it, watch it shift standing feet like a dancer, and the paper skin of a brown snake. There is always a large bird passing overhead, looking at the sheep or a rabbit, or the lizard or me.

  I make the final ten last me a whole day, and then I consider going back over the first ones, the ones I did when I was less sure of myself, but even those are not bad.

  Karen is in the supermarket. I cannot believe it. She’s comparing two packets of cereal bars, and her eyes go large and round when she sees me, but she smiles too. I go to hug her, but she holds up her hand between us to show me the sparkly ring on her finger and says in the same breath, ‘I’ve got meself married, what are you doing here?’ And I take a second to see what she means; a bloke with a hat pulled low over his face has looked up at us from the newspaper stand, and she nods to him.

  ‘Oh, I’m staying with my uncle,’ I say in a way I hope she will get what I mean. I point to Otto who is waiting outside the shop, watching and looking uncomfortable.

  ‘That’s great,’ says Karen and she’s still smiling, but just with her lips. She looks frightened, if I let myself think about it.

  ‘Where are you living?’ I ask her, and her eyes dart over my face and her smile fades.

  ‘Stay safe, darl,’ she whispers and hands me her box of cereal bars, and as she does it she strokes the back of my hand, hidden behind the box. She turns and walks down the aisle to the guy in the hat who is watching with a frown on his face. She takes him by the elbow and laughs high and flirty and mumbles something to him. He takes one more look at me and pulls his hat down and they leave the shop without buying anything; Karen glances back once and then is lost, and I am not sure any more if I actually saw her, if she was really there or if I imagined it. I pretend I am also interested in the cereal bars, I pick up one that has chocolate on one side and one that is made with real honey and hold them out next to each other in front of me. There is a yank on my heart, which takes me a little bit to still. I’d like to be able to have a Coke with Karen. I remember the air at the harbour and wonder if life was so bad back then after all.

  In the truck, Otto says, ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Just an old friend,’ I tell him, and when he looks sharp I say, ‘More of an acquaintance.’ He doesn’t talk all the way back to the station, which is fine by me, because I’m thinking of all those times with a six-pack down by the beach when me and Karen’d take a night off, even if we couldn’t afford it. I think about when she gave me five whole packets of Holidays because a regular had gone abro
ad and got her duty-free. I hope the bloke with the hat is good, I hope he is the one that got her the duty-free.

  That night, I hear Otto padding down the hall to my room, and I start to make myself ready. He likes to be able to see my scars these days, says it makes him feel protective over me which I guess can’t be a bad thing. So I yank up my T-shirt over my head, and I’ve hooked my thumbs into the sides of my shorts to pull them off too, but his footsteps stop outside my door, and he doesn’t come in. Instead there’s a scraping noise, and the doorknob rattles. Still he doesn’t come in and I’m looking at the door expecting him to walk through it, but then his footsteps go back down the hallway, and I realise he has locked the door to my room.

  Right, I think.

  A fortnight later, I am cleaning the oven when Otto comes into the kitchen holding his hat in his hands.

  ‘I’m going to the shops,’ he says, turning the hat around a full circle. I get up from the floor and pull the handkerchief from my head.

  ‘I’ll just wash my hands, then I’ll be ready,’ I say, but Otto lets go of the hat with one hand and holds his palm down to the floor.

  ‘No – you stay here,’ he says. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

  ‘It’s fine, I can leave the oven-cleaner to work – I need some more Dettol for the sheep – the flies—’

  Otto interrupts to say, ‘I’ll get that for you.’

  I go to the sink anyway to wash my hands, hang the rubber gloves over the faucet. ‘It’s fine, I can finish the oven later.’

  My back is turned to him and he says in a voice with an edge to it, ‘You’ll stay here.’ And the fly-screen snaps behind him.

  When I turn around, he is getting into the truck and leaving Kelly, which he never does. Kelly stands out the front watching him leave, and then she turns to look at me. I put my hand up to the fly-screen and she lowers her head, keeps her eyes trained on me. I’m not to leave the house.

  When he gets back that evening, I see Otto take out the keys, and I see him lock the ute up and hang the keys high up above the sink. He’s never locked the ute before. Not even in town. I take this small thing that I see to bed and think about it as I watch out the window. There has been a change – I can sense it in the smell of the place, which has started to get to me.

  And when he comes to my room, the sex is different, it’s too tender, makes me feel like I’m made of wax. He holds my trunk for a long time afterwards, his head resting on my belly. He kisses the space above my navel and sighs into me. I look at the bald spot at the top of his head that is covered in liver spots, and where the hair is greased by his own scalp. I get the feeling I’d rather be fucked hard and hated, I’d rather his socks in my mouth.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ he asks me. ‘Do you need the loo?’

  When I come back from the toilet he has smoothed over my bed sheets and put a glass of water on the table by the bed. He pulls back the sheets for me to get in, and when I comply, he tugs up the sheets around my shoulders, makes sure my man’s arms are covered, even though it’s a hot night. He tucks my feet in so that my toes point downwards. He kisses my forehead and tells me, ‘Goodnight, sleep tight.’ And in that moment I think I might cry, but I manage to wait until he has left the room and I hear the click of him locking me in again. Kelly scratches in the dirt underneath the house and tonight I cannot bear the sound. I get out of bed and hit the metal cage of my window to try and get her to go away. She barks loudly and I sit back down on my bed and wait to hear Otto’s footsteps padding down past my room and looking out on Kelly. I hear him say, ‘What’s it?’ and Kelly’s whine. ‘Good girl,’ he says quietly and he goes back to bed, pausing at my door, listening perhaps. I bounce a little on the bed, to make a noise like I might be turning over in my sleep. I hear Kelly growl, then bite at the fleas on her back. She heaves herself up and starts to dig again. I get quietly out of bed and I do push-ups in the dark. When my arms can’t take my weight any more, I do sit-ups and finally I crawl into bed and as I fall asleep a bird cries in the night, and it sounds just like a fire horn.

