The Best Australian Stories

by Black Inc.

  A WHAT?

  A HANDSTAND AND TEN BOB. ARE YOU DEAF? I COULD HAVE CHARGED SOME JUGGLING TOO, BUT THEY’RE NOT PUREBREED.

  I have my fingers through the wicker. The pups are biting me. Their teeth are like talons. They cut to the bone. I WANT THAT ONE.

  OH YER, HE’S MIGHTY.

  I’LL HAVE TO ASK MY MOTHER.

  GET GOING, THEN.

  SHE’S OVER THERE. AT THE CAKE STALL. I’LL BE BACK IN A MINUTE. DON’T LET ANYONE TAKE THAT ONE WITH THE STRIPE.

  CAN’T MAKE PROMISES, BOY.

  I can hardly bear to turn my back. I tear myself away. I speed like the wind through the crowd. I feel my feet strike the earth. I want to run, like a sheepdog, over shoulders and heads. My mother is not averse to animals. In fact, she likes them, as does my father. I have many books on the subject of the natural world. I’ve had a rabbit and a white mouse. I can identify many wild birds. But I’ve asked, before, for a dog, and my mother has said no. I don’t know why she’s taken this stand. I am not irresponsible, forgetful, or cruel. I am clever and obedient and accepting. Until today I have always taken no for an answer.

  I run, dodge, weave. The crowd is bovine, slow, thick-boned. Waves of sickness and fear splash me. She’ll say no and my life will veer irreversibly onto the wrong road. I will become criminal. I will become hollow. I will waste away.

  At the cake stall, Mother is talking. I hop up and down distractingly. I fidget as if I have worms. Finally she looks at me. CAN I HAVE A PUP?

  NO. HAVE YOU HAD LUNCH?

  BUT MOTHER. THEY ONLY COST TEN BOB.

  AND ALL THE REST. HAVE A SUGAR SLICE.

  I stand back from the table, swallowing. I feel suspended, as if from a hook. In this moment there’s only me in the world. There is me and the cobwebbed, abandoned planet. PLEASE, MOTHER.

  She leans toward me. Her voice is hushed in the vain hope that the other mothers won’t hear. WHY DO YOU NEED A DOG, KEVIN? WHY CAN’T YOU BE FRIENDS WITH OTHER BOYS?

  My lips are cracking. BECAUSE I CAN’T BE.

  I’m trembling. It’s the truth. I can’t be friends with the other boys. I will never. In my life there will be only me. I NEED A DOG BECAUSE I CAN’T BE FRIENDS.

  MAYBE, IF YOU TRY – THEY’LL LIKE YOU, KEVIN—

  NO THEY WON’T. THEY NEVER WILL. I’M TIRED OF TRYING. I’LL JUST BE ALONE, MAMA.

  My mother glances at the cake-stall women. They stand around nonchalantly. They are curious as hens to know what she will say. They have boisterous sons of their own who get smacked on the backs of the legs. This is a smacking situation. The women listen, because there’s pleasure to be had in hearing a child denied.

  My mother recognises the moment of decision. Perhaps she sees me standing at the junction of life’s long roads, sees me wasting away. Her shoulders fall, her gaze subsides. She waves farewell to the child she hoped I would grow up to be. WHAT SORT OF DOG?

  A hot knife goes through me. I do not look up from the cupcakes and jam slice. I DON’T KNOW. NOT PUREBRED.

  YOUR FATHER WILL BE ANGRY.

  I’m about to fly. She stops me with cool fingers. Our eyes meet over the fruit buns. KEVIN, she says, and nothing more. I know I disappoint and perhaps frighten her. It’s not my fault. I am who I am. I will never disappoint my dog.

  He was still in the cage. He looked out at me. MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM, sang the second-hand man. THIS BOY MUST FLAWLESSLY PERFORM A HANDSTAND.

  I was not particularly athletic or skilled. I thought the handstand would prove a second ordeal. But my legs swung up limberly when my palms pressed the dirt, and I never forget the upside-down sight of my shoes against the sky, dark as war, huge as planes, blotting out the sun.

  *

  Something makes a noise. A static cough. The man in blue speaks into a crackling box. When he lifts his arm I see great lakes have spread across his shirt. These men, this room, this furniture, it’s repellent.

  —The family’s here.

  —Thank God. We’re not babysitters.

