The Seventh Day

by Joy Dettman

  Energy begins its return with this food, and with energy comes a little hope. But I have become as old Pa’s pigs. There is more food, so I must eat it. I stuff my mouth with cheese and drink much water to help it on its way, courting strength now, strength enough to do what must be done.

  The infant has begun its wailing again. With disinterest I turn to it. I have read Granny’s doctoring book many times; I know what should be done, and soon after the birth. It was not done soon after birth and desire to do it is still lacking. I do not like this ugly thing of my belly. I had believed it to be an infant of great beauty, with a halo of gold and the face of . . . of Jonjan. I take up the knife, blunted by rust, and with it hack through the umbilical cord, separating the being from its trailing birth membranes before wrapping it in the blanket, left here from the time of Jonjan. Placed in the basket, I lift it with difficulty to the rock shelf. The cave is warm. It will do well enough until Lenny – or the grey men – come to carry it down, but first I must find my own way down.

  How much time has passed since I prepared that meal of pig which I had left on the hob to heat when I returned? That first night, certainly, and one – perhaps two – more. Or has a week of nights passed? In truth, I do not know, nor can I ever know how much time has passed, as I do not know why Lenny has not come for me.

  And I do not wish to think these things for they make the hairs on my neck quiver.

  Blood seeps from me continuously as I kneel at the cave entrance, watching the rain that is pleasing to the eye as it cuts its pathway freely to the earth where it dances on rock, making small rivulets that find their own tracks around the rocks.

  I do not feel strong enough to think about walking down to the house, but I prepare my clothing and attempt to bandage my bleeding with a strip ripped from a blanket. I fasten the legs of my overall, and fasten it across my belly. As before, it will not close at my breasts, which do not look like my breasts. My half-dress is fouly soiled, but it covers me. With my cape fastened, I place the remaining cheese in my pocket and wait for the rain to ease. And I wait long.

  In time it stills its beat. As I step out to the wet rocks the infant wakes and its wail is wretched, and weakening. One step, two more I make. What choice do I have? I can not remain here, hiding like a rabbit in a hole. I am not a rabbit to live on water and grass. I must get down to the house and my strength is little enough, and insufficient to waste on pity; the path over the rocks will be treacherous, my legs are weak and time is wasting.

  There is no sun to tell me if it is morning or afternoon, no cloud-covered glow in the black sky that I know is only waiting until I am far from shelter before it sends more rain down.

  The infant’s wail grows thin, then silences.

  Lord! What am I to do? Though no longer joined to this burden, I am not yet to be free of it. On trembling legs, and disbelieving my actions, I return to it, strip the blanket from its chilled limbs then tuck it at my breast, beneath my half-dress. If I carried it up here in my belly, then surely I can carry it down at my breast. The ties of my half-dress wrapped more firmly around my waist give the burden some support – and I gain another blanket, which I knot with the first over my shoulders. The weight is too much for my legs, but I leave the warmth and shelter and start down to where the world overflows with water.

  The rocks have grown slippery in this rain. Several times my feet slide from beneath me. It is odd. Each time I land hard on my buttocks, with one hand grasping at my burden, when certainly my hands would do more good to save me the pain of a fall.

  Brief energy is too soon gone. I rest too much, and the rain comes back and hard. We are nearing the edge of the upper woods when the black clouds cover the earth, bringing with them such a blinding rain that we are forced to seek shelter inside a hollow log. I have with me the last of the cheese. I eat it and drink pure water as it trickles from the mouth of my log cave. Wrapped there in the blanket, I sleep – warm or cold I do not know. I sleep where I sit.

  And wake to the strangest of all sensations. The infant has found its own food source. It clings to my nipple, and like a piglet, grunts as it draws nourishment from my breasts. They have filled, just as Granny’s doctoring book told me they would.

  I had not thought to put the infant to suck. In truth, I had not thought of much. Unmoving then, my mind in a strange new place, I wait until the infant falls from the nipple. Had some instinct led me to take it from the basket, carry it at my breast? Consciously, I had thought only to warm its chilled limbs and leave my own hands free; still, there is no time to ponder the wonders of nature, and this log is no place to do it. It is not so dry now and my cloak and blankets are dank and cold.

