Coming Rain

by Stephen Daisley

  ‘Where is the daughter?’ Dr Fraser asked as he worked. ‘Clara, is it?’

  Jimmy watching them. ‘She out riding doctor, be gone all day. It’s hard on her y’know. She not herself anyway after mother.’

  ‘What’s been going on out here?’ the doctor said. ‘Mr Drysdale has had, well, there’s the stroke of course. But what are these blows to his head?’ He took off his glasses to look at them both.

  Jimmy stepped forward. ‘When Mr John fall down he roll around, hit his head. Mr Lew fall off horse before, very bad luck same time and Mr John it just happen too. Isn’t it. Maybe he get big fright from Mr Lew falling.’ Jimmy speaking in feigned stupidity and innocence. ‘Ask Mr Lew if you want.’

  ‘Is that right Lewis?’ the doctor asked, staring at him. ‘I may have to call in to the police station about this.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just bad luck. All at the same time, Doc. Just happened mate.’ Lew said and tried to smile through his bruised face.

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  The doctor left Jimmy with a bottle of pills and instructions to bring Mr Drysdale into the Gungurra hospital if his condition deteriorated. Said the next one might kill him.

  Jimmy nodding and thanking the doctor.

  Lew saw old man Drysdale sitting at the end of the veranda. He had not been shaved and saliva bubbled from a corner of his mouth. The stubble on his chin and throat as white as smoke bush. His neck hung in loose wattles and his burnt face shining red. His damaged eye was closed; fluid streamed almost constantly. He was holding a handkerchief to his face with his right hand. Food stains on his shirt and trousers. His left hand like a rubber glove, useless and livid. Held at an awkward angle in front of his groin.

  Drysdale, trying to say something but seeming instead to be yawning, hissed, winked and turned away. He reached out with the hand holding the handkerchief, waving it at Lew. Making angry noises. His head sagged and he appeared to weep.

  ‘You fucking old bastard,’ Lew said softly. ‘What you did, you selfish fucking old bastard.’

  Jimmy was calling out from somewhere in the house. ‘Mr John where are you? You hiding from me. Time for your tablets isn’t it.’ His laughter.

  When Jimmy came, he was holding two white tablets in the palm of his hand and a glass of water with two straws. A towel over his shoulder. He stopped and stared at Lew. ‘You better go Mr Lew, upsetting Mr John. I mean it,’ he said and was not laughing or smiling. ‘I mean it OK?’

  ‘Where is Clara, Jimmy?’ Lew asked. ‘I want to see her.’

  Jimmy giving him a hard look.

  ‘She no come out room, Mr Lew. Best you stay away for while. She not speaking to anybody even to me. Best you go away now. Please Mr Lew.’

  CHAPTER 52

  By the time the dingo bitch smelled young goats on the wind her hunger had become constant.

  They had come up to the old township from the west and were safely downwind of the herd of goats the old man kept. Her mother’s hunting, the beginning of her knowledge of the world. All the animals of the old men to be approached with much caution but the reward was usually an easy kill. She waited for the young dog to catch up to her. They heard singing coming from the stone house with the series of offset walls and gardens spaced out towards the east. She knew there was water there; drinking troughs for the goats. The smell of it coming on the wind.

  The old man emerged from the stone house and the young dingo’s tail immediately shot between his legs. He whimpered and put his head onto the sand and began to backtrack. It was the old bearded man with the car. The shooter who had slaughtered his clan. Almost killed them.

  He looked at the bitch in confusion. She too was lying flat on the sand, but she was studying the movements of the old man. Saliva dripped from her tongue and lips and once again the unceasing hunger made the whole world alive to her. She almost whined but instead opened and closed her mouth and continued to pant. Would never be so weak to her hunger as to become vulnerable. Again the schooling of her mother and grandmother, the awareness in her body. What good to the whelp, the pack, dead? Be hungry, eat, after the kill. Above them the sun rose and the day was hot.

  The young red dog crawled forward, touched her nose, licked as if to bring her to her senses, to run away from this madness. Her hackles rose, a low growl from her throat.

  They waited until nightfall. Lights came from the windows of the house and then they heard a great crash and silence. After a while, the old man began shouting and there was solitary laughter. Singing.

  She walked backwards, turned and trotted north into the old town cemetery until she found an urn filled with stormwater from the rains. Drank. The night was closing on them and she waited until she heard the sound of sweet frogs alongside a brush-filled line of abandoned and sunken gravesites. The rain had brought them. They sang in their pleasure, like morning sun on a cold body.

  The young red dog was a few paces back, lying on the day warmth of a stone and cement slab. He watched as she pounced and took a frog. Lifted it slightly, threw it up and swallowed it whole. Gulped, paused, looked at him to say this is how it is done, now you eat. Hunt, you young fool. He walked over the brush hollow which had become silent and waited, shooting glances at her as she returned to the funeral urn and again began to drink, lapping the water.

  He made several unsuccessful leaps into the croaking frog hollow. Stood, staring at her with a crinkly mouth. She turned and trotted away from him into the old processing area of rusting iron tanks and bricks and broken buildings.

