All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  One of the fox cubs snapped at a fly, and the vixen’s ears sprung around at something in the undergrowth. She kept one foot off the ground to listen, then hauled up a cub by its scruff and the other followed her back into the dark where it was safe. Dog appeared out of the woods, long pink tongue lolling out of him, seeds plastered to his snout and goosegrass tangled around his back leg. He looked happy. If they could they would all kill each other, the fox would kill the sheep and then Dog would kill the fox.

  Dog came up and smelled the newly sheared bum wool and then lay down panting heavily next to the pregnant sheep, who laboured up and moved away like she couldn’t take the smell of him. From the trees a flock of starlings took off. Maybe they signalled the vixen moving deeper into the woods.

  From the stile, I saw Don’s truck was back and breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Christ’s neck, what happened to you?’ he said as he opened the door, smiling like he always did when he knew exactly what had gone on and was waiting for me to ask for help. ‘Get bogged did you?’

  ‘Could you give me a tow out?’ I said, reddening.

  ‘Good opportunity to call on one of those younger farmers, don’t you think?’ he said, making no move to get his boots on.

  ‘I could do it myself if you’d let me have your keys. I could pull it out myself.’

  ‘Really? And who’d steer? Some things you just can’t do on your own.’ He turned and started to pull on his oilskin. ‘That’s why farmers need to know each other, you help them, they help you, that’s just how it goes. All it’d take’d be the pub once a week for a couple of hours’ – he started to push his feet into his gumboots – ‘because sooner or later I’m going to hit the post and be dead and then what’ll you do? Starve to death I suppose.’ Don was in a good mood at least.

  It took just a couple of tries to get the truck out, and when it was free, Don leant out his window. ‘This that chap who helped you out of the ditch?’

  Lloyd was coming up the track, looking like a country rambler with an ash pole to help him along.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Handy to have him around.’

  Lloyd raised a hand in hello. Don nodded back and turned his engine off. I turned mine off too, reluctantly.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Lloyd to Don. He looked at me and I might have imagined it but he looked a little hurt. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to – thought I might be able to help? But you’ve got the car out I see.’ There was a quiet in which Lloyd’s words hung.

  Don looked back to me. ‘I’ll come by with a chainsaw and get rid of this for you,’ he said, nodding at the tree.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a saw, I’ll be right.’ Don narrowed his eyes at me.

  ‘My saw’s a big one,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Mine’s pretty big too.’

  ‘You know how to use it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well,’ Don said, not satisfied. I curled my tongue into my mouth and gave a short smile. It was important not to be rude. Don turned his attention to Lloyd.

  ‘Nice to see her with a bit of company about the place.’

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lloyd, visibly uncomfortable, ‘I’m afraid I rather forced myself on her.’

  Don barked, ‘About time!’ He started up his engine so that he had the last word, raised a hand and disappeared up the track. Lloyd looked at me and I tried to soften my jaw.

  ‘He likes winding you up that old guy, huh?’

  ‘He does.’

  We drove back to get the chainsaw in silence. I went into the shed and topped up the diesel, and picked up an axe too. Lloyd waited by the car talking softly to Dog. I put the axe and chainsaw in the back and he moved to get in with me.

  ‘You stay here,’ I said.

  ‘Er—’

  ‘With the dog.’ I got in the truck and left him there looking embarrassed.

  Back at the fallen tree, I got out of the truck, left the door open and took the tools from the back. I started with the axe, feeling the fluid pump through my shoulders, skimming off the smaller branches until I had a clear shot at the trunk and then I laid into it, hacked with no particular aim, but a steady rhythm, shouting and sweating as I gouged at the wood until there was no strength left in my arms and I stopped to pant and close my eyes. I had the singular clear thought, He doesn’t know me. And I pulled the choke out on the saw, and yanked the cord to start it.

