Dark Roots

by Cate Kennedy

  It’s the stupid little things, isn’t it? What I couldn’t stop crying at was the cheap yellow polyester lining of her coffin; all the tack and scrimping. Stapled onto the sides with a staple-gun. And her stick-thin arms. I hadn’t seen her in a year, so it was a shock, still. And the powdery make-up they’d slapped on over the needle tracks. They could have matched her skin-tone, surely. Just shown a bit of love. That wouldn’t have taken two minutes.

  Poor Alan. In the end he just wanted a refuge, I suppose. I remember him arriving home last Wednesday after laying low in Port Douglas for two months. I know how he would have spent that time. Looking over his shoulder and doing a lot of business by phone. He was a nervous wreck. He looked a hundred. Waiting for the shoe to drop, I suppose.

  Still, he played his part as best he could. Fumbling with the dog’s leash, brightly suggesting an early-morning walk over the headland.

  I took Goldie off the leash, though. Let her meander with me past the guardrail and down to the bluff. It wasn’t the first time we’d done it. I suppose it does look dangerous, with the sheer drop and the waves crashing below. It’s only natural he would follow.

  Say what you like, it has dignity, a sea burial. So silent and elemental, and so few witnesses.

  ‘Alan gone again?’ That’s what the bridge ladies will say tomorrow with that mock sympathy, and I’ll nod with a mock regretful smile. Then I’ll deal the cards.

  Kill or Cure

  ‘It’s a lot of routine, I’m warning you,’ John had said before they were married. ‘You won’t just be marrying me, you’ll be marrying the place.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ she’d said. Helen remembered that night; exactly the way she’d said it as she’d leaned over the table. She’d had no idea, then, how much organising it had taken him just to have a weekend off in the city. She’d assumed once you planted stuff in the ground or put sheep out in a paddock, things basically took care of themselves.

  ‘You won’t know what to do with yourself,’ her friends at work had said, not without a trace of envy, and she’d laughed.

  ‘Watch me,’ she’d smiled, raising her glass. She remembered that day, too; a great lunch in a good café where the owner knew her name. Funny the things you took for granted.

  Now she watches John methodically chewing through a sandwich as she cuts up more cheese and tomato. As he eats he reads through the mail: the bank statements and veterinary bills she’s collected for him that morning. The phone only rings now at mealtimes when people know he’s going to be home: stock managers, reps, the CFA lieutenant, with some message about fertiliser or machinery or a meeting. At first, they’d rung all through the day, and she’d done her best to take everything down dutifully, pretending to know what they were talking about, but something’s shifted there; word’s got around.

  Nothing else breaks the pattern of the day, not even weekends, when things go the same, only slower. When she visits the butcher, who’s always friendly, she notices she has to be careful not to talk too much in what is often her biggest conversation with someone other than her husband for days. In town, she walks slowly down the quiet main street with its two pubs and three takeaways, the big new supermarket dumped at the end looking like a huge shiny toy. She glances into the hopeless little library with its old magazine collection and well-thumbed large-print westerns. She hasn’t gone in there to sign a membership form. Not yet.

  The old dog trains up the young dog, is what John explains.

  ‘Up, Fella,’ he says shortly to the old dog, whose adoration overcomes arthritis and bad hips, so that he determinedly hauls himself onto the tray of the ute. The new dog, in rangy puppyhood, watches nervously, then crouches and unfolds like a pocketknife to spring up alongside.

  Helen watches them both there side by side amid the spades and ropes and coils of wire, as John starts up the ute and drives out of the yard. She watches the quaking balance of the young dog, which they’ve named Jake. It has to be a name you could shout, that the dogs can differentiate. Has to have a sharp consonant in it. Jake staggers on the ute tray, tail tucked between his legs, knobbly pelvis hunched into the air, looking miserably ahead as Fella drops his head over the side and relaxes.

  Helen has to keep checking herself with the dogs. They aren’t like pets. She stoops to give them a pat and they do a double take at her, then Fella breaks away uncomfortably to lie down nearby and Jake leans into her legs, overwhelmed by the unaccustomed attention. She feels John watching her, amused.

