Crow's Breath

by John Kinsella

  You’re not … medical! You’re a bloody receptionist!

  Maybe, but without me there’d be no practice. Mrs-Dr Kelly couldn’t run a stall at the church fete, and Mr-Dr Kelly is an invalid.

  Get out of my house, now! Love! Love! Where are you? Come and get this little trollop out of my room.

  That’s harassment, sir. I told you, there are laws about mistreating medical people. Strict laws for our protection. I wouldn’t like to call on those laws, but don’t for a moment doubt that I will if need be. And if you get fresh with me my boyfriend will beat the shit out of you. I don’t need to put up with this – I’m out of here. It’s your loss.

  *

  Bec didn’t stay upset for long. That Lady of the House was a bore. Bec enjoyed her drive back to town. She played the stereo quite loud, singing along with Celine Dion in a falsetto she considered her crowning glory.

  Pulling up outside the surgery, she shook her head to see the crowd spilling out the door, the town policeman calming them down. Really, people were just so vulnerable, so demanding.

  Mrs-Dr Kelly looked frantic; she had clearly lost the plot. Poor old dear, overworked. And that husband of hers, breaking his hip like that. Hopeless. A couple of hours without me and the whole place falls to bits, she said to the rear-vision mirror as she unbuckled her belt and checked her face, opening the car door with her spare hand, then sliding out onto terra firma to get the show back on the road, and right the sinking ship!

  Okay, all! Okay, all! she called out as the crowd clustered around her and the doctor and the policeman approached wearing grim looks. It’s okay! called Bec, who suddenly felt as if she’d been drinking a fine champagne, the bubbles rising up through her noise and deep into her head. It’s okay … Come to me! Come to me and I’ll sort it all out.

  THE WATER CARRIER: A REPORT

  Drought was good for him, though he’d never say so. He didn’t need to; people said it for him. He grimaced and glowed at once. There were other water carriers in the district, but he was the oldest and most established. He was the King of Carriers. It annoyed him when people joked ‘King of Carters’. He was a carrier, not a carter… ‘carter’ sounded so ordinary, so work-a-day. His wife liked to point out that he was born under the sign of Aquarius. He was destined to be a water bearer, or as it translated in the wheatbelt, a water carrier. Even when she was furious with him, his wife wouldn’t stoop to calling him a water carter.

  He liked to sell himself as everyone’s mate, boy-next-door even to those whose next door was miles away, and generally an easy-go-lucky kind of guy. Children could be trusted with him; your credit card details were safe in his keeping. He was parsimonious, though. He worked out the shortest distance between the standpipe and a customer, and he never filled a litre more than ordered. He made a good show of generosity of spirit without ever actually being generous.

  But there was something about him. He wasn’t what anyone would call handsome, but he did have a rugged, robust masculinity that made people feel safe in his presence. He would always tell blokes to keep their bad language out of earshot of the ladies, and he was a mighty fine batsman– wicketkeeper in the Forties-Plus district cricket team. When he was a young fella he’d been popular with the girls, and it was rumoured he had some prowess as a lover – his wife encouraged and damned this at once. She was a former semifinalist in the state beauty pageant and now a successful businesswoman in her own right, running the town’s beauty salon. She was a trained hairdresser. She was also good with money, and it was the carrier’s financial responsibility that had attracted her to him in the first place.

  There was one customer he serviced whose run didn’t make good fiscal sense. A single lady of uncertain age who lived down by the coast where there was mains water on tap! Why would she order water in? She was a good hundred kilometres away from his fill-up point. And she went through a hell of a lot of water.

  The carrier’s wife didn’t like it. Silly bitch, she’d say, why doesn’t she get one of the local blokes down there to service her – it’d be cheaper and better. She snaked her way through the word ‘service’ and hit home hard with ‘better’. The carrier always tried to ignore these taunts, but by way of warding her off, he called to his son, I’ll be doing the run down to the coast tomorrow after school, wanna come? And when his son replied, Nah, Dad, I’ve got footy practice, the carrier would look at his wife and shrug his shoulders. She’d glare at him and he’d add, You could always come, dear. You like riding up in the truck. Idiot! she yelled. In the end, as always, the boy would go, and a strained peace was maintained.