  Desperation moved my feet away from the cave yesterday. Exhaustion drags them today. It is as if I dream this walk. I count my steps but sleepwalk my way through tall timber. I count steps to the great gum tree, its arms spread to the rain, and I do not know how I have come this far, but know I can go no further. I rest against it until my mind can think to count again, to make the steps again.

  Fifty, and fifty more, and I reach the ancient cedar which stands alone. I did not see the grey men’s fence. I did not hear its singing, nor do I recall if the gate was open or closed. I do not know if I am awake or dreaming.

  Twenty steps, and I rest. And twenty more. And ten. I count to the fine leaf tree that offers some shelter from rain and I lean long against the rough bark of its trunk, breathing deeply, striving to force will enough to my legs. I dare not sit, for if I sit I will not rise again. Too long I lean there – until my legs become as the tree trunk and will not move me from this place.

  But they must move. I can see the house. They must move me. I take one step, and count it, then again, and again, slow counting. There is no conscious thought left in me, only the counting, the gaining of my objective. There is the foot fall, the foot lift, and the house which seems to move away as I approach.

  When I am at last near to it, I look at it with lack of recognition. Only ten or twenty steps away it is, yet I can not make them. My knees shake, bend. The infant tumbles. I grasp it and not the earth, and I sit hard in the mire, so close to the rear verandah. So close.

  ‘Lenny!’ I can not move more. ‘Lenny!’

  He does not hear me and I have no voice to call louder. I sit, my legs spread. I sit in the rain while my blood runs red. I can do no more. I can walk no more.

  So I will sleep and die here.

  But my burden is not yet ready to die. Again it has fastened itself to my breast.

  ‘Lenny.’

  I hear the whimpering of a dog. If I can hear that dog, Lenny can hear my cry. Why does he not come to carry me inside? I have laboured so hard, so long, to come this close to life, but I am close enough to death to make that house and life unattainable. My hand is as cold as my mother’s hand.

  But it is not still and stiff, and it will not grow still and stiff. I place it in the mire, try to rise. It trembles, my arm shakes and my shoulder shudders with the mere thought of rising.

  ‘Pa!’ I weep. ‘Pa. Help me.’

  He does not help me. And who helped him when he was a boy, and alone? He helped himself – as he had helped himself to a mating with Granny. But from his boyhood years until Granny returned he had survived alone. Had he not looked to his own needs, who would have? Who would have saved the hens and the stock, the tomato and the pumpkins? Who would have helped him had he fallen in the mud and cried?

  He did what he had to do to survive. Surviving is all there is.

  ‘I will survive. I will help myself, Pa.’

  And I am on one knee. I can not gain my feet, but I wait there, wait, my eyes staring at the verandah where the black cat now walks. She sees me, and approaches. I rise to a squat, one foot beneath me, and I reach out a muddy hand to stroke the damp black coat as she pushes against me before continuing on her way to shelter.

  I follow her, and like her, on four legs.

  Supporting myself then on the wall, I gai
n my feet, and somehow gain the kitchen. For minutes I stand head down at the tap, drinking from it, wasting water into the bucket that waits below. I wash my face, my arms, rinse mud from my trailing hair. The bucket overflows.

  Cold, cold kitchen. No stove making heat. A crust of cornbread catches my eye. I snatch it, gnaw at it, then sink down onto a chair where I dry my face and hair with a soiled paper towel.

  There is sugar-sweet in its grey bottle. I drip it onto the dry crust and stuff its sweetness into my mouth. I drip its sweetness onto my finger then lick it clean. I suck the sweetness from the bottle until weariness wraps me in its shroud, enfolds me, buries me with syrupy saliva still drooling from the corner of my mouth.

