by Rosalie Ham
‘This is going to stop, right?’ Neralie said, and the men replied, ‘It is.’
Santa put his cup on the sink and said, ‘You’ll get a full house today even if you serve fried fox,’ then said he’d better get back to the kids before Mrs Santa got her claws out. Beau joined them and asked what time breakfast was served.
‘Whenever you feel like serving yourself,’ Elsie said, and pointed to a packet of muesli on the counter.
The lawn roller was fetched from the bowling club to squeeze out the dining room carpet, the cool room was emptied onto the ute and water pumped out of the cellar.
o0o
Jasey had the fox in the crosshairs of her scope when Lana’s scream shattered the morning quiet, waking the owls and possums in their cosy hollows. Jasey ran the short distance to her friend’s house, gun in hand, to find Lana standing next to her precious blue Commodore. Someone had used a key or nail to etch a giant penis and testicles on the bonnet. Jasey reached into her bra and brought out a tissue for Lana’s tears and put her arms around her. Kevin ambled over from Jasey’s, his red hair screaming in the bright morning, and said, ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed,’ and bit into his Vegemite toast. Then Jasey’s phone started ringing in her pocket and she answered with: ‘What now?’
o0o
He calculated that the donkeys were twenty-three years old, given they stumbled backwards out of the float the Christmas he got a cowboy suit. He remembered unwrapping it. Isobel got a portable record player but she sulked because she had no records. Then the truck came with the float and two Shetland-sized foals with long fat ears appeared and shuffled about side by side, as if they were glued together.
He got out of bed and found his way to the kitchen and took his phone from the charger, flicked on the torch and made his way as quietly as he could to the sleep-out. The box was not there so he made his way into his old room, got onto his hands and knees to the hollow sound of Cal’s snores. The box was not there, so he went back to the sleep-out cupboard. It was gone. The only photos he had of the foals, the balsawood war planes and ships, his footy and cricket trophies, and photos of all his pets and Goldie’s collar, his adored long-dead retriever. Mitch did his crying for it all on a wool bale in the shearing shed, Tink watching from the greasy floor.
The first grey rays took an age to taint the black horizon then showed a thick grey sky. The air felt humid. Tink was asleep. ‘Happy Christmas, Tink.’ She didn’t move. He placed his hand on the soft curve of her furry ribs and she opened her small black eyes and lifted her head, her tongue protruding slightly. ‘You’re getting old, Tink. And deaf.’ But she sat up, turned her ear to nothing Mitch could hear, and then thunder rumbled a long way off, like a pumpkin rolling across the kitchen floor.
Because he could not stay at home they drove to the ruined fence. Straining wire in a storm was stupid, Mitch knew, but he felt only desolation, and there were lambs to keep safe, and they were his only remaining pure breeding stock; they were his future. The eyrie atop the dry old pine remained abandoned and he wished he knew where the eagles were – if they really were dead or if they had just moved house. He finished the strand, tied a knot with the key and straightened, uncurling slowly to accommodate his stiff farmer’s back. Above, the fat clouds curled westwards. He made loops on the end of the broken strand, folding the wire back on itself, and tidied the tag ends as best he could. Another round of thunder rumbled, swelled and thumped in the distance, and then a bolt of lightning struck the sparse dark scrub far away, like an image from a horror movie. He worked at a quicker pace now, threading wire through one loop and putting the two ends of broken wire in the strainer jaws. He worked the strainer lever, inching the ends closer together, then joined and tied another wire knot with fencing pliers and twisted the tag end, winding the sharp snipped wire around itself. Thunder cracked like a cannon shot, louder than anything earthly. The ground at his feet erupted and he jumped, catching his finger in the sharp tag end of the rusty knot. Dust swirled all around him and, somewhere, wood was burning and grass singeing, and a sound like a tall building collapsing tore through the electric air.
He was on the ground, his head buried in his arms, his thoughts a jumble of Tink, his sheep, Callum and Neralie, and he looked up just in time to see the mighty pine lean, crack and smash to the earth. The steaming branches bounced and shuddered, smoke and dust ballooned, and almost immediately rain started falling, as if from a hose. His hand ached. The fence wire had ripped the soft flesh at the side of his index finger, catching the nail and ripping through it. He held up his wounded hand and swore, scowling at the giant old pine smouldering in a thousand steaming pieces on the ground around him. Rain ran from his back into his shorts and down his legs. He dropped his tools and went to the pine.
