Red Dog

by Louis de Bernières

  They clambered out of the car, stretched, fanned their faces with their hands because of the heat, and went to see how their dog was. When they saw him they put their hands to their mouths and laughed. Tally looked up at them and wagged his tail disconsolately. All they could recognise of him were two sorry-looking amber-yellow eyes, because the rest of him was an inch thick in dark-red dirt and dust.

  TALLY HO AT THE BARBECUE

  ‘Why don’t you take Tally for a scamper on the beach?’ asked Maureen. The evening had brought pleasantly cool temperatures, and in any case she fancied the idea of having the house to herself for a while.

  Jack looked at his watch. ‘Might be a nice idea,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some time to kill before I go on shift, and Tally could do with a run. Couldn’t you, mate?’ Tally seemed to agree, even though he had just been missing for several days, and had only recently returned, and so the pair of them set off for Dampier beach, just when the western sky was beginning to turn gold at the edges. A collared kingfisher sang ‘pukee, pukee, pukee’ as it flew overhead, and a posse of fork-tailed swifts sang ‘dzee, dzee, dzee’ as they swooped in the opposite direction, rolling and darting after insects. Man and dog made their way down to the beach, where a gentle swell was dropping wavelets onto the sand. Opposite was the strangely named East Intercourse Island, and south-west of that you could see Mistaken Island huddling in the sea, though no-one seemed to know who had originally been mistaken about what, in order for it to have earned itself such a quirky name. The beautiful islands of the Dampier Archipelago lay strung out across the ocean.

  A man was fishing off the beach with a handline, hoping to catch a garfish for the pan, but what really interested Tally Ho was the delicious, rich, juicy smell of frying steak, lambchops and sausages. His ears pricked up, his mouth watered and every nook of his brain began to engage itself in mischievous plans. Jack Collins sensed what was going on, and took hold of Tally’s collar before he could run off.

  As they walked down amid the barbecues, Jack was puzzled and amazed by the number of people who seemed to know Tally Ho already. ‘Look, there’s Red Dog!’ said one man, and another patted him on the head and said, ‘Hello, Bluey, howya goin’? Welcome to the barbie.’ Jack Collins realised that Tally must have made a lot of acquaintances in his times off. It occurred to him that perhaps Tally had already attended a few barbecues on this very beach, which was a popular place for the local folk to come and cook up in the evenings.

  He relaxed his grip for just one moment, and Tally took that chance to leap free and scamper away. Jack called after him, but Tally was too busy to hear and too obstinate to obey. What Jack saw next made the blood rise to his cheeks from sheer embarrassment.

  There was a man lifting sausages off his grill with a fork and bending down to put them on a plate that was on a rug beside him. On the plate were some salad and some new potatoes. When there were three sausages on the plate he straightened up to collect a burger from the grill, and when he looked down again, he had to look twice. There were no sausages. He gasped with surprise and shook his head in puzzlement. He scratched his head and looked around. Everyone was minding their own business. ‘Me snaggers!’ he said, ‘someone’s swiped me snaggers!’ He called to the man next to him, ‘’Ere, mate, did you swipe me snaggers? ‘Cause if so, I want ’em.’

  The man turned his head briefly, ‘Not me, mate. I got me own. If you want one, you’re welcome.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ said the first man, ‘they were just there and then there they were, gone.’

  Jack Collins called after Tally, but the dog was licking his lips to get off the last lovely traces of sausage-grease, and planning his next foray. He went down on his stomach and laid his head flat on the sand, with his nose pointing in the direction of a nice succulent steak that had just been put on a plate. The man who was about to eat it looked away for a second, and Tally darted in and snatched it, leaving his victim with nothing but a sliced tomato and a few scrapings of mustard. Tally bolted the steak and set off in search of a burger that he could smell quite distinctly at the other end of the beach.

  ‘Did you swipe my steak?’ the second man accused his neighbour, and ‘Who swiped me snaggers?’ called the first man, soon to be joined by ‘Bloody ’ell, where the devil’s me burger?’

