Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

‘No, thank you,’ she managed.

  ‘You can’t be out in this cold, sweetie,’ he said and his grip on her arm tightened. She yanked her arm away and shouted at him. ‘No! Thank you.’ And then she ran, turning to the right, to the dark woods, but he was behind her. Walking fast, keeping close.

  ‘You can’t go that way. There’s nothing there. Don’t be scared. I’m just…’

  She kept running, walking, running, and he was behind her. He was matching her step for step. She felt her heart beating; too fast. She was frightened now. What if he dragged her into the forest? There was no one to save her, no one to hear if she screamed.

  She heard a car engine, tyres scattering dirt as a car pulled up at the side of the road and the man stopped, turned. Jessica stopped too, looked back into Matthew’s headlights. Matthew’s body beside her, Matthew’s arm around her waist, pulling her towards the car, and she was grateful. She let herself be led.

  ‘Any trouble?’ the stranger asked.

  ‘Nah.’ Matthew stopped, shook the man’s hand. ‘All good now.’

  All good. The relief of his arm around her. This one sure thing.

  ‘That right? All good?’ He was speaking to her. Jessica nodded. She let Matthew lead her. Let Matthew ease her into the passenger seat. When he shut the door she felt safe inside. Matthew climbed in. Turned the car around, waved to the stranger as men do, one finger raised.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jessica. She was shaking, but she was not sure if it was anger or relief. ‘It’s just…’

  Then she saw Matthew’s face, the tears streaming down it.

  ‘I’m such a shit,’ Matthew said.

  She hesitated. The way he’d hurled the laptop. But he was crying. He was so vulnerable, so scared.

  ‘No. No, baby, no, you’re not.’

  ‘I’m a fuckhead.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You should hate me.’

  ‘I love you.’ She put her hand on his thigh as he geared down for the turn.

  ‘No wonder you want to leave me.’ He was weeping openly now and her heart was breaking. She reached out to stroke his cheek, wiped the tears away, but more came to replace them.

  ‘Leave? I love you. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Leave me for Gus.’

  ‘Gus? Gus is an idiot.’

  Matthew raised a hand and slapped at the side of his head. He tugged his hair—hard—and she winced, reached out, stilled his hand.

  ‘I hate Gus,’ she said, remembering that she’d felt this to be true. ‘I’ll never leave. I hate him. I do.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I swear.’

  They had stopped outside the shack now, such a short drive. Such a long walk.

  ‘Honey, honey.’ She turned his face towards her. ‘I love you. I love you. Gus is an idiot. I love you.’

  His eyes flooded with relief, and she kissed him.

  He clung to her awkwardly, turning his body to press up against her. She spread her fingers through his hair, smoothing down the place he had just slapped. She stroked his scalp. He let his tongue stray into her mouth. Then her jeans were undone and he was tugging them down. She was pressed against the seat. It was awkward, her hip hurt. It was cold. He was on top of her. She started to push him away, but she loved him. She made herself relax. He prised the laptop from her fingers and it was okay. It really didn’t matter. Matthew was the loved one. Her studies were just something she had done. Something that was almost over. This was what was real, and he was still weeping when he pushed himself into her. He lifted her awkwardly and then it felt right. The comfort of him rocking against her.

  ‘There, there,’ she said; a whisper. ‘I love you. See? I love you.’ She checked up and down the street but the road was empty, the windows blind.

  ‘So much,’ he said and then he touched her in the way that only he knew, and she closed her eyes. She didn’t care who was walking along their street. She couldn’t think anything, couldn’t say anything, and the sky was ripe with stars and she opened her mouth to them and they were inside her.

  Jessica startled awake. The sun was so bright. She blinked, shaded her eyes. Her body ached but that was just how she felt after sex. Always.

  Not always.

  Why hadn’t William called her back? He had told her he wanted to see her again. He had said it right here, on this couch. She looked out to the bright sun reflected off the sand, painting stripes and squares on the couch. A view of the water.

  And from the strand? A view of the couch. Her heart started to thump wildly in her chest. She knew where William lived. She had the address in her phone, although she had never visited.