The eagles’ nest was strewn across the wet mud near the head of the tree: sticks and branches, feathers and chick fluff, and bones of all shapes and sizes, stripped of lamb, possum, fish, snake, bird and rabbit flesh. He glimpsed a couple of cat collars, which was fair enough, and then his eye lit on a collar with a name tag that said ‘Spot’. Poor Morton. But Mitch saw nothing in the debris to suggest a recent kill. Mr and Mrs Eagle must have died shortly after devouring Morton Campinnini’s obese Chihuahua, or maybe they’d eaten a rabbit that had ingested the 1080 poison the department had dropped at Esther’s.
He walked slowly to the ute, eyes to the teeming sky where the majestic raptors he’d known so long had once reigned. And his finger was hurting like nothing else. He scooped up his trembling, terrified dog and put her in the cab out of the storm. She snuggled beside him, her nose forced into the small gap between the seat and his back.
o0o
‘I thought you were a goner,’ Cal said.
Mitch sat beside the first-aid cupboard in the machinery shed amid the greasy tools, oil drums, files, anvils, clamps, welders, grinders and old filings while Callum washed his wound with a cotton ball dipped in Dettol and rainwater. He poked the jagged flesh back into place, distracting Mitch by telling the story of the lightning strike that shattered the old windmill and set the hay barn alight. Rain kept falling and they could almost hear the smouldering tree hiss and drown. Mitch patted Tinka, wedged under his seat, and tried not to wince. His father put a plastic finger guard on his wound and bound it with a wide roll of bandage, then made them each a cup of sweet black tea.
o0o
As the phone calls spread, the women of the town and surrounds – so recently divided – united, and many fridges were raided.
While the clouds above rumbled, Papa and Mati Jovetic stood in their precise, fecund vegetable garden, arguing, and Lana loaded her boot with salad and vegetables and strawberries. At the IGA, Jasey and Elsie loaded a frozen turkey, a leg of ham and some frozen seafood into a shopping trolley and pushed it across the road just as the rainclouds burst and water came tumbling down.
Meanwhile, Mandy Bishop lay in her bed in her lovely big room and thought about Stacey and his wonderfully convenient Bodybuild Olympic Utility Bench. Finally she flung the covers back, got up, bathed and dressed carefully and sat at the triptych mirrors to do her face and hair. Great claps of thunder smacked across the sky and lightning dimmed the lights; then rain fell, and that was annoying because her hair never sat well in damp air. She rested the curling wand on the dressing table so that it scorched the polish and bruised the mahogany. She checked her phone, but there was still no message from Stacey. ‘Too soon yet,’ she said, but in her heart she knew it wasn’t.
She went for a walk through the big old house. Callum was in the shower, and the cover on Isobel’s bed was tugged roughly into place, so she stood next to the tiny Christmas tree, a dry pine branch in a bucket of sand, its brittle needles falling on the carpet, and looked to the vista outside. There was no sign of human life, just a bleak sky purpled with thick clouds and blue rain above a vast yellow blanket, then lines of grey weeds along the channel bank, scr
ubby thistles and wild ryegrass, wet skeleton grass clinging to a shoddy fence along a puddled track that led to a small town where nothing happened . . . except for today. Christmas Day. Neralie McIntosh’s big day. Startlingly, a feeling of utter isolation filled her, even though she’d been loved – adored – been possessed, body and soul, three times (!), and her eyes were bright with the afterglow. She turned sharply away from the window and went to the kitchen, where she filled the kettle – hearing a faint ‘ouch’ from the bathroom as the water falling onto Cal’s old head suddenly thinned and scalded.
o0o
When Isobel arrived at the pub with her in-laws, husband, children and Aunt Opal, they found a loud pump sucking water from the cellar.
Inside, Neralie took their dripping umbrellas and gave them disposable plastic shower caps to cover their shoes. ‘There’s been a flood . . . but not from the rain.’ She set them up with a bottle of local organic sparkling wine, chilled champagne flutes and a platter of seafood and explained that they’d had to change the menu a little. She hoped they didn’t mind. Opal said archly, ‘Well, we can hardly go home and cook a meal now, can we?’ but Isobel looked hard into Neralie’s blue eyes and asked, ‘What happened?’