  This year the carrier had been voted president of the Lions Club. He was a pillar. He was thinking of contracting his business out and running for state parliament. No, he had much to give the entire country – for federal parliament. Church lit up when he walked in. He fancied himself something of a lay preacher, and read the lesson as often as he could wangle it. No one could doubt his energy. But some of the congregation muttered about his lack of goodwill towards the town’s less fortunate. Let them get up off their rears and do a decent day’s work. If there aren’t jobs, they should make them. I don’t know how, don’t ask me, that’s their problem. I’m busy enough. At such moments he showed himself up, but he quickly quelled dissent by making a generous contribution when the plate went around, making sure it was seen. Hundred-dollar notes speak louder than prayers, in among the small change and the odd five-dollar note. And it should be added that he always felt a warm thrill at helping the disadvantaged, even if he felt he should publicly condemn them. After all, his wife had no room for a pushover in the family, or ‘in the business’, as she called it.

  *

  But his charitable contributions weren’t on anyone’s mind. What’s really up with this lady on the coast? was the question on everyone’s lips. The carrier didn’t know how the townsfolk had got wind, but the main source of the chatter was his own wife. For her it wasn’t gossip, though; it was strategically aimed barbs. A few years and their son would be gone; divorce would be in the air. By blindly throwing the lasso, she was sure to bring back some scrapings of fresh skin. She’d even quizzed the boy about the visits, but there wasn’t much to be drawn from that source. And after all, it was a good job. Good business. She was in two minds about the worth of the deal with the woman on the coast, but not about her husband’s worth.

  So what was really going on? Fly on the wall, fly in the truck’s cabin. Fly here, fly there. Swarming. Well, he drove over to her place, through the wandoo and marri forests, down through the hills, past the cattle farms and vineyards, the orchards and sheep paddocks, onto the plains to the coast. He and the boy said nothing. The boy listened to his iPod, jaw set surly.

  Fact is, the tanker was empty on the way over. The carrier was getting his son to fill the tanker from his mistress’s mains water outlet while he serviced her. The carrier’s wife could surely have worked this out by forensically going over the accounts, but she just didn’t click. More than an oversight, it was a grotesque failure on her part. The carrier knew it, and it was a fillip. He was making a tidy sum and getting his end in.

  He prided himself on his endurance. He needed hours to even part-fill the tanker – although he was struggling, and aching all over, he told his mistress that he was a bull.

  The carrier had trained the boy well. Thirty bucks and his father wouldn’t smell the dope being smoked in the shed back home. The water supply pipe tapped into; just after the meter, the full pressure gushing into the tanker. Just meant the water going off for a bit while the boy worked the plumbing – the valve fitting that the carrier had inserted and buried. And the tart wouldn’t register because she was too busy being plumbed herself! Sometimes he laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all.

  You’d think the carrier’s mistress would have heard something of the goings-on outside, but nary a hint that she heard anything but her lover’s gasps. Not even the splash into the tanker. Just the passion of her carrier.
One of the qualities the carter, sorry, carrier, found endearing. He loved her deafness and yelled, You wouldn’t read about it! What, darling? Never you mind. Take this! And this! And this! He told her she smelled good, which was true. He really thought so. She really did.

  Volte-face! What was going on here? Did she, deep down, really know what was going on? She was a smart woman. She was experienced. Was she so desperate as to consider the almost weekly load of water a good deal for his services? Hardly. Actually, she truly had no idea it was happening. When her annual excess water bill arrived she would know, and that’d be an end of it or much more. It was theft. Was he so caught up in self-belief, in his power over her, that it simply did not cross his mind that this would bring about his downfall?