  —Oh, I’ve seen worse. He hasn’t been any trouble. Hasn’t wrecked the place. You’ve been good company, haven’t you, Mr Collier? You poor old thing.

  —How did he know how to drive, anyway? He can’t remember his name or address or how to tie his shoes. How could he drive?

  —Oh, dementia’s like that. Sometimes they remember stuff from years back, clear as crystal. They forget last week or a minute ago. He’s probably been driving for sixty years. It’s as natural as walking. But he can’t remember the vehicle or the dog or whether he ate breakfast today. Those are just black holes.

  I jolt in my chair. How dare they. Perhaps I’ve forgotten other things – inconsequential people, countless patients, the smell of my wife’s hair – but never, ever my dog. The gentlemen reach out to calm me. I turn indignantly away. Mind your own business. Don’t touch me. There’s plenty of memories I can happily do without, how dare they accuse me of forgetting the dog. That will never happen.

  Of course, we don’t like to hear that – that an animal can be as beloved, or more so, than any human being; that the company of an animal can be preferable and superior to the company of our own. Such notions dangerously expose our faults, so we ridicule them. We insist and insist that the animal is lesser. We point to their silence, their forgiveness, their stoicism, their peace. These traits make them lesser.

  But sometimes – maybe often – an animal is more. Sometimes an animal is the sun which brings all that revolves around it into the light.

  My father said WHAT’S THAT?

  MY DOG.

  Father glared at my wilful mother. Yet his softest spot was for dumb children and animals. Taf was mine, but my father loved him. My mother loved him. Taf bound our family. He belonged to me but had loyalty enough for each of us. He became our centre of affection and goodwill.

  Each afternoon, when I came home from school, my mother would tell me the things he had done. His sleeping, his waking, his yawning, his barks. His watching through the wire fence, his sitting outside the store. His many admirers, his enemies. No dog had such charm. For her, he was a listening ear, a sharer of biscuits, the wiper of crumbs, the guard at the door. She babied him, mollycoddled him, brushed his silken coat. He once chased and apprehended a gypsy who’d been staring through the bathroom window.

  My father was the Teacher of Tricks, and Taf liked to succeed. No dog could jump higher, run faster, turn tighter on a coin. When called upon to perform, Taf never made my father out to be a liar. On Sunday afternoons the pair of them walked for miles across the countryside. For Father, Taf was mischief. He chased birds and cows. He would vanish and reappear with a crafty smile on his face. Father would drum his palms on his thighs. WHO’S MY WICKED TAF THEN? WHO’S MY CLEVER FELLOW.

  Myself, he was my shadow. Often I forgot to think of him as dog. Rarely did I call him anything but Boy. With Taf beside me, I became that respectable thing – a kid with his mutt. I stepped, with him, back from the brink. My life changed. I remained shy, awkward and unbefriended at school – but I saw that I would be all right anyway, that I could survive nonetheless.

  Lovely creature. You beautiful animal. After all these years I can still feel the warmth of you. My hand recollects the shape of your head, my eyes see your sunshined colour. You good, cheerful soul. How I loved you.

  Part of me hardly dares even to think your name. Especially in these ugly surrounds. It’s sacrilege. You dog, you holy relic.

  You lived for fifteen years. A shambling wreck by the end. Arthritic and bent, mornings were the worst time. You did not walk, you hobbled. Your eyes were blindly glazed with silver, your coat was powdered white. You were deaf, yet seemed to hear everything that nobody else could. You slept deeply, twitching, eyelids fluttering, moaning. In your sleep, you could see; in your sleep, you re-lived life.

  You evoked pity. IT’S QUICK IT’S PAINLESS HE’LL THANK YOU FOR IT, YOU’D BE DOING HIM A KINDNESS YOU KNOW. I was heartless, because I refused. But I wa
nted you to die only when you were ready: for I would never be.

  I was twenty-seven years old at the end. My calling was zoology, but my mother begged me to do medicine. Initially, I refused. I had no empathy or concern for my fellow man. I knew I would struggle to care sufficiently. But Mother wheedled. Medicine will save you, she said. Respect and prosperity are no bad thing. You don’t have to care. Just do it well. You can study nature on your days off.