  15

  The next morning when the wind had stopped blowing, the mist came down thicker than I’d seen before. It lapped at my feet when I opened the door, like my house was an island. Dog strode off into it, and lost his legs and hovered smoothly. In the woolshed I dug out the unopened fox bait that had been there since I moved in. I put it in my pocket and thought about how probably I wouldn’t lay it, but it was good to feel like I could if I wanted to. I doubted it would do anything much to an animal the size of the one I’d seen on the way home. I tried to remember the shape of the thing, but all I had left in my memory was a set of yellow eyes.

  Outside Lloyd was shaking his finger at Dog. I started when he yelled, ‘No!’

  Dog sat at Lloyd’s feet, with his ears back and one foot raised. He looked pissed off.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Lloyd ignored me and said Dog’s name in a creepy way. He was saying it the way people talk to a baby, with too many ups and downs so it sounded like ‘Doo-erg’, and looking Dog right in the eye at the same time. The hackles on Dog’s shoulders were up more every time Lloyd said it, until Dog couldn’t take it any more and barked his warning bark, the high-pitched one that meant Get lost. As soon as he’d barked, Lloyd yelled ‘NO!’ in a deep voice and Dog cowered down, but his ears flicked about and he looked ready to murder.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked.

  When Lloyd looked up, Dog started to slink away up the field.

  ‘The book says you need to get him to know his name.’ He bent down and picked up the book lying on the ground which he’d taken with him from the pub. I hoped nobody had seen. He read out, in a booming voice, ‘“Your puppy should learn his name right away. Say his name often in a gentle voice.”’

  ‘Dog is four years old, and he knows he’s Dog already,’ I said. ‘You’re just pissing him off. He’ll bite you.’

  Lloyd carried on, ‘“It is imperative you teach your dog not to bark when working. Yell NO! at him harshly. If he does not listen, grab him by the nose and say NO! firmly.”’

  ‘He is going to bite you,’ I said again.

  Lloyd waved his hand at me. ‘We have an understanding now,’ he said and looked around for Dog, who was still trying to make his way inside without being noticed. ‘Here!’ Lloyd shouted sternly, pointing to his feet, and fair do, Dog shuffled back to him. ‘See!’ said Lloyd, resting his weight on a crook and looking very pleased with himself. ‘He knows who’s boss.’

  I went back inside, put on a pot of coffee and watched from the kitchen window. Lloyd started up with his gooey naming again and Dog barked, three times, so Lloyd shouted NO! NO! NO! one for each bark.

  Dog’s ears were flat to his head, and he put his bum up in the air, his chin down low. ‘Doo-erg,’ said Lloyd, pointing at him. Dog made six high-pitched yips, wiggled his arse and lunged at Lloyd’s face. After impact, Dog seemed free of rage, and trotted happily back towards the house, his work completed.

  Lloyd was bent over, cupping his nose in his hand. He checked for blood and there must have been some because then he threw his crook away from him and stamped his foot like a toddler. I let Dog in and gave him a biscuit.

  When Lloyd came in he had his scarf wrapped around his face and neither of us mentioned it. He glanced at Dog and Dog pretended not to see him.

  ‘I’m going to check on the sheep,’ I said, looking at the space near his head.

  ‘Great,’ he said, maybe a bit too brightly, ‘I’ll come too.’

  ‘I did warn you, and to be fair, so did Dog.’

  Lloyd poured himself some coffee. He took his scarf off to drink.

  ‘It was more of a head-butt than a bite,’ he said.

  I nodded, taking in his red nose. ‘He must like you.’

  Lloyd squinted at me like he was trying to work out if I was taking the piss, and I tried to look serious.

  On our way out the door, Do
g caught a mouse and tossed it about while it squeaked, keeping it alive for too long. Eventually though, he crunched it up. Lloyd avoided looking at him.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know you at all,’ I said to Dog, but he wasn’t bothered.

  We walked in silence up the steep way to the top field. Lloyd wheezed behind me. When I looked there was a soft frown on his face and he leant heavily on his stick. I stopped and pretended to check the fence. Lloyd panted.

  ‘What are those for?’ he asked, pointing at some dried moles that hung from the fence. Don’s work.

  ‘Telling the time,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ He bent down and squinted at the closest mole, as flat and dry as the sole of a shoe. ‘Is it like a sundial?’

  I looked at him to see if he was joking. He switched eyes.

  ‘They make the ground lumpy,’ I said, but he either misunderstood or didn’t understand anything at all because he continued to squint at the mole from different angles. We moved on up the hill towards the top field, and I picked an old sloe and handed it to Lloyd.

  ‘You can eat these,’ I said, and he bit into it.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, and spat it out.

  I laughed. ‘Have you not seen Crocodile Dundee?’

  Lloyd wiped his mouth over and over on the back of his hand.

  ‘Stop picking on me,’ he said.

  At the top of the hill, I shook a can of feed and watched the faces bob up and scrutinise me. A few of the greedier and more pregnant ewes started forward, their bellies swaying like hammocks.

  ‘I need to move some of them into the shed,’ I said. ‘Could use your help.’ Usually one or two went their own way when I tried mustering them down to the pens, and it took a while on my own to get them back.

  Lloyd looked steadily at the sheep approaching and said nothing. He looked like he was thinking about running away. I tied Dog to the fence so he wouldn’t interfere.