  It was dark by the time I was done, and raining. Lloyd had lit a fire in the fireplace.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said when I walked in to find him standing at the sink, washing up. Dog wagged his tail from his spot on the sofa by the fire, like it was normal.

  ‘How’d it go with the tree? I would have cooked something,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know what you were saving. I did a bit of cleaning instead.’ He turned around and looked at me. ‘Not because the place needed it, just to say thank you.’ He turned back to the sink.

  ‘Huh,’ I said. It was annoying that he had moved things, and that the place looked nicer because of it. It smelled different, the air was dry and warm. I never lit the fire. I ran a bath and was in it before I noticed how much I ached.

  We shared a can of mushroom soup at the table. I’d thought I could cook the chicken, but it smelled green. The wind rattled in the pipe of the Rayburn. It was late to take him into town, but maybe after tea.

  ‘So,’ Lloyd said, not for the first time, and then because the silence was not comfortable, I got up and took a bottle of whisky out of the cupboard. I poured two mugs and sat down, handing one to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and coughed. ‘So.’

  Dog growled. We both looked over to him. He had left the warmth of the fire and was standing by the front door, head down. Lloyd looked at me.

  ‘Why’s he doing that?’

  I scraped back my chair and went to the window.

  ‘He can smell something outside.’ The growl was a deep one from down in his guts. I pulled back the curtain and looked out.

  ‘Turn the light off,’ I said quietly.

  Lloyd flipped the switch and came to stand next to me. I closed my eyes for a moment to try and get them used to the dark, then looked again.

  ‘The human eye senses movement before all else,’ said Lloyd, and I stared at him. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I read it in National Geographic.’

  Out the window, nothing moved.

  ‘Someone’s watching the house, I can feel it,’ I said, and Lloyd’s eyes widened at me.

  There was a loud knock at the door, and Dog bared his teeth and growled like a wolf.

  ‘Fuck,’ we both whispered.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called Lloyd in a deeper voice than I’d heard him use before. He coughed with his mouth closed.

  There was no answer, but the doorknob started to turn and rattle like someone was trying to get in.

  I went towards the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Lloyd.

  ‘This is stupid,’ I hissed back. ‘Hold Dog.’ Lloyd grabbed him by the scruff and held on while he barked and wrestled about. If I had been on my own, I would have taken the axe handle to the door with me.

  On the other side of the door was a man with a young face. His hair was gelled in neat rows from his crown to where it spiked over his eyes in mouse-brown spears. Wind came into the house and all I could think about was a time in the near future when this man would be gone and the door would be closed and the wind was outside again.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked in a voice that was not as confident as I had hoped. He looked at me, confused. It looked like his hair interfered with his eyes, which were red and crusted with yellow. The skin around his chin and neck had been recently picked free of spots. He wore a slick-looking puffer jacket, and he stared at me, rubbing his index finger up the side of his nose. He sniffed hard.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. He looked around me in a way that made me think he was about to co
me inside. Dog barked behind me.

  ‘I live here,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’ He stopped rubbing his nose and looking over my shoulder, and looked at me a few beats.

  ‘Where’s me dad?’ asked the man.

  ‘Are you— Do you mean Don?’

  ‘I mean me dad and who the fuck are you?’ His eyebrows drew together.

  ‘I live here,’ I said again. ‘I bought this place off Don Murphy – if that’s your father, he lives over in the next valley now . . .’ But he was not listening, his mouth was open and he breathed through it, ran his flat palm up his nose to take care of a drip that had formed there.

  ‘You shacked up with the old fucker, are you? Yeah that’d be right, shack up with some cunt and forget about Samson, to fuck with Samson.’

  Dog snarled.

  ‘Now then,’ said Lloyd from behind me, in a teachery voice. I drew myself up to my full height but the man was not put off. He looked at Lloyd.

  ‘An’ who the fuck is this bearded prick?’ His voice squeaked and he sniffed hard again. The wind knocked him in the back and he stumbled forward a step. There was white spittle at the edges of his mouth. He took a couple of steps back to steady himself and then a couple forward again. Dog’s barks rang out over the valley.