  I was at the hospital when Father rang. That morning Mother had found Taf down the side of the house, curled and colder than stone. My father had dug the grave by the time I got there. Mother had cut flowers from the garden. I wrapped you in a bedsheet and laid you in the hole. The three of us were stoic. Nobody cried. But neither my mother nor myself could watch the dirt tumble down on you. We walked away, not speaking, leaving Father to do it alone.

  For weeks afterwards I found myself waking at night, anxious, aching. My bones felt hollow, my chest cribbed. I told no one that I was haunted by the desire to unearth you for a final glimpse. IT MUST BE A RELIEF, HE WAS OLD AND FRAIL. But it was no relief to think of him under the mud. I took him from its sodden grip and bid him lie down inside my heart. It was warm and safe there. Sleep, I invited him. Don’t leave me.

  A year after the funeral, I married. The bride was lovely, the wedding fine. Everybody said it was the happiest day of my life. I remembered the flea-market, the handstand, my boots against the sky.

  —Look who’s here, Mr Collier. Your son and grandson. They’ve come to collect you.

  —Dad? Dad? It’s James. How are you feeling? Do you remember what happened?

  —Ask him about Luka, Dad.

  —The older man leans closer. Dad? Listen to me. Do you remember what happened this morning? You took the car and drove around and then you must have parked the car and started walking. These policemen found you wandering around lost, remember? Dad, where did you leave the car?

  This newcomer makes a lot of noise.

  We had four children, I believe. I spent long hours working at the hospital. My specialty was lungs. I liked their determined deflate and revive, their canine faithfulness. I liked them for being the cleanest element of the system, their memories of the fresh air.

  When I wasn’t at work, I was out in the fields. Flora and fauna remained the sustaining interest in my life. I also owned dogs. Seamus, the laughing German shepherd. Flight, the quick-witted border collie. Good dogs, now with Taf. Sometimes I picture what my life would have been, were it not for the dogs. I imagine it as a habitable but sterile, unbroken, grassless land.

  Of course, I taught my children to appreciate animals, and nature as a whole. I believe children learn such things best from a parent. To take a broad view of the world; to respect lives other than our own. I don’t much like children – I find them, as I did in boyhood, discomforting – but I’m pleased I’ve passed on to others my abiding affiliation with a wilder world.

  —Grandpa? Look at me. Where is Luka?

  I gaze obediently at the youth who is the other newcomer to the room. His face is unfamiliar. I won’t speak to him – he’s impolite. His hair has not been brushed. I don’t know who or what Luka is, and I wish he would go elsewhere.

  —We’ve put the vehicle’s description out over the radio. Everyone will be looking. No question, we’ll find it soon.

  The youth seems momentarily lost for words. He puts his hands over his face. It is an action of despair. I wonder why someone, so young and healthy, would think they had cause for despair. The indulgence of it. I could tell him some stories that might make him realise he isn’t so badly off. From behind his hands, the youth speaks. We haven’t got time. She’ll die.

  —We don’t even know if she is in the car—

  —Where else could she be, Dad? Where else would she have gone? He’s taken her. He’s put her in the car and taken her for a drive, like he’s always saying he will. And now he’s lost the car, and he’s lost my dog. And it’s forty-four degrees out there!

  He is shouting. He is an angry youth. I don’t know why he’s shouting. I don’t know what he’s got that’s worth shouting about.

  —Maybe he let her out of the car. We don’t know that she’s still inside it.

  The youth gasps for air. He shakes his head. If he’d let her out, she would have stayed with him. She wouldn’t have left him alone. She’s locked in the car, Dad – you know it!

  One of the men in blue speaks up. If your dog is trapped in the vehicle, it’s possible a passer-by might see her there, and break a window to let her out. People are very aware of animals in distress.

  The angry youth just stares at him. His face is very red. His eyes are filling with tears. My dog is locked in a car, he mutters. She’s lost and locked in a burning-hot car.

  One man moves to put a hand on him. The angry youth wheels away. He crosses the room and bends down to me. I shy in my chair. He’s a disturbing stranger. He opens his mouth and words crawl out like adders. I hate you. I hate you, you revolting old man. I wish you had died years ago. You’ve lost my dog – you’re killing her. You’ve left her to die in a burning-hot car. I’ll hate you forever for this. Until the day I die, I promise, I will never forgive you.

  —Don’t, whispers the empty-handed man. He doesn’t understand.

