All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  ‘You stand there,’ I said, pointing to a spot just beyond the gate, ‘and stop them from escaping.’ I opened the gate to the top field. ‘Wave your hands about if they run for you. Shout at them. That sort of thing.’

  ‘What do I shout?’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  I rattled the shaker again and a few more lifted their heads up and stared. Some began bustling down towards us, others followed.

  ‘Here sheep sheep sheep,’ I called.

  As they got closer, I backed away, so that they would follow me into the other field. The first fifteen or so were in the bottom field, and then a Blueface with twins inside her gave the eye to Lloyd. He saw her coming and sent his legs wide apart and waved his arms about. The sheep kept on going, and Lloyd yelled, ‘Fuck you!’ at the sheep, which peeled off away from him and back down the hill. Dog whipped around on the end of his rope like a pike eel.

  I closed the gate and gave them what was in the shaker.

  Lloyd untied Dog, who peed angrily against the gate post then patrolled up and down, his hair raised. Lloyd leant heavily on the fence.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked and he straightened up. I tried not to smile.

  ‘It was all I could think to shout.’

  I shrugged. ‘Worked.’

  Lloyd wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His eyes brightened.

  ‘Quite invigorating really,’ he said.

  I walked up to the hawthorn stile and looked back down on the house. Over on Don’s side of the hill I could see the yellow glow of his electric lights – every window lit, even in daylight, like he was trying to burn off the fog with them. On the border of his property, I saw the vixen again, dragging with her a large bird, a pheasant maybe, I was too far away to tell. She pranced, holding her kill high, weaving and bouncing. I glanced at Dog but he had his nose to the ground smelling out the things that had been there in the dark. If her cubs had made it, they’d be getting bigger soon, hungrier, and the lambs were coming. I watched her disappear into the woods, and heard on the air the far-away tinkle of Don’s digital radio, which played tinny pop music. I patted the pocket with the fox bait in.

  ‘Hey.’ A girl was sitting on the stile, smoking. ‘You’re the woman in Samson’s old house.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I said, suddenly aware that I may have been talking out loud to myself.

  The girl blew out a waterfall of smoke which played over her face. It must’ve stung her eyes but she showed no sign of that.

  ‘I’m Marcie. I went to the same school as him. I know you from the shop.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked different out of her thick green tracksuit. She wore a full face of make-up and her hair was dirty blonde, straight and still.

  Marcie narrowed her eyes at me. ‘This is public property, you can’t do anything about me being here.’ She squinted at me.

  ‘No. Would be good if you took your rubbish with you though.’ She didn’t react, apart from to take an open can of drink from the pocket of her overcoat. She drank it looking me in the eye, like she was waiting for me to be shocked.

  ‘What are you doing anyway?’ she asked, putting her can carefully back in her pocket.

  ‘I’m laying fox bait,’ I said, to have something definite and grown-up to offer her.

  ‘Isn’t that against the law?’

  ‘That’s fox hunting.’

  ‘Same difference.’

  ‘Not how most people see it.’

  She lifted herself off the stile and came and stood next to me. Dog presented his nose to her and she touched it.

  ‘Your dog’s pretty wild-looking.’

  ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  I toyed with making one up to avoid the questions, but couldn’t think of a name that would be convincing.

  ‘Dog.’

  Marcie shrugged off this information.

  ‘So what’ve you got against the foxes?’

  ‘It’s lambing season. You’d know that, being from around here?’

  She hissed breath through her teeth. ‘I keep out of it. As soon as I can I’m away from here anyway.’ She drew her hair back from her head into a high ponytail and held it there. ‘I want to be in London. Or Sheffield.’

  ‘Cities can be crappy places too,’ I said.

  She shrugged and let her hair drop back down to her shoulders. ‘At least they’re not boring.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘So they eat the lambs?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The foxes?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve seen you before.’

  Marcie’s face showed no surprise or intrigue. ‘I told you – I know you from the shop. Anyway, everyone here has seen everyone before.’