  She backed out carefully on the slick road and turned the car in his direction. And drove.

  Old logging track. Cluster of houses. There was nothing unusual about William’s place. There were a thousand houses like this one, prefabs, nothing to distinguish one from another. There were a few letters in the mailbox, their damp ends curling out into the weather. No car in the drive. Jessica pulled up on the street outside and checked the address in her phone. Number twelve. And even as she stepped towards the gate she could hear the dog barking, claws scratching against the door. Jessica hurried up to the front door. Her knocking was obliterated by the barking and scrambling. She backed away and peered in through a side window.

  A dog, a young labrador similar to her missing puppy. She had forgotten that William had another dog from Brutus’ litter. The poor abandoned thing leapt at the window, frantic, scratching at the glass. Jessica turned around and looked helplessly out at the houses next door. The one on the right had a for sale sign. The one on the left had not seen a lawnmower for some months. Across the road a woman stood at her open front door, staring at Jessica. She was dressed in a long quilted jacket with the flannel legs of her pyjamas hanging down to her ugg boots.

  Jessica hurried across the road. ‘Do you know how long William’s been away?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but you can tell him if he doesn’t shut that dog up someone’ll shoot it.’ She paused, looked Jessica rudely up and down. ‘Round here people like some peace and quiet.’

  ‘How long has it been barking?’

  ‘Two days. Straight.’

  ‘William hasn’t been home for two days?’

  ‘If you can’t look after a pet you shouldn’t have one.’ She turned and shuffled inside, slamming the door.

  Two days. Two days ago William had left her place and had since failed to answer his phone. She ran across the road and pushed through the shrubbery at the side of the house. Most of the windows were closed. She rattled each one and the dog followed her, scrambling from one room to the next. A window at the back was ajar. She opened it; the dog jumped up, scratching at the wire screen. It was easy enough to push the screen in. Jessica hauled herself up over the sill. The puppy jumped and licked and whined.

  The place smelled terrible and when Jessica walked into the corridor, sidestepping puddles of urine and lumps of dog shit, she could see why. In the kitchen a big bag of kibble had been torn open, the remnants of it scattered about the floor. The fridge was open and anything within reach torn, eaten, spread onto the linoleum. No water, but it was clear from water splashed around the little bathroom that the dog had been drinking from the toilet bowl. In the lounge room it had torn all the cushions and strewn the stuffing around.

  Jessica filled the empty bowl with water and the dog, a female pup a little bigger than Brutus, divided her attention between drinking and turning to Jessica for a pat. Starved of water and attention in equal measure.

  The puppy finished the water in the bowl and then there was the scrabbling of claws on the lino as she ran, tripping and falling, to what must be the bedroom door. The puppy sniffed at it, jumped up onto it. There were already gouges in the paint, so it wasn’t the first time the dog had thrown herself at the door.

  Jessica turned the handle and pushed the door with her shoulder. It didn’t move. She bent low and tried
again, putting her back into it. It shifted minutely—there was something blocking it. Jessica felt her heart skip.

  ‘William?’ She pushed again. The door inched forward, the gap big enough for the puppy to slip through, sweet little tail disappearing. Jessica heard her snuffling and whimpering, and pushed harder. She squeezed through the gap.

  But for his size, William would have been unrecognisable. His huge hands, the massive spread of his body—but his face was a swollen ball of dried blood. And there were no eyes. That was what struck her: his eyes had disappeared into a mask of doughy skin.

  Matthew alive.

  William dead.

  She shook her head. It was all upside down.

  She stepped away from his body. She had wished Matthew back to life, but this wasn’t fair. This trade, one man for another.

  ‘Please, God. Take Matthew back. Leave William.’ She heard her mother in her voice, betraying herself. Praying to a God she did not believe in.

  The puppy was standing on the lifeless chest, nuzzling there. And then, as if it really was a miracle, William’s hand moved towards the dog’s head.

  He was alive. Barely. She should have checked before begging for divine intervention.