  CHAPTER 53

  He looked at the Daybreak Springs, Thompson’s Find signpost again, opened the door of the Land Rover, stepped out and closed the door.

  The silence of the land seemed to make the noise of the closing door longer. He stretched his hands above his head. His ribs hurt. Bent to touch his feet to ease his back muscles. Only made it to his knees.

  His eyes were still yellow-bruised, his mouth scabbed from where Painter had beaten him, but his face and head had stopped aching. He touched his cheekbone with his fingers and felt his broken lips. Cleared his throat. He did not believe Painter would have done that to him until he did. He walked around to the passenger’s side and urinated into a ditch. Spat also. The blood had gone from his water.

  He got back into the Land Rover, started the engine and drove towards Thompson’s Find. The track was potholed and corrugated. Thought about the day Painter left.

  *

  The morning had been hot. The sun overhead in the blue sky. Painter packed his swag, checked the oil and water in the truck. Filled up the tank from the forty-four-gallon drum of petrol on the back tray. Wearing his old brown moleskin pants and shearers vest, the Traveller hat pushed back on his head and still those don’t touch me arms. Hands like broken feet, he would say.

  He came to where Lew was standing. The air was still, a sudden screech of galahs and far away the bleating of sheep. Crows protesting. Painter nodded.

  ‘The boss is fucked. Jimmy got him flush on the uncle with that stick. Twice. Didn’t think the cunt had it in him.’

  ‘And Clara?’

  ‘At least the old bastard didn’t shoot her. She’ll be right.’

  Painter was holding out his hand. Lew couldn’t see his face properly; it swam before his eyes. Rain on the windscreen. He took the old man’s hand and shook it.

>   They stood there for a minute.

  ‘Yep.’ Painter said and got in behind the wheel.

  ‘You know how to drive?’ Lew asked.

  ‘I know how to drive. Hard part is convincing the wallopers I didn’t bloody steal it.’ Big smile. No teeth.

  Lew stepped away from the truck and watched as Painter drove down the red gravel track towards the Great Eastern Highway. The truck got smaller and smaller. Brackets of red dust coming together and turning into spirals above the cab in the heat, the engine whine climbing. Change bloody gears, Painter. Go on now.

  Painter changed up and Lew watched until the truck disappeared. He would never have said sorry.

  *

  When Lew reached the outskirts of Thompson’s Find, he passed the cemetery. Ornate railings surrounded the white marble headstones. Black writing. A mournful white angel with a raised index finger. Rows of metal and marble crosses, headstones, beds of white quartz. Walkways between graves wide enough for four men to carry coffins. A myrtle bush thriving against a monument of red bricks. Grey, termite-ravaged fence posts leaned north-south; red wires sagged, holding them in place. A painted wroughtiron gate had been left open and was off its top hinge. He changed gears and slowed the Land Rover further. Leaned the underside of his forearms and wrists on the steering wheel and studied the ruins of the town as he drove into it.

  An ugly pair of stunted, hopelessly foreign-looking oak trees partly obscured the outline of a crumbling stone church. A granite cross made from local stone remained on the apex. Beneath the cross, an empty window space in a perfect circle, the stained glass of the rose long gone. Collapsed and scorched roof timbers, two beams like fingers pointing in a defiant gesture towards the sky. The English trees should have died a long time ago. Perhaps they had. One was orange. The other a sickly grey.

  CHAPTER 54

  The feral cat was ginger striped and had beautiful yellow eyes. In its mouth the throat of a honeyeater it had taken. The broken wings askew.

  The young dingo saw her first and raced into the granite heather to attack.

  The cat transformed, suddenly becoming a crazed explosion of fur and claws. Seemingly larger now, backing off yet hissing and spitting at the dog in open-mouthed fury, left and right paws slashing.

  The boy dingo stood his ground at first, growling and showing his teeth. Lowering his head to snarl and watch. The cat yowled, hissed again and launched into a counterattack, running straight at him as if sensing his inexperience. He retreated, yelping, running away and looking back into the scrub with horror. Claw marks down his forehead and across his snout; spots of blood. His tail pressed once again between his legs.

  The bitch glanced at him and immediately leapt into the bushes. The orange demon flew to attack her but she simply snarled and lunged into the savagery; took the cat by the head and snapped it like a snake, smashing its body back and forth onto the ground.

  She let the body drop from her mouth and placed a paw on its neck. Using her front teeth, she opened the cat’s belly and exposed the bodies of five or so fledglings, baby zebra finches. She ate the half-digested birds and ripped the cat apart further to get to the liver and heart. Ate them also and turned back to the sulking youngster. Stared at him for a while and moved away from the cat’s body.

  The young dog edged forward. He had seen how she took the cat. He nosed at the bloody carcass and after a few more tentative sniffs and licks he too began to feed.

  CHAPTER 55

  On the eastern edge of Thompson’s Find there was a long copse of blackened mooja and gimlet trees. Behind them, a metal tower with portholes cut at regular lengths. Three wooden poles with wire strung between them. A large rusting cyanide tank with lines of rivets around its girth and up one side. The flotation plant alongside the tank. It was shaped like an enormous funnel and held in place with bolted angle-iron supports.

