The Dog Runner

by Bren MacDibble

  Christmas is looking out across the land like she’s looking for Emery. I duck down lower into the scrubby grass. ‘He hasn’t got here yet,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t pass him, so the kid must be hiding out somewhere. Still I gave him two possums, you owe me.’

  ‘Of course, if you helped Emery, I’m happy to give you mushrooms,’ Christmas says.

  ‘What do you mean, “if”?’ Mike growls.

  ‘I mean, I’m sure you did,’ Chrissy says, her voice careful and calm like Mike might be dangerous. ‘I’ve got half a bucket picked already, but the rest can’t be picked too early, they’re gonna need another couple of days growing. I can give you another half bucket in two days. And a pumpkin.’

  Mike nods. ‘Thanks. Do you want to trade for the roo as well?’

  Maroochy whines and pulls at my hand like she wants to get moving. I pull her back down.

  ‘I’m all out of mushrooms,’ Christmas says, like she hasn’t got a whole cave full. ‘You wait here, and I’ll go get you that half bucket from the shed.’

  Christmas climbs out of the van and slides the door shut hard behind her. Then she hurries out behind the house checking the hillsides all around her, like she’s looking for Emery maybe. Or Mike’s men. There’s a flash up high somewhere in the hills off to the side. Mike hasn’t seen it.

  ‘Don’t you let that bloody horse trader rip you off!’ an old lady yells from the house. Emery’s grandma is down there too.

  Chrissy’s back from the sheds soon enough carrying a white bucket.

  Maroochy whines and pulls away from me. I lunge after her, but I fall and get a faceful of dry grass as she streaks away. I get up and chase after her. Too scared to call for her in case Mike turns.

  The two of us charging flat out towards the house, and I think that somehow Rooch knows that something is going to happen or that she knows that Christmas is Emery’s mum, coz she lets out these happy yips like she does when she’s saying hello to one of us, but she swings away from the house.

  Mike turns around at the sound of the yips and he puts down his roo and possums. I swerve from following Maroochy and run flat out towards Mike and he’s so far away and he starts doing what I hope he won’t do. He’s pulling his gun off his shoulder. What does he think she is? A black kangaroo?

  My legs are hardly keeping up with my body as Mike’s hand, fingers holding something shiny, goes from his pocket to his rifle, and back to his pocket a second time and I’m running, not breathing, no air in me, no air to even scream. He lifts his rifle and points it right at Maroochy, and I open my mouth but nothing comes out, and the rifle lifts higher and it’s not pointing at Maroochy. It’s pointing up to the road. And there’s flashing. Mirrors flashing the last of the light all around in the hills, and something is happening but I don’t know what.

  And coming down the road, slowly, on a silent white bike is two people. A tall woman and a thin small man with his head close shaven like mine. Mum and Dad! My throat lets out an enormous sob.

  Mike lines up the rifle and his finger slides forwards to the trigger, and all the time I’m running, running, can’t run any faster. I yell and leap, pull my fists into my body and twist my shoulder forwards and hit him full on in the side, my shoulder hurting as it connects with his ribs and he falls against the van with a thump. The rifle drops to the ground, and I scramble over him, his hands snatching at my shirt. I grab the rifle and keep running. Mum and Dad have seen Maroochy, yipping and sprinting across the flat. They’re off their bike. Standing up, putting the bike stand down. Standing still.

  Dad always said hardly anybody in Australia can shoot straight, so if you’re a long way off, keep running. And now there he is, standing still, him not knowing there’s guns all around him and Mum.

  ‘The hills!’ I yell, but maybe they haven’t even seen me. And maybe they can’t hear me over Rooch’s yipping.

  Then ‘Crack!’ a shot rings out from somewhere up on the hill.

  Stones fly up on the road in front of Mum and Dad, pinging off the plastic and metal of the bike. They scramble and duck down behind the bike.

  Me and Maroochy, we’re still running though. Maroochy lower to the ground. Nothing is gonna stop her from getting to Dad after all this time.

  I slide to a stop. Drop down sitting on one leg, with one knee out in front of me. I stick the butt of the rifle in my hip and rest it on my knee and hold it down with all the strength I have in one hand. Line up my knee to where I think the shot came from up the hill. I have no hope of really aiming a rifle. I pull the trigger.