  I sleep well where I sit, my head in my arms, and I dream of the kangaroo, and its tail is as the coil spring. It makes a strange squeaking as it hops beside the rabbit, who has lost his white gloves. I am following the rabbit, but his hole is too small, and the grey men come with a bottle of cordial and on it is written Drink Me.

  ‘No. No,’ I say. ‘I will drink no more.’ My words wake me and the world is in darkness.

  What is this place where I am? Have I followed the rabbit to Wonderland or am I dead and wandering through some off-land between the world I know and the other? Where did the light go so soon? It was day when I had placed my head down, just for one moment. Now the light has left the world.

  Again I rest my head on the table. Just for a moment, and I dream of Granny. She is sitting in a tree, laughing at me.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  My eyes open, and darkness has given way to light. Certainly I am in another land for in it time can alter in an instant. Ah, but there is the familiar window. And there is the door. And there is the whimper at my breast. I had so many dreams, perhaps I dreamed the dark.

  I try to stand, my hands gripping the table. I look up at the ceiling, and my head spins. But up there, beyond that spinning ceiling, is my bed. Let time and the world take care of itself; I will take care of myself.

  (Excerpt from the New World Bible)

  And two score of searchers came to the Morgan settlement where they followed the plan of the strategists. One score placed their craft down in a circle and suited themselves with power-pack and gun. And they waited.

  One score of searchers swooped down from out of the blue of the sky while the sun burned hot on their wings and there was no wind. They came swiftly as silver hawks swooping upon their prey in the open field. And their prey was female.

  And they herded the field workers and the infants. And there was great pandemonium as those searchers who had left their craft came fast across the field, for their power-packs gave great mobility. Their weapons felled the males and stunned the females.

  And they bound them, and they took the infant females, all that they found, and left the males to rot in the fields.

  But the battle was long and the strapping and the loading of females laborious, and it continued long after the sun had left the sky. And in the night five searchers were felled, for the males of the settlement had great skill with their ancient weapons.

  In the first raid, the searchers’ harvest was fourteen females, both adult and infant. Those of breeding age were sent to the breeding stations to lay with the Chosen, while the infants were sent to the creche, where it was found they had no immunity to city disease. And they died.

  Of the nine breeders taken in the first raid on the Morgan settlement, only two survived the first year.

  They did not survive the second.

  And the Chosen were not pleased by this waste. And it caused much debate and report-making.

  THE SOUND OF SILENCE

  Old cocky red rooster, crowing. No other sound. Is it the same grey day or a new day? I wait on my pillow, wait to hear Pa’s morning cough, his spit onto the verandah. I wait for Lenny, wait for footsteps on the stairs and for my door to swing wide. The infant sleeps on my breast, its small mouth sucking while it dreams. It did not climb alone there. Did I place it there? Or did Lenny place it there while I slept?

  I believe he came to me in the night, or to my dreams. It is as if my head is full of the strangest dreams, and so hard yet to know dream from reality, but I am awake now.

  I do not much like to look at the infant’s face, which appears badly bruised and scratched from brow to jaw. Its mouth sucks well enough, and when it is done with its meal, I place it on the bed and walk away, for I have a great need to use the chem-shed and my own belly tells me it wishes to be fed. A rough blanket as my only garment, I walk downstairs, surprised by my ease of movement.

  There is too much blood coming from that place in me. Perhaps the birthing has done great damage and all my blood will leak away. But this is no time to fear the future; the present is more pressing, for when I return to my room, I find worse than blood again coming from the infant.

  Lord. I am too weary for this.

  We have the grey paper towels the city men bring, and I have brought the last of the pack up with me, but for my own needs. I take up one and rip it into four, using one section to absorb the infant’s waste. And it is wet already, and will not remain in position.

  Upstairs, downstairs. Downstairs, up. It is too much, but I need the small plasti-wraps. The corners cut from one enough to allow the tiny legs through, I ease it onto the squirming thing and hope it may hold the towel in place and also contain the moisture. I look then to my own needs. Downstairs I walk, where I eat a can of cornbeans, cold, and drink V-cola. And oh, Lord, that demanding wail! What a sound it is! It trembles, rising and falling, and so big for such a small thing. It will not be denied long.