  ‘Out on the Military Road. I’ve seen you there before. Your friend showed me his arse.’

  ‘He shows everyone.’

  ‘It wasn’t very nice.’

  ‘Take it up with him,’ she said and got her cigarettes out of her pocket. She shook two out. ‘Smoke?’

  I looked at her for a moment. ‘Thanks.’ I don’t know if she expected me to take one, but again, there was no reaction. She held a lighter out to me and I made a shield with my hands to light up then handed it back.

  ‘You’re younger than everyone else,’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone else who has a farm. And you’re a woman.’

  ‘I am,’ I said, and blew out smoke. For the first time she raised her eyebrows, but she closed her eyes as she did it which perhaps meant it was not surprise but something else. Disgust maybe.

  ‘Is that man you’re hanging out with your boyfriend?’

  I frowned. ‘Have you been watching me?’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘He’s just passing through. I don’t really know him.’

  ‘You just let people you don’t know stay in your house? Well, I suppose it keeps it fresh. You know he’s been doing some pretty funny shit around the place.’

  ‘What kind of funny shit?’

  She shrugged again. ‘Sings to your dog quite a lot.’

  We both looked at Dog, who gave a slow wag of his tail then looked away up the hill like he was thinking of something else.

  ‘He’s a strange man,’ I said.

  Marcie smiled, and I smiled back. I would have liked her if I was her age.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  She behaved as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘So this vendetta against the foxes – how come there are so many about if you lay all this poison for them?’

  ‘I don’t usually.’

  ‘So why now?’

  ‘Something’s been killing my sheep.’

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘It has. In fact, I thought it might have something to do with your lot.’

  Marcie’s eyes widened but again she didn’t really address what I said. ‘I have this cousin, Wesley, on my mum’s side – he’s on the mainland but up north, way up north – and he’s just got in trouble for messing with horses.’

  ‘What kind of messing?’

  ‘What – do I have to spell it out for you? He fucked a horse,’ she said and there was silence. Then Marcie giggled and I smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry about spelling it out for me in the future,’ I said.

  She took her can out of her pocket and took a swig. It was super-strength lager. After a pause she offered it to me. I shook my head.

  ‘Aren’t you young to drink?’

  She cocked her head to the side. ‘Something?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You didn’t say foxes are killing your sheep – you said something is killing your sheep. So you don’t really think it’s foxes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I used the cigarette to pause the conversation. I blew smoke out and it disappeared against the white sky. ‘Do you ever see . . . anything?’ I said. ‘I mean it feels like you’re out there all the time.’

/>   Marcie smiled. ‘We see everything,’ she said, like she thought she was a teen witch. ‘I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine.’ She looked into the distance and her smile softened a little. ‘But mostly, it’s just people having sex with each other.’

  ‘Anything that might be killing my sheep? Anybody?’

  ‘Oh!’ she said loudly. ‘There was a big fuck-off bear or some shit that Samson was telling us about.’

  ‘A bear?’

  ‘Not a bear – a big cat or a big dog or something. A beast. Samson’s full of shit though. He’s a bit . . . retarded, if that’s allowed. Mentally challenged? I don’t know. It’s not as bad as when my dad calls them coloureds.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he doesn’t want any coloured people moving into the lane, not because he’s racist but because it’ll mean the house is worth less.’

  ‘What did Samson say, about the beast?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know – it might have just had big feet or teeth or something. I think he’s telling stories. He likes telling stories. Sometimes he camps in the woods, and he reckons something was licking his tent in the night, that he shone his torch on it and it was this cat-eyed thing. I told him, it’s just the weed.’ She glanced at me when she said ‘weed’.

  We watched rain start across the valley. Marcie dropped her cigarette on the ground and pressed it into the mud with her heel.

  16

  We drive through an old flaky wooden gate and up to a homestead. I turn to look in all directions, but there is nothing to see – some black hills long and far in the distance, a backdrop for the desert. I can see flies in the air, and my window-side arm is sunburnt.