  ‘The more you reward them for nothing,’ he says, ‘the less they’ll obey you.’ And it’s true; they hesitate before coming when she calls, glancing uncertainly at John first. At nights they get fed and tied up, during the day they stick close to him, alert and anticipating every monosyllabic command. Jake has the genetic hard-wiring, just like Fella. The push, John calls it. It’s something bred into them. They stay skinny and obsessive, focused only when John starts up the tractor or the chainsaw, or grabs the keys to go and move some sheep. A tremor seems to pass through their bodies then, like everything else is just waiting around. Fella rests with one ear up like an antenna. Jake can’t settle, ever. He positions himself on the grass in front of the house, equidistant between the two doors, watching. Whichever one John comes out of, he’s ready.

  ‘Chooks okay?’ says John, stirring his tea.

  ‘Yeah, they’re good.’

  Three days before, she’d released the six new chickens into the run, the dogs observing her thoughtfully from the back of the ute. She’d ordered the birds from the produce store and spent a day shifting the old machinery cluttering up the shed and reinforcing the netting with new star pickets. The chickens had stepped through the overgrown run suspiciously, pecking here and there at shoots of green. At the show Helen’s seen a rooster she wants — a big white cockerel with a brilliant red comb. And she’ll make a temporary yard for them so they can scratch over the weed-choked vegetable patch, and then she’ll put in some asparagus. The weeds have got away from her, she’s the first to admit. Turn your back and they’re up to your waist. She doesn’t know where the days go. She’ll put some asparagus in, and change those awful curtains in the guest room, and then she’ll invite some friends up from the city.

  She stacks plates in the sink now, and catches sight of the two dogs out the kitchen window. Jake’s still sitting at his post, gazing through the glass with rapt gleaming attention at John eating, waiting to jump on command.

  ‘That dog’s got to learn to relax,’ she says jokingly as John stands to go, and he grins and lifts her hair, kisses her on the back of her neck.

  ‘He’s a kelpie,’ he says. ‘They never relax. They’re like the class prefect.’

  He’s out the door with one more sandwich, and as she starts washing plates, she can hear the dogs’ claws hit the metal as they scrabble back into the ute. She finds herself idly reading the label on the washing-up liquid, and shakes her head impatiently. No wonder, like a couple of acolytes, the dogs idolise John, with his wordless, unequivocal sense of purpose and order, his day full of small objectives, the onward roll of tyres.

  Every couple of nights she kneels next to him on the verandah, holding the dogs steady as he methodically checks for grass seeds in their paws and coats. The dogs submit to his ministrations stiffly, tucking their tails up between their legs and looking away as he carefully separates their toes. She feels their ribs move under his fingers as he finds corkscrew grass in tufts of hair and inside their ears. Covertly, she watches his slow, hard hands working through their fur. When they’d talked about getting married she’d taken him to meet her parents, and as she was gabbling nervously at the table she’d felt his hand move to the small of her back and stay there, the silent, soothing pressure of his palm warm through her silk shirt.

  ‘Well,’ her father had said to her later, ‘there’s a bloke who’s not going to waste his time on small
talk.’ And Helen had imagined the two of them working together, heads close and no need for words; some enviable, shared comprehension.

  ‘Hey, Jakey,’ she whispers now, cuddling the young dog to her, smelling his clean, grassy smell. Jake’s going to love her, she’s decided. She scratches him behind the ears, and he collapses, sagging and boneless, across her knees.

  Constantly, it seems, she needs to get a broom and brush down the cobwebs that keep appearing in the house. She’ll be lying in bed and notice fine webs around the windows shining in the sun, in places she’s only swept clean days before. Narrow spiders repair them incessantly, their crooked legs in constant circular motion. Around the lights they construct elaborate web traps, throwing disconcerting, hugely magnified shadows on the walls. She rotates the broom slowly, collecting the spider webs like sticky spun sugar from every crevice and insect path.