  Jack saw all this and crept away as quietly and inconspicuously as he could. He knew that Tally would find his own way home, and he wasn’t going to hang about to be blamed for his dog’s behaviour. An angry miner wasn’t the kind of man you’d want to have a blue with.

  RED DOG MEETS JOHN

  ‘I don’t think he’s coming back,’ said Maureen Collins.

  ‘It’s easily the longest he’s ever been away,’ said Jack, shaking his head. They felt a little sad, as though they had both known that they were going to lose him, and had been trying not to think about it.

  ‘I hope he hasn’t been run over.’

  ‘We would’ve heard. In a small place like this, all the news goes round in a flash. Anyway, that one’s got more lives than a cat.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Maureen, ‘that he’s been going from door to door, bludging.’

  ‘He’s got a knack for locating tucker, that’s for sure,’ said Jack.

  ‘I suppose he’s probably all right, then. Still, it’s a shame. I miss the little fella.’ Tally had finally left home. Unlike most dogs, who are happy to spend the day either sleeping or watching life go by, he found life too interesting to stay in one place. He wanted to see what the world was like, wanted to know what was going on round the next corner, wanted to join in with things.

  He was too bright to spend his time being bored, and, whilst there were a lot of people he liked, he hadn’t yet found anyone he could really love, the way that dogs are always supposed to love. There wasn’t anyone to be devoted to. He would call in on Jack and Maureen from time to time, and he would always be happy to see them. He might stay a couple of days, and get fed and watered, but he and they knew that he had moved out for ever.

  It was lucky for him that the town was so full of lonely men. There had been a few aborigines and even fewer white people there before the iron companies and the salt company had moved in, but just recently a massive and rapid development had begun to take place. New docks were constructed, new roads, new houses for the workers, a new railway and a new airport. In order to build all this, hundreds of men had arrived from all corners of the world, bringing nothing with them but their physical strength, their optimism and their memories of distant homes. Some of them were escaping from bad lives, some had no idea how they wanted their lives to be, and others had grand plans about how they could work their way from rags to riches.

  They were either rootless or uprooted. They were from Poland, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, Greece, England, Yugoslavia, and from other parts of Australia too. Most had brought no wives or family with them, and for the time being they lived in big huts that had been towed on trailers all the way up from Perth. Some of them were rough and some gentle, some were honest and some not. There were those who got rowdy and drunk, and picked fights, there were those who were quiet and sad, and there were those who told jokes and could be happy anywhere at all. With no women to keep an eye on them, they easily turned into eccentrics. A man might shave his head and grow an immense beard. He might to go to Perth for a week, go ‘blotto on Rotto’, and come back with a terrible hangover and lots of painful tattoos. He might wear odd socks and have his trousers full of holes. He might not wash for a week, or he might read books all night so that he was red-eyed and weary in the morning when it was time to go to work. They were all pioneers, and had learned to live hard and simple lives in this landscape that was almost a desert.

  These brawny individuals took a rapid shine to Tally. They had little affection in their lives, and they could feel lonely even with all their workmates around them, so it was good to have a dog that you could stroke, and have playfights with. It was good to have a dog to talk to, wh
o never swore at you and was always glad to see you. Tally liked them, too, because they ruffled his ears and roughed him up a bit, and rolled him on his back to tickle his stomach. They fed him meaty morsels from their sandwiches and dinner plates, and they brought him special treats from the butcher. Even though he was sometimes absent for days on end, there would always be a can of dogfood on the shelf, along with all the tools and oily rags, and there would always be a bit of steak left over from the weekend’s barbecue.