  ‘Well, here we are then!’ Otto says brightly, and I can tell he’s excited to show me the place. An old dog, far older than the photograph he showed me from his wallet, lumbers up to us.

  ‘This must be Kelly?’ I say in a voice I reckon a dog would like. The dog looks at me blankly through clouded eyes. She’s got a grey muzzle and patches of dry skin show through on her flank. Poor old thing, I think.

  ‘Kelly, meet Jake,’ says Otto, and I squat down to make friends, but she keeps her distance. Just gives me that look like I’m not there, and turns and heads back behind the house, her ears flat to her head against the flies. ‘She gets cranky when I leave without her,’ he explains.

  I get a small tour. ‘Like I said, we’re pretty much self-sufficient here,’ says Otto, and I wonder if there’s a greener patch around the back for vegetables. There is a hairy-looking paddock next to the house, but it’s dry and wild. ‘We slaughter our own sheep, and so really it’s just basics we shop for, twice a month or so. Bread, eggs and beer. I’ve tried a few chickens, but they don’t last long – Kelly doesn’t take to them too well.’ I wonder if ‘we’ means there’s someone else around the place or if he just means his dog. There is no green space around the back, there’s just the dunny and then beyond that, the rest of everything. The watering hole has dried up because of the drought, he tells me, and it doesn’t seem right to say anything more on the subject. The house is made of splintery weatherboard. It’s small, the kind you see carted up and down highways on the back of road trains.

  Otto shows me into a bedroom. It’s an odd room, there’s a Winnie the Pooh poster on the wall and the narrow single bed’s doona has a faded pony on it. The room is painted pale blancmange and there’s a smallish window with no glass but with mosquito netting nailed over it. It smells of air freshener.

  ‘Did it up meself,’ Otto says with pride.

  I start to get twitchy once the sun goes down. Otto makes bacon sandwiches for tea, which smell and taste of other meats. I don’t know what the plan is, what he’s expecting from me. ‘You like Shortland Street?’ he says as he pats the sofa next to him. I sit down and he puts a hand around the back of my neck so that I can smell the undercarriage of his arm.

  ‘Never seen it,’ I say, and he looks at me like I’m telling him I’ve never seen the sea. The theme tune comes on, and Otto looks at me with meaning as he sings it.

  Is it you or is it me?

  Lately I’ve been lost it seems.

  I think a change is what I need.

  If I’m looking for a chance I’ve a dream.

  Shortland Street . . .

  His eyes mist over and he holds the last note long enough that the television has gotten well into the second verse before he’s finished. He shakes his head. ‘That’s just beautiful,’ he says, ‘that song. Just beautiful.’ And for the next half-hour we watch comings and goings at a hospital. Kelly is sitting outside looking through the fly-screen at me.

  Once the programme is over, Otto stretches and says, ‘Right-e-o, time for bed,’ and I think, Here we go, this’ll make things clearer. He leads me into the pink room and sits on the edge of the bed chatting about what we’ll do tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll take you into town so you can get acquainted with the general store, then we’ll go and show you the sheep. Kelly needs some tick drops, so remind me about those.’ I don’t know what the protocol is, so I change into the T-shirt I sleep in while he’s talking. I don’t turn my back to him when I take my top off but he just carries on, and so I sit next to him on the bed and he tells me about his sheep. ‘The ex-wife’s show sheep – merinos, she insisted on, even though I told her, too dry out here, they take looking after. She went on and on, and then once I got them for her she lost interest. Expensive buggers they are too. And then, well, she went, and so I just use them for meat. I told her, right off the bat, those sorta sheep are no good out here where there’s no grass – need a desert sheep, something tough and wiry. She wouldn’t listen though, just like with her poofy little dog she brought along. Me and Kelly were clear to her about that dog, we warned her. No good with your peking-fuckin-eses, a farm. Carpet snake I reckon, took it under the house, probably swallowed the nut whole.’

