The Big Dry

by Tony Davis

  ‘Torgie.’ Beeper’s hand was clenched on the sleeve of George’s T-shirt. ‘Dad’ll be a hero, won’t he? He’ll make it rain.’

  ‘Quick, grab that big water jar. We don’t want to miss out.’

  ‘Torgie!’

  George sighed. ‘Of course he will. Our dad wouldn’t let us down. He wouldn’t let anyone down. But right now, we need food.’

  The boys burst into the front yard and through the gateway. ‘Stop!’ George yelled.

  The rabbitoh man stood outside with five or six twitching rabbits hanging from his right hand. His face had come out in big yellow and purple bruises.

  ‘Here’s two boys I know!’ His voice was shaky. ‘Is it liquid or dough?’

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Beeper.

  ‘The question means, little one,’ the rabbitoh man said as he squinted past them and studied their house, ‘are you paying with water or money?’

  ‘We’ve brought water,’ said Beeper. He held out the jar.

  ‘It’s just one of my sayings, sonny. I could hardly charge the boys who came to my aid, now could I?’ The rabbitoh man stuck his hand into a cloth bag slung over his shoulder. ‘Anyway, I’m the one who … has something for you.’

  The rabbitoh man pulled out the plastic water bottle George had given him in the picnic reserve.

  George took the empty bottle, pushed Beeper closer to the man, and said: ‘We want you to have the water in this jar. It’s a bit brown, but it’s the best we have.’

  ‘Generous of you. Not something I’d do.’ The rabbitoh man waved away the jar. ‘You’ll need that.’

  Beeper looked at the rabbitoh man’s bare and swollen feet. ‘You have to wear shoes,’ he bleated out. ‘A spider or snake might get you.’

  The man didn’t reply. Instead, he examined his rabbits. ‘Which one will it be?’ He ran his left hand along the collection like he was selecting a shirt from a wardrobe. He was carefully checking their eyes. ‘This is the healthiest! The best of my little hoppers, for my favourite little shoppers.’

  He held the trembling animal out to Beeper. It was just as scraggly as the others. It flailed around and Beeper took a step backwards.

  ‘You shouldn’t go white. It’s not going to bite.’

  ‘Why is it alive still?’ asked Beeper.

  ‘To keep it fresh, of course. I’ll just dash its brains out if you like.’

  ‘No,’ said George, without even pausing. He moved forward, and reached out for the rabbit. The thought of brains being dashed out was horrific.

  The man hooked the twine over George’s outstretched fingers, leaving the creature dangling by its back legs. George kept his arm straight, holding the rabbit as far away from himself as he could.

  ‘You know how to prepare it for the pot, don’t you?’ the rabbitoh man said.

  ‘Of course,’ said George.

  ‘So everything’s good?’ said the rabbitoh man.

  Still holding the rabbit at arm’s length, George pushed his brother towards the house. ‘Yes,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Thanks for our water bottle — and for the rabbit. We found our dad.’

  ‘Is that a fact? Well, God bless.’

  George kicked the door shut and slid the metal bar into place with one hand. He had something for them to eat, at last. He just had to hope it wouldn’t make them sick.

  ‘What do we do with it, Torgie?’

  George said nothing. He had absolutely no idea.

  TWENTY

  The ‘little hopper’ wriggled and squirmed and tried to jump off the end of George’s outstretched arm. George felt weak and jittery. A couple of times he nearly let go. The boys struggled down the hallway and paused in the day room to take a closer look. George held the rabbit above the dining table. It was grey and bony and bug-eyed.

  ‘Hello, Mr Bunny,’ said Beeper, leaning across the table to peer at it more closely.

  ‘Don’t call it that!’ George said. ‘It makes everything harder if you give it a cute name.’

  ‘Emily said …’

  ‘I don’t care what that girl said. We’ll just put it in here for a while, so that I can get things ready to, er …’ George opened the bathroom door a crack, pushed the rabbit through and unhooked the twine from his fingers. He slammed the door before it could escape.