  No-one knew his real name, and before long he was simply called ‘Red Dog’. A dog is happy to have lots of names, and it was no bother to him if someone wanted to call him ‘Red’. In any case, a red dog is exactly what Tally was. He was a Red Cloud kelpie, a fine old Australian breed of sheepdog, very clever and energetic, but some people thought that Red Dog might have had some cattle dog in his ancestry. He was one of three puppies, and Tally turned out a lovely dark, coppery colour, with amber-yellow eyes and pricked-up ears. His tail was slightly bushy, and on his shoulders and chest the fur was thick like a mane. His forehead was broad and his nose was brown, a little bit turned up at the end. His body was solid and strong, and if you picked him up you were surprised by how heavy he was.

  Red Dog and the men from the Hamersley Iron Transport section got to know each other, because one of their bus drivers adopted him and became the only person to whom he ever belonged.

  John was not a big fierce man like some of the miners. He was small and quite young, and he loved animals almost more than anything else. He had high cheekbones because he was half Maori, and people used to say of him that he was a friend to everyone. One day John met Red Dog in a street in Dampier, when he was standing outside his bus waiting for some of his daily passengers to arrive. When he caught sight of Red Dog he reacted with instinctive pleasure, crouching down on one knee and saying, ‘Hey, boy! Here!’ and clicking his fingers and tongue. Red Dog, who had been busy with his own thoughts, stopped and looked at him. ‘Come on, mate,’ said John, and Red Dog wagged his tail. ‘Come and say g’day,’ said John.

  Red Dog came over and John reached down and took his right paw. He shook it and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, mate.’ John took Red Dog’s head in both hands, and looked into his eyes. ‘Hey, you’re a beauty,’ he said, and Red Dog knew straight away that from now on his life was going to take a new direction.

  When the miners turned up to take their big yellow bus to work they found John sitting in the driver’s seat, and Red Dog sitting in the seat behind him.

  RED DOG AND NANCY GREY

  One day someone turned up on the bus whom no-one had ever seen before. Nancy Grey was new in town, having come to work as a secretary at Hamersley Iron, and she had never heard about Red Dog.

  When she got on the bus to go for her first morning at work, she found it full of miners, and with no empty seats, except for a seat behind the driver, which had a red dog in it. She looked at the rows of men grinning at her, and she gazed at the red dog, who looked away as if he had not noticed her.

  None of the men offered her their seat, because they wanted to see what would happen when Nancy tried to move Red Dog.

  ‘Down!’ said Nancy, who wasn’t going to take any nonsense from an animal. Red Dog looked up at her, and settled himself into his seat more firmly.

  ‘Bad dog!’ exclaimed Nancy, and Red Dog curled his lip and gave a low growl. Nancy was a little bit shocked, and drew back but at the same time she was almost sure that this dog would never bite her. His expression wasn’t quite fierce enough. The men in the bus began to laugh at her. ‘You’ll never get him out of there!’ said one.

  ‘That’s his seat,’ said another. ‘No-one sits there when Red wants it.’

  Nancy faced the men, and began to blush. It was embarrassing to be outfaced by a dog and a busload of miners. Determined not to give in, she sat down gingerly on the very edge of the seat, where Red Dog wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Red Dog was disturbed, however. This was his seat, and everyone knew it. What was more, the whole seat was his, and not just a half of it. Ever since he had met John, he had travelled around as much as he wanted on the company buses, no matter who the driver was, and he always had the seat behind the driver. It was emphatically his seat, and no-one else’s. He showed Nancy his teeth and growled again.

  ‘Well, aren’t you a charmer?’ she said, but she didn’t budge.

  Red Dog could see that threats weren’t doing any good, so he decided to push her off the seat. He turned around, stuck his muzzle under her thigh, and pushed. She was surprised by how strong he was, and she was almost tipped off. Behind her the men began to laugh again, and she grew even more determined.

  ‘I’m not moving,’ she told the dog quietly, ‘so you’ll just have to put up with me.’

  Red Dog wasn’t going to give in either, and he pushed Nancy until she only had one tiny bit of her backside on the seat. He felt that he had made his point, and let her perch there, uncomfortable as she was.