  ‘Careful,’ I said. I heard Lloyd drag Dog to his room to lock him in. The young man looked over my shoulder again.

  ‘Don’t put that filthy dog in my bedroom!’ he shouted. ‘What the fuck?’ I heard the door close on Dog, and he flung himself against it, howling and scratching. Lloyd came and stood by me.

  ‘Look,’ said Lloyd, ‘go over to the next valley and talk to your father. If you don’t go away, I’ll let the dog out, and he’s completely out of control.’

  I looked at Lloyd.

  ‘Fuck you, grandad.’ The young man took another step forward, brought his fist up. Lloyd stepped in front of me and pushed him hard in the throat, and the young man gagged and staggered backwards, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘I told you,’ said Lloyd, ‘now get lost.’

  Lloyd had lodged himself in the doorway, suddenly taking up a lot more space than he had before. The boy’s face sagged.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered and dug his wrists into his eye sockets. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’ He let out a small sob and turned around; in a few paces he was out of sight. From the dark came a muffled cry and the noise echoed around the house long after we’d closed the door. Dog yelped from the bedroom and Lloyd let him out. He turned three circuits of the kitchen table and went to stand by the door, looking at the gap underneath it with dark concentration.

  Lloyd clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. ‘Right,’ he said loudly, ‘shall we go to the pub then?’

  I’d been to the Blacksmith’s Arms a couple of years ago. It hadn’t worked out. Sitting at the bar with a pint of something warm and treacly, I’d tried a rocky conversation with the barman.

  ‘The wind always this fierce?’ He’d looked at me with an unreadable face.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  And then a drunk farmer had brushed against me and I’d barked at him. I’d left without drinking even a third of the pint.

  When Lloyd went to the bar, I watched how easy it was for him, how the barman volunteered conversation without hesitating. It was warm, the light was low, and rain beat on the windows. Lloyd brought us over whiskies. He’d put too much ice in mine, and I hooked out two cubes and put them in an empty glass. Lloyd watched me but didn’t comment. The next one came with just one cube.

  ‘I never come here,’ I said after a while.

  ‘Why not? It seems nice. Nice ambiance.’

  I looked at him a while before replying.

  ‘They don’t like me.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Lloyd. I frowned. ‘They’re just interested in you.’

  ‘Interested?’

  ‘Christ, I’ve been here half an hour and two people have already asked how I know you and what sheep you’re breeding.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I don’t, and they’re white ones.’

  I glanced up at the barman, who was looking, and shifted in my seat. Lloyd didn’t seem bothered.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘About the boy?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll speak to Don in the morning.’

  ‘You think he could be the one – hurting your sheep?’

  I turned my glass around on the table a few times. I didn’t. Watching him out there against the dark, I’d felt something strange wind its way up around my heart, like I recognised him, like we’d known each other once. Those spittle-grey eyes and desperate mouth.

  ‘I don’t know. He seemed mad.’ I stole a look at Lloyd and then downed my drink. ‘I’m not that sure it’s kids any more. I saw a fox this morning.’

  ‘Does he count as a kid?’

  I shrugged. ‘He just seemed batshit.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lloyd.

  We watched a teenager try to get served. In his hand he held some keys which I supposed he was hoping looked like the keys to his people carrier or his family townhouse. He wore a badly fitted jacket that on him looked like a school blazer.

  ‘Pint of cider, thanks,’ he said and the barman didn’t move to get the drink, just stared the boy down, resting his hands on the bar in front of him like he was bracing against it. The boy cleared his throat and nodded to the pump. ‘Cider, pint of, please.’ He looked like he had considered saying my good man at the end, but had rightly decided against it. The barman still did not move, just fixed the boy with a strong look. Then he slowly raised his arm and pointed, without looking, at the sticker underneath the spirits that had an 18 with a red line through it. He didn’t say a word, but the boy’s ears turned pink. He opened his mouth and closed it and then tried for a leisurely retreat, which he almost carried off, swinging his arms and keeping his knees soft and neck loose. But he stubbed his foot on the rug and it wasn’t much of an obstacle, he barely stumbled, but it took the ease out of his departure and the whole face went red and he sped out the door. The barman remained looking at the same spot in front of him like the boy was still there.