  Back in the kitchen, he brushed the worst of the dust off the servery, pulled the frying pan from the cupboard and banged it against his leg to clean it. He pulled their biggest knife from a drawer. It was long and heavy with a serrated edge. Just holding it made George nervous, even though he knew it was designed for cutting bread and was not very sharp.

  Beeper stayed next to the bathroom door, listening carefully. ‘Mr Bunny’s dragging his back legs around the bathroom,’ he said, ‘and banging against the door.’

  George fetched the stone he had been throwing at the rabbits. He placed it next to the knife on the kitchen servery.

  ‘When can we eat?’ asked Beeper.

  ‘Soon,’ said George.

  ‘Now?’ Beeper asked a few moments later.

  ‘No, I’m still getting things ready.’ George wiped the servery again. He inspected the bottom of the frying pan, looked at the switches on the little plug-in stove sitting on top of the old oven, picked up his stone to check its weight. He wished that the hammer wasn’t under all the rubble in the bedroom.

  ‘Hurry up, Torgie!’ Beeper said. ‘I’m starving.’

  George inched open the bathroom door. The rabbit was crouched under the sink with its ears flat against its back. It stared at George and shivered.

  ‘It’s you or us …’ George said, uneasily. He crept towards the rabbit and grabbed the loose fur behind its head. The rabbit kicked out its tied back legs.

  George held the animal still. He grimaced as he lifted the stone with his other hand.

  He realised Beeper was gawking over his shoulder. ‘Outside! I can’t do anything with you watching.’

  Beeper backed out slowly and George kicked the door shut behind him.

  George wished he could just let the poor thing go. But if he did that, how would he feed his brother?

  ‘It’s the same,’ he muttered to himself, ‘as eating meat from a tin. It’s just that someone else has done the yucky parts for you before you eat it from a tin.’

  Beeper yelled through the closed door. ‘Have you killed it?’

  George bit his bottom lip and tightened his grip on the rabbit’s neck. Its back legs kicked furiously. George lifted the stone, counted down and aimed for the crown of the skull. The rabbit whipped its head out of the way and George smashed it on the nose.

  It thrashed with pain. Blood mixed with the dirt on its fur. George had been too slow, too soft. His heart hammered and his stomach lurched.

  ‘What’s happening, Torgie. Is it dead?’

  George gripped the fur, and tried to pull himself together. ‘One good strike,’ he said aloud. ‘I can do it.’

  He lifted the stone again. ‘Three, two, one …’ This time he brought it down on target. There was a dull thud. The rabbit’s back legs jolted out, then its body went slack.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Bunny.’ George ran his sleeve across his eyes and opened the bathroom door. He had done it.

  Beeper barrelled in. ‘It’s dead now! Yuck, look at its head. Can we eat it straight away?’

  George pushed Beeper aside. ‘Of course not. I have to cook it.’

  George carried the limp, warm corpse to the kitchen and laid it on the servery. A few noisy flies arrived almost immediately. George picked up the knife and cut the twine from its back legs. Beeper reached across and prodded the rabbit’s soft fur with a grubby finger.

  ‘If you need something to do, Beeps, swing this cloth at the flies.’

  From an old book he’d read years ago, George knew you had to start at the stomach. He lifted the fur on the rabbit’s belly and timidly sawed at it with the bread knife. The skin didn’t break.

  Beeper occasionally snappe
d at a fly with one end of the straining cloth. George sawed harder and produced a small opening. He forced his thumbs inside, between the skin and the stretchy tissue that held it to whatever was underneath. He pulled in each direction as hard as he could and the skin tore in the middle and started to peel off.

  ‘Like taking off his shirt,’ said Beeper, pushing his way between George and the servery and blocking George’s view of the rabbit.

  ‘More swatting, Beeps. Less gawking.’

  George peeled the skin as far as the front legs and the head, and as far as the rear legs and tail. But he couldn’t slide it any further.

  ‘Pull harder, Torgie.’

  George clamped his teeth together and wrenched. Nothing happened. The skin wouldn’t move. He could think of only one way around it: to cut off all four of the rabbit’s legs and its head. George was glad that the skin was covering the rabbit’s big eyes.