  She looked out through the flapping gauze curtains and in the distance saw the boy sitting in the tanker, wired, drumming on the dashboard. Did she notice the hose snaking its way into the top of the tank? No, not really. The pipe wound up the far rear wheel. You wouldn’t really think. Why do you keep bringing him, and why do you have to bring that bloody great truck every time? It’s an advertisement around here. You go on about your wife not finding out, and you drive the proverbial sore thumb here every weekend! … And that lad of yours looks like a girl. What’s going on with the fringe over the eyes and all that gel? Looks like he’d prefer himself than anything on two legs.

  She could give as good as she got. She wasn’t regarded as an easy touch around her patch. Some would say she was a rough woman. But she was being done over. Fact.

  *

  The tale of a successful man about a small country town, supplying an essential service to a dry district, was of interest to many locals. His fate was tied in with their own. But only to a limited extent. He was replaceable. Water was harder to get hold of. Good potable water. And, what’s more, who doesn’t enjoy seeing someone get their comeuppance? So many rivals in various capacities had tried to pull him down, and failed. But that’s no part of this tale. That’s a sidetrack barely taken, if at all.

  But there is a twist. The water bill came; the theft was evident if you filled in the blanks.

  What transpired was unusual, to say the least. And it did make the local paper, in a vague sort of way, but that wasn’t read outside the district, and the website was down at the time. Actually, it’s still down. But here’s the inside story … Coming across a pool of water and disturbed soil around her water meter, the carrier’s lover investigated instead of ringing the water board. She noticed the dodgy fitting and saw the meter and realised it all in a flash. She prodded at it with a shovel, wondering why he’d want to have her charged for the water when he was clearly adept enough to tap into the mains (and keep her meter out of it!) and steal it without being tracked. It was a fancy piece of work. It was pure malice. She felt repulsed. She struck at the fitting with the shovel. I should turn the mains off, she told herself, but instead she started bashing the fitting, the meter. Something gave way at high pressure and a piece of metal shot out and water spouted high into the blank sky.

  All around the new lake the ground was dry and brittle. A lake in drought country is a torment and a joy at once. You blink twice. It doesn’t add up.

  *

  The carrier grieved in his own way. He’d known the risks. He was planning to bail out or tell her before the water rates fell due. He had enjoyed poking her. He really had. Poking her … it wasn’t really like that. In fact, he’d been losing his edge. He wasn’t up for much these days and was a disappointment to his wife. He knew he was a disappointment. In fact, he was astounded when Rose – that was her name, and he’d rarely ever used it – had responded to his advances. They had met at the bar of an away cricket match. A widow. Her husband had been a cricketer.

  The carrier’s own greed offended him. What had possessed him? What? It was a compulsion, really. Even great men have compulsions. He knew his future was water and water alone. He’d concentrate on that. A service, an essential service. And droughts were lasting longer and becoming more frequent.

  SHAME

  There’s a sense of anticipation when you round the corner of a supermarket aisle. That bookend demi-space where displays of tacky gimmicks and fads catch your eye between the serious considerations of the aisles proper. Mick Li was a nervous shopper, always anticipating a confrontation with one of his students. Admittedly he got on well with most of them, but there were a few of the redneck variety who still resented having an ‘Asian’ teacher. He’d long given up telling them he was an Australian teacher.

  And when he was with his family, Mick felt the trauma of shopping even more. His wife was Caucasian, and his children a basically acceptable ‘Eurasian’ – his teenage daughters were beautiful, or so everyone said. Even the redneck boys followed them around with hangdog expressions. Not that Mick, sensitive to bigoted overtones, would ever publicly use the term ‘redneck’ himself. Sometimes, wanting an easier life, he had to check himself from thinking it would have been good for him if his daughters had gone to the state high school where he taught, rather than their religious private school. They would have counted as kudos, as a kind of protection for him from the we’re full taunts.