  The gun slams into my hip. The crack makes my ears go numb, my fingers buzz and burn.

  ‘Wait!’ Mike yells. He’s running after me.

  Behind him, Christmas is climbing out of the van, screaming, ‘You leave them kids alone!’

  I get up and run, all of us running flat out towards Mum and Dad, still ducked down behind the bike.

  ‘You tell them guys to stop shooting!’ Christmas screams.

  Mike’s waving his arms as he runs, maybe so they don’t shoot him.

  Roochy’s reached the bike. She’s scrabbling around it to leap on Mum and Dad like she’s not seen them for a million years. Me too, Roochy. Me too!

  ‘It’s okay!’ Mike’s yelling. He’s standing in the middle of the flat, hands on his knees, puffing. He lifts a hand up to the hills.

  I’m gasping when I reach the bikes. I lay the gun down and throw myself into the mess of dog and people that I love, gasping laughing and gasping crying, coz I never thought I’d see them again.

  Mum’s shouting, ‘Ella, baby, are you okay? Where’s Emery?’

  And all I can do is nod and laugh and bawl.

  And Dad wraps me in a hug so tight and strong that I want to live there forever. Forever safe in those skinny wiry arms. That man built of wire and steel poles that no one can kill.

  Mike arrives and picks up his gun from where I dropped it, and Dad scrambles up. Mum pulls out a revolver and points it at him.

  Christmas arrives, slapping at Mike’s arm, while he’s still holding his gun.

  ‘Them’s family, Mike,’ she says, telling him off. ‘That’s my boy’s dad and his wife.’ Then she’s around the back of the bike hugging Mum, never minding about the revolver, and then hugging Dad and scooping me up and hugging me too. ‘Where’s my boy?’ she’s whispering in my ear, like she’s gotta know right now.

  And I know I gotta keep the secret of the mushroom caves from Mike, so I say, ‘Just in the scrub there. He’s got a broken arm but he’s sitting there happy as anything on a bit of sand he’s calling Emery Beach.’

  Christmas plants a big kiss on my cheek and says, ‘I’ll go get him.’

  ‘Need a hand, Chrissy?’ Mike offers.

  ‘No,’ Chrissy says, waving Mike’s offer away with her hand. ‘The boy’s dad will help me. He’ll be wanting to see him.’

  Dad grins. ‘I am.’

  ‘You go get your mushrooms by the van, Mike,’ Christmas says, all bossy. ‘And I’ll have that other half bucket and a pumpkin for you in two days’ time like I promised, but after that, I don’t think we’ll be able to spare any. Not with the whole family home now.’

  And I’m so happy with the sound of that. The whole family home now. We really are. The whole family. Home together.

  ‘But Chrissy,’ Mike says, ‘we agreed we all got to contribute to the community.’

  ‘Well, with more help, maybe I can get more mushrooms and veggies turned out next month, but I’m taking it down to the village to trade. I’m sick of your manky soup possums. Sometimes I think you been taking advantage of me since my dad died and I been stuck home looking after my mum.’

  I suck in a breath. ‘Ba’s dead? Emery’s gonna be so upset.’

  Christmas nods and rubs my cheek. Her touch so soft. She blinks a couple of times, and says so gently, like she’s breaking bad news to just me alone, ‘Was only medicine keeping him going and we couldn’t get it sent in he
re anymore. That’s just how it was. We all knew it would come to that. Especially after he set the land on fire to burn off that bad grass. Nearly killed himself doing that burn-off.’

  ‘He went mad,’ Mike says. ‘Nearly burned down everybody’s properties!’

  ‘Well that mad old man and his burn-off and his seeds is the only reason you’re still eating possum and roo today, Mike, so you owe him,’ Christmas says. ‘A few lost houses for all that grass coming back was a fair trade. Off you go! Make sure your trigger-happy men don’t shoot you.’

  Mike twists his lips to one side but sets off back across the flat to the van left wide open.