  George angled the blade of the knife across one of the front legs, next to where the skin was pulled back. He put one hand on the end of the blade and the other on the handle. He stood on his toes and pushed hard on the knife. The knife wouldn’t cut through the bone; the leg wouldn’t snap off.

  ‘Why don’t you swing the knife and smash it down?’ asked Beeper. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You have your job to do. Keep swatting.’

  George took a step back, raised the knife high and forced it down hard. His aim was bad. He struck the fur that was bunched up around the rabbit’s head. His aim was better the second time, but he still didn’t chop through the leg bone.

  ‘Nearly,’ said Beeper.

  This time, George lifted the knife higher above his head, clutching the handle with two tight fists. He focused on the exact spot he needed to hit, then stepped forward and swept the blade down in a long, fast arc.

  The knife bit into the bone. The leg snapped off, though not cleanly, and not exactly where he wanted. The other legs and the tail were no easier, but at least the technique worked. He’d used the weight of the knife and put all his strength behind it.

  ‘I can do this, Dad, I can,’ George whispered to himself as he hacked at the head. It was a harder and messier job than removing the legs, but it finally came off. Beeper put the head next to the feet and tail on a pile at the end of the bench.

  Mr Bunny was now just a tiny pink carcass. He was like a baby bird that had been plucked.

  ‘We can cook it now, Torgie.’

  ‘We have to pull out the guts first.’ With more confidence, George sawed into the rabbit’s stomach muscles and pulled them open. The crinkly intestines spilled out onto the servery.

  ‘Yucky yuck,’ said Beeper, waving the straining cloth at the flies. ‘They’re like worms. Stink, too.’

  ‘Shut up, Beeper. Or I’ll be sick.’

  The guts were mixed with slippery dark organs that felt as bad as they looked. George felt a fiery pulse of sick rush up his throat. He swallowed hard to keep it down. He stared at the ceiling. ‘If I can finish this,’ he said, ‘is that enough, Dad? Will you come back home?’

  George ran his fingers around the inside of the rabbit’s ribcage and pulled out what he guessed were the heart and lungs.

  The carcass was clean of everything but meat and bone. The pile of things they weren’t going to eat was much bigger than the pile of things they were. There seemed hardly enough meat to feed one person.

  George swung the knife down, dividing the body in half, and then into four rough pieces. He turned up a dial on the stove and waited. One of the two hotplates glowed orange. Thank goodness it was working. When the frying pan was hot, George threw in the sections of meat. They stuck to the flaky black surface of the pan. When he tried to flip them over, a layer of meat was left stuck to the metal.

  The smell of frying meat filled the room and George’s stomach growled. It reminded him of the days when his mother could still buy fresh lamb and chicken, and would spend hours cooking a Sunday roast.

  ‘Let’s eat it now,’ said Beeper, bouncing around on the balls of his feet.

  ‘We have to wait for it to cook properly, or it will make us ill.’ The rabbit flesh was dark to start with, and George wasn’t sure what colour it was meant to be when it was cooked. He scraped the pieces off the pan and flipped them twice more. Then he realised the frying pan was no longer hissing. The power was out. The meat would have to do as it was.

  George scraped the frying pan to remove every fragment of rabbit, no matter how small or burnt, and shared everything onto two plates. By the time he took his first small bite, Beeper was greedily sucking on a shoulder bone. George cut into one of the tiny quarters. The flesh was tough and oily, and too raw in the middle. But it wasn’t his fault the stove had stopped working.

  ‘What about saying thank you, Beeper?’

  ‘Got my mouth full.’

  ‘That’s never stopped you talking before. Taste all right?’

  ‘Is there any more?’

  George passed him one of the pieces from his own plate. ‘I turned a rabbit into lunch, Beeps, didn’t I?’

  ‘I knew you could, Torgie.’

  ‘I didn’t know I could.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘I did.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  George picked up the frying pan and the bucket of guts, bones and fur. He carried them into the back yard, as far from the house as possible. He scraped a hollow next to the fence, emptied the bucket into it, and kicked dirt over the remains. He scooped up a handful of dust too, and rubbed it around the frying pan to absorb the oily film on the surface.