  —He understands! the boy yelps. Where’s my dog? he asks, and raises a hand. Where’s my dog? he screams. You son of a bitch, where’s my dog?

  There are no dogs. Look around, you won’t see any dogs. There’s dogs in my heart, hidden away – I won’t share them with anybody. The dogs of better times, that’s what they are. The great and enduring loves of my life.

  The man with empty hands leads the shouting youth out of the room. The youth is weeping now. It is not manly. Healthy, young, in the prime of life, he’s got nothing worth crying about.

  —Mr Collier, would you like some more water?

  —Yes, I say. It’s very hot; I’m thirsty.

  The gentleman in blue hands me a paper cup. I drink the water slowly. It’s refreshing. I’m sleepy.

  It’s been nice thinking of you again, Taf. Though there’s years between us, these days I seem to remember you better than I have ever done. I hear you barking at the end of the street; I hear your claws click the footpath. Sometimes I believe I feel your loyal presence at my side. I’ve lived a full long life, Taf, but it has been a lonely one. When I die, and if there’s any justice, may the first and last thing I see be you.

  The Enemies of Happiness

  Tim Richards

  Fascinated by Dr Best’s reputation as a miracle worker, Karen was anxious to meet her, but on the eve of this meeting, the principal was badly injured in a collision. Two passengers in the other car were killed, and Dr Best’s head wound re quired sixty-five stitches. Friends who’d visited her in hospital late that night said that Dr Best would be off work for a month.

  Typically, the principal was in her office ready to greet the new art teacher just two days later. Nothing kept Dr Best away from the first day of the school year. After apologising for the lack of airconditioning, the stench from the neighbouring blood and bone factory, and the unsightliness of her scar, the principal escorted Karen to a seat underneath a framed Goya print.

  ‘You might find that teaching art in the west is a challenge,’ Dr Best warned.

  Karen said that she’d been offered a better-paid job at Firbank, but challenge was what she wanted.

  ‘Beginnings are important,’ the principal told Karen. ‘Be bold. The first day sets the tone. Let them know you’re a presence to be reckoned with.’

  The principal was certainly that. Karen feared for the Year 7s who’d shriek when confronted with a massive, flame-haired woman with bloody muck oozing from a heavily stitched gash. Though the newcomer tried to stay calm, the pressure gathering in her colon told her that a trip to the toilet would soon be required.

  Recognising this unease, the older woman told Karen that she couldn’t have chosen a b
etter time to come to Prospect. The asbestos had been cleaned out of the ceilings in the art rooms, and they’d been spruced up with new seats and tables. Morale in the school had never been higher.

  ‘When I first came here, there was an epidemic of drugs and violence. We had to ban mobile phones and pagers to keep kids out of the reach of dealers. Teachers were being bashed. And this school had the worst suicide rate in the state. We’d lost more than twenty students in the last three years of the old regime.’

  Karen swallowed hard.

  ‘We’ve turned things around,’ Dr Best told her. ‘In the last two years, we haven’t had a single suicide. Not an attempt. We took some new ideas on board, and fought to maintain absolute consistency of approach. And the kids appreciated the fact that we cared enough to know when to cut some slack.’

  Karen wanted to ask about that. She’d heard the same phrase used by senior staff, but didn’t understand what they meant by this cutting of slack. The school might have been trialling a new drugs policy.

  Just at that moment, Dr Best clutched at her head as if she’d been stabbed.

  ‘Should I call someone?’ Karen asked.

  ‘No, no. I’ll be fine,’ the principal told her, wincing for a moment till the crisis passed and she was able to look the bewildered newcomer in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t miss first day for anything. First day sets the tone.’

  *

  Around 8.15, students began streaming into the schoolgrounds; the boys in their short sleeves and shorts, the girls in summer frocks designed to combat the intense heat that always accompanied the arrival of first term. As Karen expected, their faces reflected the ethnic diversity of the western suburbs; many Asians and Africans to go with students of Mediterranean and Balkan origin. And the uniform smiles told her that these kids were happy to be back.

  The initial Form Assembly with 9B passed without a hitch, attentive students apparently content that their form teacher would also be taking them for art. When Boris Feltov and Maggie Nguyen failed to answer her call, Karen was told that they were present, but had been transferred to 9IC. The teacher noted this without comment, 9IC being another of her art classes.