  He acknowledged that he had a peculiar habit of lingering behind in the supermarket. The trolley and the rest of the family would have long rounded the corner before he appeared. He had also perfected the art of looking at nothing other than what was being searched for on the list, though he rarely spotted an item first. And his kids liked pushing the trolley, so he didn’t have any gender guilt about the whole business. Instead, he filled his mental in-between moments with footnotes from the history he was teaching or reading at the time. He was cogitating over whether to include a little local history in his Australian political history course. He wondered how his students would react to reading, ‘Only allow the Chinese a footing in our town and district [and] morality and public decency will be grossly outraged.’ And there was worse. The article was from the local town newspaper, an 1896 edition. ‘Asiatic Scum’, it screamed to the good white residents. He should do it, really. But it would surely backfire on him. His eye caught the small ‘Asian food’ section as his wife selected a bottle of soy sauce from a shelf. History is in the timing, he thought.

  At first, Mick didn’t register. Then he saw his wife staring at him, and his daughters. His son was already miles down the aisle, surfing on the back of the trolley. Then he heard again what he suddenly realised he’d already heard.

  Dad-dee, Dad-dee.

  A baby in a trolley seat. A little girl? Pretty little thing. She was pointing at him. She was insistent. Dad-dee, Dad-dee!

  His wife continued to stare at him. What? he asked. Then he noticed the baby’s mother. All in slow motion. The mother was embarrassed, red-faced. Was he supposed to say something?

  Then his wife said, Yes, baby, that’s our Daddy. She then followed the surfing boy down the aisle, her two beautiful but bemused daughters in tow.

  Mick stood transfixed, staring at the baby, then the mother. After a long pause, he said, Nice baby. He turned his gaze from the mother and walked off.

  His family were at the end of the aisle, selecting a brand of tea. They did not look back, though as he joined them he couldn’t help taking a quick glance; not at the baby, but at the mother. She was studying him with her bright red face. Was that a look of longing? No, no, it was all too ridiculous for words. He didn’t know her; he didn’t know the baby.

  *

  The Li house was within easy walking distance of the supermarket, so they carried the shopping home. This ‘shamed’ the kids. Mick and his wife knew such ‘shame’ was a favourite teenage pastime. His wife would say, A little bit of shame will do them good, but to rub their faces in things will only turn out for the worst. Mick agreed that carrying the shopping home was on the minor end of the shame scale. There wasn’t a lot of shopping, and it was a glorious wheatbelt day. True, they had a low hill to climb, but even from halfway up you could look out
across the town onto crops of wheat just turning from green to bisque. Mick Li could saturate himself in those colours and never get bored. He felt them running through his veins.

  Hey, kids, he said, look up! A pair of wedge-tailed eagles were spiralling high above. They often saw them. The entire town knew them.

  They mate for life, he said proudly, slightly troubled by the pride this induced, and the look his wife shot him. Something was bugging her.

  He spoke to her in the code they shared, which he liked to think the kids didn’t get, though they always rolled their eyes and either moved ahead or dropped back from the zone of discomfort. What’s news? he asked.

  You paid a lot of interest.

  He knew she meant the woman in the supermarket, but he wasn’t going to grace the point with acknowledgement. What?

  That woman with the baby.

  The kids were well away now, almost home, moving at a brisk trot with the recycled shopping bags banging against their legs.

  Never seen her before.

  Didn’t say you had, his wife replied. I mean, you were flattered.

  By a baby calling me Dad? Maybe I look like her dad! Maybe she hasn’t got a dad and wants one.

  The baby looked nothing like you, Mick. Don’t flatter yourself. And that woman wasn’t single.

  How do you know?

  Can just tell – too assured. She’d be the kind with a lover and a husband.

  She looked embarrassed, to me. I mean, she was embarrassed by her baby mistaking me for its father.

  She was only shamefaced because she was caught out. I saw her beforehand, before she and the baby saw you. She oozed confidence.

  A proud and happy mother. Why shouldn’t she be confident? This is too silly for words.

  You looked back. I saw you look back.

  I was being polite, for God’s sake, he said. I could see it made her uncomfortable. Just one of those things that happen. The baby was speaking its first words. Or word. Every adult male in the world is probably her Dad-dee at the moment.