  Beeper sat on the edge of the patio, watching. George eventually sat down next to him and tried to rub off the grime that covered his hands and pick the black paste from under his fingernails.

  George was still hungry but he felt satisfied. He had surprised himself with what he could do. He just hoped that he didn’t have to do it again. That he’d proven himself now. That it was time for Dad to come home.

  ‘What was that sound, Torgie?’

  ‘What sound?’ George listened. There was a shuffling at the front of the house, followed by a metallic rattle and the sound of the security bar falling from its brackets. Maybe … just maybe …

  Beeper looked first, through the open back door and along the hall. ‘It’s Emily!’ he yelled.

  ‘No,’ said George. Angry blood rushed to his temples, but it almost immediately switched to fear. Had she brought Welfare with her?

  He stood straight up and tried to make out what was happening in the gloom inside the house. He could see the front door was already shut. There was no-one in the hallway but her.

  Beeper ran into the house and met her as she whisked into the day room. She was carrying a bulging canvas bag, which she dumped on the table. George snatched up the frying pan and followed a few steps behind his brother.

  She was wearing a new brown dress that made her seem thinner, taller and older.

  ‘You’ve been cooking something,’ she said, crinkling her nose. ‘Well, have you been missing me?’

  George slammed the frying pan down on the table in reply. Beeper stared at his own hands.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a tin of meat and vegetables. Then, slowly and deliberately, she followed with a clear plastic tub of pineapple pieces. She pulled another tin from her bag, then another, then two boxes of salty biscuits and more tins and more plastic tubs of fruit.

  George gasped as if she had performed some sort of magic trick.

  She pushed a small box of water biscuits and a tin of baked beans across the table towards him. ‘You can have this and this.’

  ‘We’ve just eaten,’ George said. He slid the food back in her direction. It hurt to do it, but he had to.

  ‘We swapped some water for a rabbit,’ said Beeper. ‘George killed it. But I helped.’

  ‘Ssh, Beeper.’

  ‘Not much meat to be found on a rabbit,’ she said, pushing the baked beans and biscuits ba
ck towards George. ‘You don’t have to be proud. I’m just replacing some stuff I borrowed earlier.’

  George took the food in hand. ‘Then you should be giving us a lot more than this.’

  He grabbed two spoons and a jar of water from the kitchen, brought them back to the table and ripped at the ring-pull lid on the beans. He and Beeper ate straight from the tin. Then they wolfed down the biscuits.

  ‘It wasn’t a big rabbit, was it? Lucky I came back, kiddos.’

  Beeper searched the tabletop for biscuit crumbs, stabbing them with a filthy fingertip and dropping them onto his tongue. ‘Where did all this food come from?’ he asked.

  The girl peeled the lid from a plastic tub. It made a ripping sound and the sweetness of pineapple filled George’s nostrils. ‘Same place as all the rest. From the wet countries.’

  She picked out segments of pineapple with her fingers and dropped them into her mouth. George could only stare. Would he ever stop feeling hungry?

  ‘What most people don’t know, though,’ she added, ‘is why they keep sending it to us.’

  George huffed and pretended he wasn’t interested. But he pricked up his ears.

  ‘They call it Foreign Aid,’ she went on. ‘But I reckon wet countries send it here to stop too many of us going there.’

  ‘The wet countries!’ said Beeper. ‘That’s where they have grass and trees. Where the Drought Barons live.’

  ‘The who, littl’un?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said George. ‘You knew what Beeper meant. He meant where did you get the food from?’

  ‘That’s for me to know, kiddo. But there’re plenty of opportunities waiting out there if you know where to look for them.’ She picked the last piece of pineapple out of the syrup, raised the tub to her lips and drank the juice. She leaned forward and reached into her canvas bag again. Beeper watched with his mouth open.

  ‘Voila!’ The girl pulled out a small glass bottle with a metal screw-top and a blue label. The writing on the label was in silver, and in a strange language. ‘Lemonade!’ she said with a flourish. A moment later there were three bottles lined up on the table.

  George hadn’t seen lemonade for years. And here were three bottles of it, right within reach. Little bubbles clung to the inside of the glass.