  Helen can’t believe, now, how housework can consume her day, how the weeds outside can get so out of hand so quickly, how she’s up a ladder washing windows instead of at the desk in the study, writing query letters for some freelance work. All she’s done at that desk, so far, is steer her way through the clunky computer program they use to do the farm books, sitting in the big antique chair that had belonged to John’s father. The computer hum and the clock are the only sounds in the room. On the smallest pretext, she drives herself into town.

  ‘Going to be a big year for fires, you reckon?’ says the butcher, wrapping up her meat in white paper as she lingers in the shop.

  ‘Well, after that wet spring, probably,’ she answers. Something she’s heard John say, as he stands looking at the paddocks drying off.

  ‘Yep. Total fire ban, soon.’ He slides the cabinet shut.

  ‘We won’t be needing to get these free-range eggs from you much longer. Did I tell you I got some chickens last week?’ she says suddenly, and his genial face slides from the next customer waiting and back to her, courteously patient.

  ‘Is that right?’

  The other customer looks at her, curious, and she smiles quickly and says goodbye. Jesus, I’m pathetic, she tells herself, slinging the shopping into the car and sliding in. Next to where she’s parked, one of the takeaway cafés has a sign advertising cuppachinos. She’d smirked at this when she’d first come to town, but six months of meeting no one to have one with has wiped the grin off her face. The joke had been on her after all, thinking she could afford to be condescending.

  The next morning, John and the dogs are long gone by the time she takes the compost scraps down to the chicken yard. It’s silent. Inside, she finds all six of them strewn across the enclosure, dead. Their bodies seem deflated somehow; limp as rags, feathers scattered through the weeds. Trembling, she finds the spot where a dog has scraped away one of the bricks she’s wedged in, and dug a hole wide enough to wriggle under.

  When John comes back midmorning she tells him what’s happened and finds she has to keep her voice from shaking.

  ‘They’re just all torn up,’ she says finally, ‘just thrown around.’ She turns to look accusingly at Jake, who gazes back at her with total, oblivious incomprehension. His tongue lolls with goodwill.

  ‘There’s an old antidote for it,’ John says after lunch as he gets the shovel to bury the chickens. ‘It’s like a kill or cure thing. Like aversion therapy.’ He takes one of the dead birds and ties it to Jake’s collar. The dog’s cautious interest in proceedings turns to nervous incredulity, his paws skidding desperately as John yanks him into the chicken shed and ties him up on a short rope. There, he strains and chokes, his eyes rolling in panic, fighting the rope. The chicken’s neck lolls and flops like a broken toy.

  ‘Now we leave him,’ John says.

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Theory is that the dog associates the smell of the dead chook with being exiled, or something — he never wants to go near them again.’

  Jake’s frenzied barking doesn’t begin until he hears the ute start up when John leaves for the yards again. Then Helen thinks he might strangle himself, or have a fit. She can hear him in there, like someone having a nightmare, pulling and gagging at the rope, howling for release, hour after hour. Finally, just to get away from it, she gets in the car and goes into town to collect the mail and do some shopping, and hides in the air-conditioned library for as long as she can, thumbing through gardening magazines. As soon as she arrives home, though, the dog hears her car door and starts up again.

  When she hears the ute pull finally into the drive she runs out and grabs John’s arm.

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ she says. ‘Let him off, for godsakes. I’ll fix the fencing. Just let him off.’

  He looks at her for a long moment. ‘You’re making a rod for your own back,’ he says, taking off his hat and throwing it into the tray. ‘It’s the way the cure works. Don’t think of it as cruel, Helen. It’s only for a day or two. I heard of an old farmer once, grabbed one of the feathers and wired it onto the dog’s jaw so it stayed tickling the back of its throat for hours. Never went anywhere near a chook again.’

  She stares at him, feeling hot saliva flood her mouth, her own throat closing and gagging like a reflex.

  ‘Let him off,’ she says tightly, and turns away.

  She hears Jake’s barking change to whining hysteria as John goes over, his mouth set in its taciturn line of disapproval, and unties the rope. The dog bows before him, obsequious as a penitent before a god.