  Upstairs my legs carry me, and gladly I lie on my pillow while it sucks. I am close to sleep when I notice the odour. Is it the infant’s wastes again? So many new smells have attached themselves to this being.

  But, but there is about the air another scent.

  The scent of . . . heavy.

  The heavy scent of . . .

  I think no more, except in dream.

  How I have slept, and how heavy. That wail infiltrates my dreams long before it drags me from them. I silence it, pleased that the greedy thing likes my milk. It soothes the soreness in my breasts, certainly, but it also takes the thinking from my mind. Perhaps I have the instinct of the black cat. When this burden kicked at the lining of my belly, I did not believe the reality of it. During the time it fought for its freedom on the hill, I cursed it. Now it takes nourishment from me and I hold it and listen to the rain and think only of the rain. Outside my window the sky is low and grey; I know not if it is morning or afternoon. Ah, but time is a gift, and life is a gift and I will not question it.

  When the greedy piglet is done with me, I wash myself well with much water then clothe myself in my golden overall. Such warmth it gives to me, such beautiful and instant warmth. These overalls, city things, are thin stuff, with Everlast written on the breast pocket. Many months have passed since I have worn this overall, and perhaps there remains upon it the lingering scent of the one who wore it last. She was a caged thing, the silent one who could fasten her overall at the breast. It fastens now. I think there is little left of me since the birthing and the walk down from the hill.

  Lenny is not about but I will not think of it. I will not think how odd it is that he has not heard the wailing and come to view what he believes is of his making. I will think only that the hour is late and he has gone with the dogs about his business.

  And Pa. I will think that he is sleeping.

  Yes. He is sleeping.

  But I listen at his closed door and I do not hear his snore. And there is an odour. Yes. Yes. Lenny slaughtered the yearling bullock and Pa has scraped its hide. Quickly then I turn away from the door and walk to the kitchen.

  So cold it is. Why is the stove not burning? Perhaps there is no wood and the rain has kept Lenny from the dead trees that supply it.

  There is no sense in that thought. Fire cooks food and Lenny likes to eat.

 
And what is the odour that hangs in pockets? I smell it as I walk from the kitchen. It is stronger in the passage.

  And this silence. It continues until it hurts my ears. I have never known such prolonged silence. Even the rain on the roof has become a gentle patter.

  My filthy overall and the half-dress I had worn to the cave, I pick up, study. There is only one thing to do with the defiled stuff. I am on my way to the dump-hole when I hear squealing from the sow’s sty, and it is a huge relief to hear that noise. So Lenny is down with the pigs. So he has decided to slaughter a pig today.

  I can not see him.

  I walk towards the sty, my eyes searching for Lenny, my boots skating across the mire. Only the old sow eyes me over the gate that should have held back eleven, the sow and her ten piglets, which had been separated from the males for their safety only days before I left. The piglets have not been safe. One lone small head, its mouth still open in a shocked squeal, gives mute evidence to the sow’s recent cannibalism.

  Quickly I step back from the sty wall, my eyes sweeping the yard.

  ‘Lenny!’ I call. My voice is loud. ‘Lenny.’

  The sow grunts her reply from the carnage of her pen.

  ‘Lenny!’ I try again. Lord. There is a wrongness about this place. Slowly then I approach the house, the soiled clothing still in my arms. I scan the land, the buildings, listening for the dogs. And from a distance I sight them, sleeping in the doorway of the old barn where they are always tied.

  All is well. All is well. This fear in me has been brought on by my struggle of the last days and by exhaustion.

  ‘Lenny!’

  Only the cluck-clucking of a hen answers my call. The dogs do not move. They are as rocks of sandstone and white clay.

  My heart pounding in throat and ears I run back to the house, flinging the soiled clothing down, flinging doors wide. Lenny’s room is empty. I run to the chem-tub, to the cellar, calling all the while. He is not there. He is not anywhere. And I know why. The grey men have taken him and Pa.