  The puppy was licking the dried blood on what had once been his nose. Jessica pulled her away and reached for her phone. Dialled triple zero.

  Then: ‘Ambulance,’ she said, before the woman had time to ask. ‘And police. Everyone. You’ve got to send everyone you have right now.’

  She stayed on the line as they told her to. She spoke to William when they said she should and he made a sound. When he opened his mouth she could see his bloodied, broken teeth.

  How can you fix something like that? How do you treat a man with no face?

  ‘You’ve got to come quickly,’ she said.

  They told her to wet a cloth and she had to leave him, the puppy tucked under one arm, the phone tucked up under her chin. She found a tea towel and filled a glass and when she approached the bedroom again she knew he would be dead now. She dripped water near his mouth and he opened his lips and licked at it. She let the drops fall into him and he began to shift and move and she shushed him.

  ‘You have to lie still.’

  He made a sound that might have been her name.

  ‘Yeah. It’s Jessica. I’m here. I’m here.’

  He took more water, sucking it off the cloth.

  ‘Hey, after this,’ she said, ‘if you scrub up okay…do you want to go out with me?’ It sounded ridiculous, like something you would say in primary school, but she said it again anyway. ‘Do you want to go on a date or something?’

  He began to laugh. His lips shifted into a swollen smile and his chest rose and fell and he grunted and hissed in pain. Broken ribs, she supposed. She hugged the puppy closer so she couldn’t jump on him again.

  ‘Well? Do you?’

  He opened his toothless mouth. ‘Yeah, all right.’

  ‘They’re approaching the house now, ma’am. Can you hear a siren?’

  They had heard her flirting with him. She felt a little embarrassed. The siren was there in the distance.

  ‘I hear them.’

  ‘Stay on the line, ma’am. Is the door open?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She felt something on her leg. His big hand, squeezing. She tried to look into his eyes but they were eclipsed by dark swollen flesh.

  She heard the ambos in the house.

  ‘They’re here,’ she said, standing.

  ‘The police won’t be far behind,’ said the voice on the phone.

  She moved his hand off her leg and shuffled back, making way for the three people in blue uniforms. Nodding to their backs because they were all around him, touching him, helping him, saving him.

  ‘Jesus,’ said the woman ambo, short and stocky and practical. ‘You’ve been in the wars, mate. What’s the other guy look like?’

  Jessica frowned. She was pretty sure she knew.

  Portia shivered in the bow of the boat. Jessica had thought about changing the dog’s name to something less Shakespearian but somehow it had stuck. The dog liked it too: looked up and seemed to grin whenever she heard the name.

  She wasn’t grinning now. Jessica had thrown an old blanket over her, but it wasn’t the cold. The dog was afraid of the rise and fall.

  Brutus had been such great company on the boat. She remembered the comfort of him sitting like a figurehead at the prow, panting happily and staring out at the horizon. She missed him. Portia was not as brave, but Jessica thought she would get used to the listless back and forth of a morning tide.

  The ocean looked like liquid silver. Light touched the crest of each swell; the surface thick as it undulated, a great beast breathing. She missed the weight of the gun in her pocket.

  She had stepped down from the stairs at the back of the shack cautiously, as if trying not to wake a sleeping lion. She had always felt safe on her way out to the boat but if he came at her she would not be able to defend herself. Jessica had checked to see that none of the neighbours were watching. She knew how it looked. Frightened, beaten girlfriend, glancing nervously around, clinging to the dog’s lead. She supposed that was exactly what she was. Frightened, beaten. Not physically, but she felt cowed. She wondered when she had become this unrecognisable self. She had felt invincible when she first came to Tasmania, but Matthew had somehow slowly worn that bright, fierce young woman away.

  It will be okay, she had said to William when she visited him in Hobart hospital, but she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. She couldn’t protect William. She hadn’t even been able to protect herself.

  The boat rose and fell on the tide. Something flashed in the distance. She kept her eyes softly focused on the horizon and was rewarded by the sight of a flipper.

  ‘Seal!’ She pointed, and Portia raised her nose to sniff the end of her pointed finger. ‘No, there.’ But the dog didn’t understand pointing. She settled back down, whimpering.