  A week later, galvanised with fresh energy, she cleans the house of new webs and decides to tackle the fencing again. She will set the reinforced wire into a trough of cement, then bend extra chicken wire out from the base to make it impossible for the dogs, or a fox, to dig in. It will be impenetrable, safe from predation, and then she will buy more chickens and the rooster, and start afresh.

  She takes the shovel from where it’s leaning against the shed, and begins digging what she envisages will be a long trench around the enclosure. But even after what seems like hours, when she comes back after going inside for a drink of water, sweaty and light-headed, she can’t believe how shallow the hole is that she’s managed to scrape out. She sucks her blisters and sits back on the porch, her enthusiasm baked dry and shrivelled in the heat. John sees what she’s been doing when he comes home for lunch; notes the puny pile of dry dirt and the abandoned tools.

  ‘You’d be better off using the square-edge spade for that,’ is his only comment. ‘It’s sharper.’ His hand reaches for the stack of mail as he sits down.

  Helen nods, and takes out more slices of bread. After this, she’ll do another load of washing then cut up the steak in the fridge for tonight. Used to be the butcher would do that for her, free of charge, as they chatted. But last time she’d gone in there they’d hardly spoken. He must have seen her in the previous week, carrying the two polystyrene trays of discounted chops she’d bought on impulse at the supermarket, because he’d stared out at the street behind her, pointedly offhand, as she talked to him. ‘Anything else?’ he’d said finally, wrapping up the steak quickly and clapping the parcel with finality onto the counter. She’d broken off, confused, and handed him the money as she shook her head.

  ‘Regards to John,’ he’d said shortly as she went out.

  She’s just cooking the rice when the phone rings. John answers and runs a hand tiredly over his jaw.

  ‘Sorry, Hel. Just put mine in the oven. There’s some sheep out on the road up McKenna’s lane; they must have slipped under at the creek. I’ll have to go before it gets too dark.’

  He doesn’t ask her to come and help, she notices. Assumes she’ll sit here useless, reading her library book. She follows him outside, where the sun is setting in a drenching sea of red over the paddocks. Crickets fly up around their legs in the dusk, and tinder-dry grass crunches to powder beneath their shoes.

  ‘I’ll take Fella in the cabin for once,
’ he says, opening the passenger door, ‘less distance to jump for him.’ Fella scrambles up stiffly, goes straight to the floor and curls there as if not pushing his luck. So perfectly devoted, thinks Helen, watching him tuck his tail in quickly so it doesn’t get caught in the door, so grateful for every small concession. She’s pulling the gate open when she senses Jake floundering through the fence and coming up behind her.

  For a fleeting second she has an idea the dog is waiting for her command. She imagines him pushing his head briefly into her hand, a small communiqué of devotion, like he does with John. The padding feet approach behind her, and then suddenly she feels teeth nip her heel sharply and Jake slinks away again into the shadows. It takes her a long, astounded moment to realise the dog has actually bitten her.

  ‘Come here!’ she calls angrily, hearing her voice crack as she raises it. The dog skirts her in a wide semicircle, sharply outlined in the dusk, then gives her one sly contemptuous sidelong glance before leaping carelessly into the back of the ute.

  John, not noticing, gives her a small wave as he drives out. When Helen snaps on the light in the bathroom a few minutes later to find some disinfectant, she sees her jeans and socks are studded with dozens of grass seeds, twisted like perfectly formed screws into the fabric, designed to go in and never come out.

  When he finally returns she is sitting on the floor in the laundry, grimly going through their socks and picking out the embedded corkscrew grass. Summer hasn’t even really hit yet; she’ll have months of this ahead. Get used to it, she tells herself. You wanted it, now put up or shut up. The tightness in her shoulders, the ache from her pointless bout of digging, pulls her neck down, and she leans back against the cool brick of the laundry wall, her throat filling. She hears John pull his boots off one by one and slide open the screen door, and can tell from his footfalls up the hall to bed how tired he is.

  She can hear it in his voice, too, when she climbs into bed herself, red-eyed and sniffing, an hour later.