‘Sabotage.’
‘That’s not very community-minded.’
‘We can’t prove anything.’
‘But you’ve got a plan?’
Neralie gave the cricket signal for ‘wide’, indicating gathered locals eating, drinking, sitting at set tables, a fully functioning bar and restaurant filled with friendly, mingling customers – riparians, townies and farmers. Just then, the pump cut out. The cellar was empty of water.
‘Marvellous,’ Isobel said. She went back to the dining room and rearranged the seating so that she would be sitting opposite Mandy.
o0o
Much later than she’d hoped, they pulled up in the yard and got out of the ute. The old man shepherded Mitch, whose hand was bandaged. He walked as if he’d severed his arm at the shoulder. When he came into the kitchen, he smelled of burnt sheep shit. Then he took far too long to shower and Callum had to help him with his buttons. Finally, they climbed into her small wagon and headed for the Bong, and Christmas lunch.
There was a din, she was surprised to hear, when she cut the engine, so followed her decrepit father-in-law and injured husband inside, cautiously.
The entire town, it seemed, was at the pub, sloshing around in gumboots or standing on the damp floor of the bar in bare feet. There were frail elderly people, robust men and women with strong digestive tracts, thin weak women, men with high cholesterol, barflies with liver problems, lots of small children, toddlers and babies – all tucking into ham and turkey, roast spuds with cream and slow-cooked, crackling-crisp pork. And there was Neralie, with a Christmas tree hat on her head and small gift boxes dangling from her earlobes, smiling like she’d finally won three million dollars on pub scratchies.
‘Merry Christmas! Get yourself a drink. Heaps to eat.’ She shoved a seafood platter at Mandy. ‘Warm day, isn’t it?’
The attractive ex-boyfriend, Beau, was sitting at the bar forlornly reading the label on a bottle of red wine. Kelli was talking to him about a free hair consultation.
‘Have an oyster,’ Isobel said. She steered Mandy to their table in the dining room and put two oysters on her plate.
‘Not a fan,’ Mandy said, moving them to Mitch’s plate.
Isobel shelled a prawn and ate it with sounds of appreciation. Beside her, Mitch tilted his head back and poured an oyster into his open mouth.
‘I shouldn’t eat so much . . .’ Opal said, taking an oyster. ‘But if I keel over I want you to know I’ve had an adequate life.’ And she sucked another oyster.
Isobel pushed the plate of warm chicken salad towards Mandy. ‘Dig in.’
Mandy shook her head. ‘Not a fan of seafood or chicken.’
Neralie plonked a bowl of yabbies in front of her. ‘You and your fitness friend, Stacey the water taker, have been swimming with them,’ and Opal, who’d had two glasses of sparkling wine, said she hoped Mandy hadn’t weed in there, then fell about in her chair laughing.
They gave Mandy eggnog and a plate piled with rich food – a slab of ham and a turkey leg snuggled closely to a cream-covered roast potato, some coleslaw and a mound of egg and sweet potato salad – and she spent a long time moving the food about her plate while everyone else stuffed themselves.
‘Eat up,’ Isobel said. ‘It won’t kill you . . . I don’t think.’
Isobel cut Mitchell’s food and Rory and Philippa peeled his yabby tails and his pub mates ferried drinks to him and he described his brush with heavenly death that morning. Lana joined the party, and with her came Jasey. Mandy was wedged into a corner with no way out. Lana said, ‘What did you get from Santa, Mandy, or have you been naughty?’ Jasey offered Mandy a creamy Brandy Alexander, and when Mandy declined she smiled. ‘Don’t want to live dangerously today, eh?’ And Lana added, ‘Something you afraid of?’
The noise in the bar faded and Mandy saw that the entire town was looking at her. The plate of food in front of her must be pure poison, and they wanted her to eat it.
At the other end of the table, some sort of gruesome truth was dawning on Mitch. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Neralie was waving at him, so he went to her, like a man hypnotised, and she took him by the hand and led him towards the storeroom. Levon wheeled a flaming Christmas pudding past on a trolley, and in the bar Darryl popped another bottle of champagne. There was some sort of commotion from the dining area and Kevin yelled, ‘No, Lana – no!’