  ‘Seals used to get into the fish farms,’ Jessica said to the dog. Something to talk to now. Not a crazy monologue, but an odd, not quite one-sided conversation. ‘Matthew used to make it sound so comic and so awful all at the same time.’ The seals, jumping and biting, ripping the livers out of the fish and leaving them uneaten, a feeding frenzy, the water turning red; and yet the seals looking like acrobats, turning somersaults, clapping, gawping, clowns of the sea. He would be doubled over, describing it. It only occurred to her now that he’d been laughing at a scene of slaughter.

  They motored on. There was quite a way to go, but first the nets.

  ‘Look there!’ And the dog, stupid dog, licking her pointing finger. Sweet, stupid dog. She patted the dog’s nose and Portia began to shiver as she shifted over to pant against Jessica’s feet. ‘Don’t you get sick.’

  Jessica could see her nets in the distance, two in a row. The brightly coloured floats bobbing at the place where the nets ended. She pulled the boat closer and cut the engine.

  The dog stood too quickly and the boat listed, and then she whined and shook as Jessica hushed her and petted her until she finally settled. Jessica stood, cautiously, and reached over for the grappling hook. She swung it out, catching the rope first go. She pulled the float towards the boat, hauled the rope in. The weight, an old milk bottle filled with sand, thumped into the bottom of the boat and she pulled at the net. She didn’t realise the damage at first, just a tangle in the net from the weather, but she had left the nets out too long. She should have brought them in the night before last, only there’d been William and the hospital and the long drive to and from Hobart. She pulled more of the net in. Dead fish, half-eaten, their skeletons sticking out of the wasted flesh. A red roughy, a cod. The tear in the nylon.

  The next haul untangled the corpse of a young wobbegong shark, ugly tendrils dripping from an equally ugly mouth.

  Oh God. So sorry.

  And something else, something big. At first she thought it might be a seal
. It was definitely the body of something, and huge. She pulled at the net till her fingers felt raw and swollen and the boat rocked as she tugged at it. As it came closer she could see weed clinging to the bulk of its body, only it wasn’t weed, and eventually she could see that it was hair.

  Matthew.

  What if it was Matthew?

  No, it was fur. She held her breath as she hauled. She searched for the pale stripes that she had seen on his phone, glimpsed in the forest when they went hunting. She pushed at the corpse with the grappling hook, turning it over.

  ‘Oh, fuck.’ The soft nose. The dead eyes, open and trusting, the guts eaten away.

  Brutus.

  Something had attacked the dog, but it was impossible to know if it was before or after he was caught in the net. Here was a second shark, a sandpaper of skin flicking over, still twitching, but too late to save it. Maybe the dog had drowned, floated on the tide towards her nets, caught there, belly exposed to the sharks and crabs and flatheads. Maybe the corpse had washed out on the tide, snagged in the net.

  Matthew, starving: staring into the open refrigerator for more meat. She remembered him inside her, pushing into her, hurting her, taking what he wanted.

  Jessica dropped the net. She was suddenly worried that Portia might see and become distressed. Dogs grieved, she knew they did. And this was her litter-mate, her brother.

  Jessica needed to get him out of the net but his muzzle was caught, his teeth tangled. She pulled and prised until the head fell away from the net and the body began to sink. She watched it disappear, falling down though the clear water, dissolving into darkness. It would be welcomed down there. His body would not go to waste.

  She pulled the net in. No more fish, alive or dead. She huddled beside Portia, hugged her close, buried her face in the warm fur. Portia whimpered and tried to climb into her lap.

  ‘Good girl.’ Patting her till she settled at her feet again.

  She moored the boat to a tree. Marijam’s house was turned towards the ocean, Jessica could see that now, approaching it from the tide line. There was a garden bed on either side of the path, which was swept clean of sand. Four steps down and the ocean had carved a fifth step, a gouging. The water taking the beach, wresting it from the shore, leaving a net of weed in its place; a fish head, where Marijam had cleaned her catch and left the scraps for the gulls.