  He laughs and his stomach shakes. I smile at him, hoping it’s a joke, and slide under the sheets, which are crinkly and new. Otto stalls in his chat and looks at me. He sighs and wipes his large old hand over my cheek. ‘Jeeze,’ he says, ‘I always wanted a daughter.’ He smiles and his eyes are filling, and he raises a finger to his eyelashes before pulling himself together. ‘Wait there a second,’ he says, and disappears out of the room. When he comes back he is carrying a plush brown bear holding a velvet heart, and a disposable camera. ‘For you,’ he says, with that same soppy look about him. I take the bear and I smile.

  ‘Thanks, he’s really nice.’ I say and sit the bear on my lap. Otto walks back a few feet and aims the camera at me. I smile, hug the bear. He uses up all the film in his camera just on me and that bear.

  ‘Sweet dreams then, pet,’ he says and I get a kiss on the forehead. I smile back at him and he sighs again from the doorway, looking back at me with those wet eyes before he turns out the light and closes the door. The window throws a chequered light on the Winnie the Pooh poster.

  In the morning, because the land is so flat, I can see that the sheep, far off in the distance, are penned.

  ‘You can have the use of the push-bike till you learn to drive – there’s a spare truck in the shed I’ve been fixing up and that’ll be yours once you know how.’ Otto pinches my arm like he’s a fun uncle. I smile at the idea of it – owning a truck. I could pick Karen up and bring her for a visit, once the waterhole fills again.

  We drive off to meet the sheep. As we get closer I can see how ill they look – patches of wool missing, ribs poking out. There’s a smell of shit and you can see the maggots eating their hindquarters. Man up, I tell myself, he’s an old bloke, he’s doing the best he can.

  The flies are fierce, they try and get at the wet in our eyes, and I breathe through my teeth in case I suck one in.

  Otto shows me out in the pen how to catch one and keep her down, and I can see he’s pleased when I manage to grab hold of one and flip her onto her back without too much of a problem. I can feel her heartbeat throug
h me, and she smells bad. Otto stands with his hands on his hips.

  ‘Knew I’d chosen a goodun, by the size of you,’ he says and slaps me on the thigh.

  Otto keeps the sheep penned next to the woolshed which, he shows me, is also at times a slaughterhouse. ‘Can’t let them just roam off when it’s me on my own out here,’ he says. ‘Don’t like to get strangers in here to shear – that’s when things started to go bad with Carole.’ There’s an uncomfortable pause, and I look at the old blood that has turned dry and black on the floor under the meat hook. The place smells of stale vomit and bleach. ‘An’ this way they don’t know if they’re getting a hair cut or if they’re getting their throats cut, so really it’s calming?’ I try to look like I agree with him.

  In the kitchen I make a pretty terrible mess, the air thick with smoke from the fat off the chops. Once it’s done, Otto shovels in what I’ve made him, says he loves it, even though I could only work out how to scramble the eggs, and they are crumbly and the pot I cook them in needs to soak for three days before the burn comes off it. The sausages are pink in the middle, and the chops are fatty, surprising when you look at the type of sheep they came from. I pick at my food but Otto eats all of his.

  That night, he comes for me while I’m in the shower, and I panic. I always managed to keep on my T-shirt before. He gets in with me, his hairless belly grazing me and his cock hangs in that in-between state like the end of it is attached to a thread. I try and keep him occupied with my boobs; I wiggle them about, but he’s less interested than I’d have hoped – I have never been the kind of girl who is about the boobs. He wants to scrub my back, and do all the kind of things I suppose you’d want to do in the event of caring about someone. I think I would rather a sharp jab in the back of the throat, because as he puts his arms around me and slides his hands over my ribs and along my spine, his breath catches and his fingers stop on the ridges on my back. He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t stop him as he turns me around to look. He traces the scars with his fingertips, and he says, ‘My god, my god,’ as he does it. ‘Why didn’t I know about this?’ And I wonder if he’ll dump me back in Port Hedland and find another less ruined girl to cook his chops and share his showers.