  A corrugated-iron roof had collapsed onto the ground and fallen to one side. Two large rusting wheels with metal poles through their axles. More sheets of corrugated iron at awkward angles in the ruin. The site was covered in the rubble of bricks and masonry. A dead thorn tree wrapped with galvanised metal piping.

  Lew continued into the main street of the town. He passed a set of stockyards and what was left of a Bickford aerated bottling plant. A twenty-head stamper and steam boiler lay rusting and abandoned beside the road. It still bore the metal imprint Ferguson and Sons Engineering Ltd Glasgow above the coal door. A burnt-out blacksmiths and livery stable. The wroughtiron sign still on the gates above the entrance: McGillivray’s Blacksmith’s and Iron Works.

  The first large building he came to was a newspaper office. Thompson’s Find Enquirer 1900 painted on the façade. Yellow and black paint peeling and the stonework was showing through. An ancient press, left at the front of the building. Its brown rust embossed David Payne and Co. Ltd on one brace; above that: Makers Ottley. Wharfedale. Frozen wheels, rusted fast, rollers and a large flywheel with ratchet teeth. A wooden support frame and wire basket.

  Directly opposite, another crumbling Edwardian facade. Collapsed verandas and tall windows. The Good Intent Hotel. The sign had slipped ninety degrees so that it had to be read on the vertical. The L of hotel was at the top and the G of good was at the bottom. He turned his head as he read and passed on.

  He rounded a corner slowly, and standing in the middle of the street was an old man. He had a large white beard and was wearing stained canvas trousers, an old fashioned collarless shirt buttoned to his throat, no tie and a sleeveless vest. A large belled-out hat with a snakeskin band.

  Behind him, four black and tan horned goats in harness. The cart, resembling a cut-down trap, was piled high with sandalwood branches. This precious load was secured with ropes tied off with sheepshank knots, pegs of wood through the loops.

  The old man waited as Lew stopped the vehicle, got out, closed the door and walked to him.

  ‘Gidday mate.’

  ‘Smith,’ the old man said. ‘Abraham Smith.’ He offered his hand.

  Lew nodded to the old man and shook his hand. ‘My name is Lewis McCleod, Mr Smith. How are you?’

  ‘I am well. Yourself?’

  ‘You the dingo shooter been down Drysdale Downs and Yate Valley Station? John Drysdale mentioned us to you I believe.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I got some bad news about Mr Drysdale,’ Lew said, ‘he’s had a stroke. Being cared for by Jimmy Wong, the cook.’

  The old man stared at him. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘Been bad luck around that place, Drysdale Downs. Lost Mrs Drysdale last year I think.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Other buildings, the Miners Institute and Post and Telegraph Office. Alongside that a Share Trading and Loans office and further down again, a smaller building. Berwick Moreing Mine Management and Engineering.

  ‘I knew John’s father, William Drysdale. Knew him as Bill,’ Abraham said. ‘Helped him clean up the show around Winjilla just after the war, y’know.’

  ‘I heard that.’

  ‘Killed on the station…when? Some years now. Looking for gold, the old fool.’

  ‘I have heard that.’

  ‘There is a daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lew looked away.

  Off to one side on some flat ground running out towards the mines, the football oval.
One set of goalposts remained and some spectator seating ran around the oval. Cement posts with wooden planks. A small covered stand with central stairs and filigree balustrades. A scoreboard: Visitors 1 6 12 and below that Thompson’s Tigers 16 18 114.

  ‘Never leaves you, that foolishness,’ Abraham said.

  ‘Did you get that dingo bitch?’ Lew asked. ‘The one that came back to the Downs woolshed and took a hogget?’

  ‘She runnin’ with a young red male? Come up out of the Yate Valley? I tracked her for Drysdale. Told him the story.’

  ‘He said.’

  ‘Well.’ Abraham waited a moment and looked back at his goats. ‘If it’s the one I saw, she is smart as any lubra. Never seen the like come to think of it. Wrecked my old Vauxhall chasin’ them I did. She in pup and must be getting ready soon.’

  ‘Could you tell me where she’s most likely to be? I want to get some of those dingo pups. Raise them up.’

  ‘That right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well you will wish you didn’t once you do. Dingos, you see what they do to a birthing ewe? The lambs?’

  ‘No,’ Lew shook his head.

  The old man blinked and put his chin up. ‘No good. Eat a lamb right out of the mother as it’s being born. I come,’ he clicked his front teeth together and hissed. ‘They gone. Best just clean ’em up.’

  ‘Can you raise them to change, Mr Smith?’

  ‘No young fella that’s their nature. Best to destroy them.’

  The street ran to a long view of rising ground and hillocks where the mines were located. Derelict poppet heads, small volcano shapes of grey tailings and yellow waste rock. Broken and sagging sets of rail lines running to the top of the slag heaps. Rusting orange storage tanks and a single tall red brick smoke stack. Engine houses around the head frames. Ruined workers cottages in rows leading up to the mine gates. A narrow road curving between the cottages.