  ‘Terrible age,’ said Lloyd. ‘Can’t do anything with yourself.’ He drained his drink. ‘I don’t think they had a drinking age when I was a kid. What about you? I bet you got served.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, sharper than I had meant to.

  ‘I mean, you’re tall,’ he said and looked at his empty glass.

  ‘Drinking laws the same in Australia?’ he asked, looking like he’d just thought of a really interesting question, and I realised I’d embarrassed him.

  ‘I guess so,’ I said. I drained my glass too and went to the bar. The barman looked at me for a moment before coming over.

  ‘Same again?’ he asked and I nodded and focused on the bottles on the wall behind him. The transaction took place in silence.

  When I got back, Lloyd had found a book on the pub bookshelf called Teach Yourself: Sheepdog Training. The photo on the front showed a farmer with thick grey sideburns and his obedient dog sitting at his feet. In the background some Welsh Mountain sheep were penned neatly and cleanly, all looking at the camera.

  ‘It says here,’ said Lloyd, ‘that it’s possible to teach a collie at any age, the basics of sheep control.’ I put my glass in front of my mouth so that I wouldn’t be expected to comment. ‘Worth a go isn’t it?’ he asked. I didn’t move my glass.

  By the time the pub closed, I was too drunk to drive, but Lloyd’s eyes were sleepy-looking and he stopped mid-sentence, saying, ‘Look look look, we can’t drive, why don’t we—’ and either couldn’t think of what to say next or forgot he was speaking.

  We got in the truck and Dog turned his back on us, disgusted at being left in the car park and at the state we came out of the pub in. I gripped the steering wheel as we left the street lights, and drove deeper into the dark.

  ‘My father told me,’ said Lloyd in a thick
voice, ‘when I passed my driving test, he said, “Son, if you’re coming home in the car, half-cut, wind down the window and just rest your head on the frame and keep your eyes on the white line at the side of the road. Can’t go wrong.’’’

  I glanced at Lloyd, who had shut his eyes and leant his head back against the headrest. ‘Can’t go wrong,’ he said again to himself. He was asleep in three minutes, which was good, because I had to concentrate. He snored softly and it made me smile. It was a relief to be heading back with him, that he would be there, downstairs during the night. I hadn’t even brought up the idea of driving him into town – it seemed pointless when his bed was already made. There had been a moment not long before closing when he’d got up to get another round and steadied himself on my shoulder as he stood, just for balance. Even though a jolt went through me, like I should stand up and push him over, I hadn’t. I’d sat there and while he was at the bar I felt the ghost of his hand on my shoulder and it made me count back to the last time someone had touched me just for balance, just out of absent-minded laziness. I glanced over again at his sleeping profile, the strong bone of his nose, and the truck wobbled a little, so I put my eyes back on the road and squinted into the dark. The headlights lit up a lot of insects for that time of year, white in the beams, large-winged flakes like ash. It took me a while to understand that they weren’t insects, that it was snow. I lifted my foot off the accelerator and coasted through the dark watching it fall. I thought to wake Lloyd and show him, but I got the feeling it was performing something just for me. In the headlights a large fox or a deer, but looking nothing like either of those things, ran a split hair in front of the truck and I braked so that Lloyd flew forward and hit his head on the dashboard; there was a squeak from Dog as he rolled off the back seat. ‘Fuck!’ shouted Lloyd.

  ‘Did you see it?’ I hissed, yanking on the handbrake and opening the door, forgetting to take off my seatbelt and struggling in the doorway, my breath coming out white.