  ‘He’s a bit right,’ Christmas says. ‘My father was working on the old idea of burning off grasslands like they used to do when there was just Australian grasses. But those damn dormant English grasses, all dried up and black and sick, made the fire burn too hot. Got out of control. Killed off the roots he was hoping to save, burnt down a few houses. Poor man went ’round trying to reseed the whole county after that. Exhausted himself and never got better.’ Chrissy takes a deep breath. ‘Mike’s been making my life a misery ever since. I’m so glad you’re here now.’ Christmas looks at Mum. ‘Can you ride down there ahead of him, make sure he doesn’t get in through the van. I don’t want him poking around in the sheds.’

  Mum hops back on the bike, and says, ‘Come on, then,’ to me, so I climb on the back and we head off after Mike, passing him as he’s halfway, and get to the van before him. Maroochy chases us, yipping at our wheels, then gallops off back to Dad.

  Mum parks the bike right in front of the van’s sliding door and sits on the van step while I pick up the bucket of mushrooms for Mike and hand it to him when he arrives. He gathers up his roo and possums, and trudges off back towards the road.

  I sit on the step beside Mum. She pulls me close and runs her hand over my stubbly hair. ‘Was that my baby bowling a man over, stealing his gun and coming to our rescue?’ she asks.

  ‘Not a baby no more,’ I say.

  ‘You did it, Els. You got Emery and the dogs here. I’m so proud of you.’

  I poke Mum in the side. ‘And I’m real proud of you for finding Dad. Never leave me again!’

  Mum laughs.

  Life’s good at Christmas’s with us all there together. Chrissy has pumpkins winding their way all over her back yard, as well as having kept piles of powdered milk from two years before. She says she’ll only admit to milk if someone nearby has a baby they can’t feed. In the meantime, we’re boiling up our mushrooms in milk and they taste amazing.

  She hoots and laughs and holds her cheeks when Emery tells her what’s in the anthills.

  ‘My father told me to send Emery to the anthills!’ She calls him ‘my father’ now instead of Ba so she doesn’t disturb his rest. ‘I thought he was going mad!’ she says. ‘I kept saying, but Emery’s not here, and he just kept saying Emery will be here soon, like he knew you were on your way.’

  Emery leads us all up to the closest anthill and we crack it open. Beautiful, tiny, round grains tumble out, so shiny in the sunlight they look like mini pearls. Glossy with a hint of green.

  I drop to my knees and run my fingers through them. The grains purr as they bump against each other, and the smell, the fresh smell, as each perfect shiny grain slides through my fingers, this is amazing.

  ‘I know he planted a lot of this stuff, but I didn’t know he’d stored so much!’ Christmas says.

  We grind up a little of the grain and make some bread to celebrate us all being together. It’s damp and nutty on the inside and crisp and crunchy on the outside, and even though it’s so delicious, we pack the rest of in plastic bags and Christmas takes the grains to town and hands them out to people who used to grow wheat or canola. She tells them to plant them across their land so the kangaroos have more to eat, and get fat and healthy, and says, maybe one day we’ll have enough to start the bakery back up. She tells them that if the fungus comes back, just burn the grasses same as her dad did and wait for them to grow again. This time the fires won’t get out of control, because there’s no English grasses lying round browned off or sleeping through the summer adding too much heat.

  Emery’s arm sets pretty good after a couple of weeks resting in the house in the front window, ‘on watch’ with his grandma, eating lots of pumpkin soup. I dunno, but I think that time just sitting with his grandma, watching out over his grandad’s grave and talking about old times, I think that has healed his heart somehow, along with his arm and that deep gash in his scalp. Winter sets in hard, the pumpkins die off, and we black out the windows and sleep in the lounge room, huddled round the fire. The nights stay cool, even when the hot days come back. We run low on mushrooms coz we have to give so many more away. Dad and Emery are compressing old wood into logs, and Christmas and Grandma work all day in the lab in the shed, seeding the logs, getting them ready for me and Mum to take to the tunnels. The tunnels don’t change their temperature much, no matter how cool or hot it is up top, so we can grow lots more mushrooms, but everyone else in town can only grow their vegetables under plastic coz of the cold, so now we’re giving mushrooms away or taking IOUs. Our stored pumpkins run out too, so our meals get smaller for a while.