  The next day Nancy got on the bus again, and there was Red Dog, sitting behind the driver’s seat once more. ‘Oh, no,’ she thought, because once again the bus was full, and all the men were waiting to see what was going to happen. The people in the office had told her about the dog after she had got into work the previous morning, and now she knew that this was the dog who travelled around as the fancy took him. He lived mostly in the transport workshops, keeping an eye on what was going on, and he was a paid-up member of the Transport Workers’ Union. When the action in the workshop got too slow, he got lifts all over the area. Sometimes he travelled on the water-truck, sometimes in the company utes, sometimes in the giant train–trucks.

  As he got to know more and more people, he began to take lifts in their private cars as well. You had to watch out for Red Dog when you were driving, because he never forgot a vehicle that he had had a lift in, remembering both the paintwork and the sound of the engine, and he would wait by the side of the road until one of them came along. Quite suddenly he would run out in front of the car so that you had to screech to a halt and let him in, so you learned to watch out for him in the same way that you watched out for rock-wallabies and wallaroos. Red Dog always insisted on the front seat, especially on the company buses, even more especially when John was driving, and that was that.

  Nancy sat down a little closer to Red Dog than she had yesterday, and he looked sideways at her, showing the whites of his eyes, as if he were about to bite her. Instead he got down, stuck his muzzle under her thigh and once more tried to push her off. Nancy was conscious of the sniggers of the men in the bus, and, mustering as much dignity as she could, she said, ‘None of you’s a gentleman, that’s for sure.’

  Red Dog seemed a little put out by this remark and he sat up and pretended that there was no-one else on his seat. If he couldn’t move that obstinate woman, he would just have to treat her with the disdain that she deserved. He let her put a little bit more of her backside on the seat.

  The next morning Red Dog realised that he was looking forward to sitting next to Nancy, and when she sat next to him he forgot to try to push her off. He thought that he might just try being a bit aloof, but when she said ‘Hi, Red!’ and patted him on the head, he couldn’t help smiling a little in the way that dogs do. He thumped his tail on the seat, once only, and then went back to looking out of the window, not wanting to give way too much to begin with.

  Nancy didn’t turn round, but she could tell that the miners were impressed, and weren’t mocking her any more. She knew that she had scored a victory over them at the same time as she had won over Red Dog.

  From that moment onward, Red Dog and Nancy became friends. There were not many others who dared to try it, but Nancy sat next to him whenever she liked.

  NANCY, RED DOG AND JOHN

  There weren’t many single women around the place in those days, so if one of them turned up, it caused a lot of excitement and interest in all the single young men. They speculated as to what she would be
like and whether anyone had a chance of going out with her. If anyone was spotted chatting up a girl, the other men would rib him about it, saying, ‘Fancy your chances, eh, mate?’ and ‘What makes you think she’d go for a skinny little runt like you, when there’s proper blokes like us?’

  John got to know Nancy a little because Red Dog let her sit next to him behind the driver’s seat of the bus, so that he was able to have snatches of conversation with her as he was driving along. They first got to talk properly because one day Red Dog made a smell so bad that they had to evacuate the bus completely, until it was safe to go back on. Even Red Dog got out and waited, wagging his tail and being friendly, as if he expected to be congratulated.

  John looked shyly at Nancy, and she smiled back. They both bent down to pat Red Dog on the head, and their hands touched. They both laughed, a little embarrassed, and John said, ‘Did you hear what happened yesterday? There was a new driver on the bus, and he tried to throw Red out.’

  ‘Really?’ said Nancy.

  ‘Yeah, and Red Dog wasn’t having it, and he was growling at this driver, and then the blokes started shouting and jeering at him.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well, the blokes made it clear what was what, and the new driver had to let Red stay on. Anyway, when the driver asked about it at the depot, we told him all about Red, and now he knows better.’

  ‘I saw something funny the other day, a bit like that,’ said Nancy. ‘Red was in the shopping mall, and you know it says “No Dogs” on the door, and he was lying there in the entrance because it was like an oven outside, and he likes the air-conditioning, and no-one ever tries to move him because he isn’t just any old dog.’