Mitch vaguely heard the ruckus from the storeroom, but he was kissing Neralie, at last, a long, deep and urgent kiss, and Neralie was running her hands under his nice blue shirt and Mitch’s hand made its way up under Neralie’s blouse . . . but his bandaged finger caught and he had to swap hands. He tried again, reaching for her breast, and from somewhere there was the sound of crockery being smashed. He ground against her and she reached for his fly but at that moment the door opened and there was Beau, looking at Neralie, her foot up on the shelf behind Mitch and Mitch’s groin against hers. ‘There’s a fight, Neralie! Women fighting – grown women!’ Then she was gone and Mitch was left in the storeroom with engorged genitals, a throbbing finger and Neralie’s ex-boyfriend.
Beau said, ‘You people are barbarians.’
Mitch replied, ‘You should come out and give me a hand with the next killer, find out where your chops come from.’
When he finally got to the dining room, Mitch found a circle of shouting customers and Jasey and Mandy on their knees in a sea of smashed crockery and broken glass, each with a handful of the other’s hair. Levon was trying to separate them, Kevin held Lana by her skirt to stop her diving into the fray, Larry Purfeat was taking bets in the corner, Isobel was standing on a chair with her glass of champagne while her kids filmed the whole thing on their phones. The Christmas lunchers clutched their drinks and held their food plates high to keep them out of harm’s way. Then Elsie came running in with an ice bucket and threw the contents on the wrestling girls. Startled, they were momentarily motionless. Then Lana lunged, leaving her skirt in Kev’s hands, and flipped Mandy onto her back. Jasey sat on her, pinning her arms to the floor.
‘That’ll do it, then,’ Levon said, and Darryl helped them up and held their arms in the air, declaring a tie. Lana put her skirt back on.
Mandy wobbled over to Neutral Bay, sat next to Beau and asked for a whisky, which Levon gave her. ‘They’re upset because I ruined their Christmas Day,’ she said to Beau. ‘But I am going to ruin the Bishops, you just wait and see.’
‘I can hardly wait for what happens next,’ Beau said, and poured himself another glass of red wine.
Music played and people sat and talked, but the mood was flatter than it should have been. The first Bong Christmas was a slow, pis
sed day with very little laughter, made worse by Morton Campininni harping on about Spot and showing everyone the collar Mitch had found.
o0o
Later, at Esther’s, Callum stared out the window to the street and the place where the swimming hole had been, with a cup of tea resting on the arm of his chair. Esther reached down between the wall and her chair and lifted her father’s 1943 Remington .22 calibre rifle and checked the chamber. Then she applied her polishing rag to it.
‘You got ammunition?’
‘Plenty.’
Much later still, Cal struggled out of Esther’s comfortable lounge chair and limped to the pub. He pushed the bar door open and found his drunk son sitting on a stool, looking at the floor between his knees, and his daughter-in-law stretched out along the bar, holding an empty bottle of crème de menthe, fast asleep.
o0o
Before climbing into the small bed in Isobel’s old room, Mitch phoned Neralie. When she didn’t answer he sent her a text message: I love you like air but I’ve ruined everything for you and life’s a clusterfuck-up of inestimable proportions but I know what to do to end it all.
26.
Boxing Day
Mandy’s scun fist was tight and the noise was loud when she moved against the sheets. She needed to get to the bathroom, but it would hurt. Everything in her intestines would move. Sloppy, slimy food would shift and churn, and fetid wind would swell against her poor tender liver and her aching kidneys. Slowly, she raised her head from the pillow. She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time looking at the wall, then reached for the bedside table and levered herself up. With the help of friendly infrastructure she made it to the toilet, fighting dizziness and waves of feverish nausea. In the bathroom, her reflection didn’t look as bad as she felt, but when she turned on the taps the thunderous cascading water made her weak. She sank to the floor, her mouth near the spill drain in the centre of the old green tiles. Footsteps, punctuated by the clack of Callum’s stick, shuffled across the timber floor to the bathroom door then retreated. When the bath was full and hot, she crawled into it and sank so that her ears were submerged and the muffled thuds through the house softened. She let her tears drip straight from her eyes into the foamy beige water.