  Now Emery’s off with Dad every day, hunting for meat to keep the dogs fed. He always carries a bag of seed and he spreads it wherever he goes. He says his grandfather was right. He’d always be here waiting for Emery when he came back. He’s in the land, he’s in the grasses that he’s saved, he’s in the knowledge that he’s passed to Emery like his people have been doing for thousands of generations, he’s here as sure as if he was still alive.

  Dad keeps watch from the hills some days with Mike’s men, but there’s not many people who come heading up these old roads, them probably thinking it’s too dry out here to grow anything. Those that do look like they’ve been driven out of every other place, blank eyes sunk into bony skulls, so Mike’s men tell them they can stay in the old hotel in town, and there’s possum and roo and a few veggies if they work, but not much else to eat. Dad says the people mostly look grateful just for that.

  ‘Must be bad out there,’ Chrissy says, ‘if going into debt to Mike for his manky soup possums looks like a good idea.’

  Some days Dad and Emery come back without meat and it’s just the eels that me and Christmas pull from the dam for the dogs. Christmas knows how to cook eel and make it tasty enough for us to eat too.

  We’re down there one night, setting the hooks with chunks of possum tail, when Mum comes down to tell us to look up at the glorious sunset.

  It is glorious, orange and gold, and it’s like a mash-up of my whole world, the pink dirt, the dry yellow grasses that Emery’s grandad planted, the dark trees, patchy red and pink hillsides, even the old dirty white house is every tone of red and yellow there ever was at once.

  In the sky, a long way off, there’s two little planes flying up and down and back and forth making patterns in the sky. As they get closer, Mum gasps.

  ‘They’re dropping something!’

  I look back to the house, and I think we can get there before the planes arrive, but Mum takes off towards them.

  ‘Mum!’ I yell.

  Christmas grabs my hand and we run after her.

  The plane sees us and turns towards us, flying low, giving its wings a waggle, and something rains down from the plane as it passes over the top of us. I cover my face, thinking it must be poison or something, but tiny things ping off my head and neck.

  Mum turns back and runs at me with her arms up. Her eyes are wide. ‘Grass!’ she screams. ‘They’re grass seeds!’

  She scoops me up and spins me around, then hugs Christmas and they leap up and down together, screaming, ‘Grass! Grass! Grass!’

  On the side of the grey airforce plane I see the words ‘CSIRO Seed Bank’. And I didn’t even know this was a thing. That someone was working hard to find enough seeds to spread everywhere. Enough to spread over the Mallee
grasslands, and maybe the Wimmera grasslands to the south too. Maybe the whole country? Or just the big grasslands? Maybe the wheat fields are already planted with wheat? I wish I knew. I hope the starving people in the cities know that spring grass is coming, and they only have to hold out awhile longer.

  I drop to my knees and scoop together some of the grains, and in amongst the spiky grains, the fluffy grains, the short grains, the fat grains, the long pale grains, the green and the yellow grains, I’m sure there’s the same round grain that came spilling out of Emery’s anthills.

  Emery’s tearing down the hill at us coz he’s heard us screaming, five dogs and Dad on his heels, and he laughs like a clown when he figures out why we’re so happy.

  I show Emery the grains I’ve caught, all the different shapes and sizes and some just like his grandad’s.

  Emery nods. ‘He said the old grass doesn’t care if the overseas grass grows first and dies down, it makes the soil healthy and covers the ground, which the old grass likes, and each grass will grow where it grows best no matter what farmers plant. He said people are like grass seeds, you can dig them in and feed them someplace, and maybe they’ll grow quickly there for a while but only the ones that really suit that place will thrive.’

  ‘That’s why he said you could come back after high school?’ I ask. ‘Coz you needed to find out where you’d thrive?’

  Emery smiles. ‘I guess. I never thought of that.’

  ‘They must have figured out how to control the fungus,’ Dad says, turning the seeds over in his hand, right under his nose, like the answer is written on the sides of the seeds and he just needs glasses to read it. ‘Or maybe how to make the grass resistant?’

  Christmas starts making plans. ‘After grass, there’ll be grain and bread, so I’m gonna have me the biggest sandwich, with a fine slice of salami and huge chunk of cheese, coz there’ll be cows, and an egg, coz there’ll be chooks, runny in the middle, firm around the outside. Then for dessert, mmm, ice-cream!’