Crow's Breath

by John Kinsella

  The teachers all rushed to haul him upright, and after a few words of concern and encouragement, he was told, You’ll be right, son. Well done. Going to have a bit of a blister on that back of yours, but you sure broke the ice. Harry was confused, upset, but felt as if he were coming out of this hell okay. He could hear kids gasping and saying, Wow, see him break that ice! One of the male teachers said, War wounds. Other kids said, That was a great bombie! He was getting through, he was emerging into the full-blown sunlight, the winter sun bringing him to life.

  Then she said it. Mrs McDonald, with Andrew by her side. She said it so loud, it resonated across the busted-up water and right up into the karri tree canopy, scaring the cockatoos away. The bus driver heard it. The caretaker of the forest pool heard it. She said, Oh, you’ve made your back all red like a flower, Harry. You’re my Little Flower of Forest Pool. Come with me and we’ll put some soothing cream on your back. I’ll look after you.

  *

  Flowers of the forest can be subtle yet brilliant. The forest is no ‘bed of roses’, but diverse and fascinating. Some of us spend a lifetime studying orchids that flower underground, and blossoms that flourish without exaggeration in the otherworldly canopy. But the Little Flower of Forest Pool is a species constantly fighting extinction. Whether the toothpastings, the short-sheetings, the pulling down of pants and the sticks pushed up the arse are part of its folklore, I wouldn’t know, but in a real and tactile way they were. I remember Harry, the Little Flower of Forest Pool, a pressed specimen in the pages of learning. The unlearning of school and its extracurricular manifestations. And I don’t have a thick skin. I will never have one.

  *

  When Harry arrived back on the train with the others, after a long drive through the forests on the bus, then catching the old train from Bunbury to Perth, he was hoarse with shouting through the windows into the breeze, the cold air. All of the kids had been shouting and singing, with Andrew leading the chorus. But Harry’s mother, seeing her son calling emptily to her as the train pulled in, knew what was hidden behind the supercilious joy on his face. And when she saw him shudder as Mrs McDonald led him by the hand off the train, Andrew following behind larger than life, she shot the ‘ample-bosomed’ woman a look that would wither a flower, a bed of roses, an entire forest.

  METRONOME

  She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was fifteen. Have I told you about her?

  My first ‘date’. An assignation after school – or rather, an agreement, an understanding that I would walk her home. I did. To her grandmother’s where she boarded, coming from deep country where her parents ran a petrol station, the only one for 150 kilometres in any direction. I fancied she smelt of petrol and perfume – she didn’t. She played a piano accordion and dressed as if she were from the realms of a Bartók peasant fantasy. Her clothes were so crisp, even her school uniform. I sat in her grandmother’s lounge room watching a metronome clicking back and forth without reason. It was doing that when we arrived. The girl – my girlfriend – went to her room to get changed, which made me feel anxious and slightly ridiculous, sitting there with my schoolbag in my lap, hunched over, looking at the Axminster carpet and wondering if the garlic I could smell was coming from the old woman dressed entirely in black, sitting in a lounge chair under a frilly shaded floor lamp. The metronome was going so slowly. Click … … .… click … … .… click … … .… click.

  Under the gaze of Grandmother, who said nothing but watched us with a frightening intensity, my girlfriend (even thinking it, never mind saying it, didn’t seem right), played jigs on her accordion. She was pretty good, actually, though the slow, dirge-like beat of the metronome added an uncomfortable warp to the situation. If I hadn’t been so anxious, so worried that something more might be expected of me, something sexually ‘adequate’ – even under the old woman’s gaze – something revealing of my potency which I could barely imagine would be up to the task, the warp would have overwhelmed me, and I would have gone over to the metronome, and either adjusted the pace, or shut it off.

  But I didn’t. Ra ra ra wheeze, went the accordion, and my girlfriend said, Come on, clap your hands. This was extravagant and disconcerting, for so many reasons and in so many ways. At school she was quiet, got okay marks, and not one of the cool girls. She was far from hot, but not unpleasant to look at. I mean, I was a bit of a weedy specimen and the other boys would consider it a score – out of my league, though no others to my knowledge had paid her any attention. I wasn’t going to say anything about my new… girlfriend… in a hurry. I risked looking at her jigging about: what my mother would have termed ‘well-covered’, with large breasts (did I think of them as ‘tits’ then? it’s hard to be honest with oneself in a less sexist age of telling) and a pageboy haircut. I am pretty sure she was blonde, but maybe her hair was a mousy brown. That detail has been lost to time.

  The recital stopped, and the grandmother said to my girlfriend, Give the boy some tea and biscuits. Once I was on my own again with the grandmother, she said, My granddaughter is a nice girl. She will marry a nice boy. And that was it. Tea and biscuits arrived on a silver – pewter? … tin? – tray; I spilt my tea into the saucer and hesitated before pouring the hot liquid back into the cup, and drinking it. I put the saucer and cup back on the tray, nibbled a biscuit with care, catching a crumb in my hand. The biscuit goo stuck in my throat, and I wished I’d saved some tea, but I managed to say, Thanks, I’d better be getting home. I stumbled out the front door onto the porch and said, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.

  Our second date wasn’t until a few weeks later – my girlfriend had gone off on music camp, or church camp, or some kind of camp, and I needed the recovery time anyway. I didn’t say a word of it to my mates. Maybe ‘colleagues’ would be a better word for the other kids at school; they seemed to like me only if I helped them with their schoolwork. And she seemed to have kept our interaction to herself as well. That was a good sign. That was grounds for a relationship, as far as I was concerned. I’ve always valued my privacy, and maybe it shows how much I value our interaction, how much I care for you, that I am sharing this story … this experience, what with you being a musician and all. Yes, yes, I knew you’d understand about the metronome. It was so annoying! Almost haunting.

  Anyway, our … the … second date. Again, it took place straight after school. Midweek. I summoned up the courage to ask her if I could walk her home. I was very old-values then, very chivalrous in my fumbling ignorance. No, I’m not putting myself down, just ’fessing up. It’s taken me decades to come to grips with this. I was a much more concise person then, and less inclined to wander off the track. Well, I took her bag – yes, truly – and slung it over one shoulder with my own bag hanging off my other shoulder. I remember labouring with the load, but it felt good to be distracted. She talked about the camp, though I don’t remember what she said about it, other than that she’d had a good time. I do remember having a moment of nerves over whether or not she’d met some guy there, but I am pretty sure no guy was mentioned. Or maybe that’s something I’m reading back into the situation – the kind of anxiety I’d have now. No, I never doubt you, even when you’re on tour for months on end. If you tell me you’ve been true, I believe you. I know you’d always tell me if you went off the rails.

  So we walked and walked. Grandma’s house was such a long way from school. My girlfriend kept bumping into me and I’d stagger under the bags. Sure you don’t want me to take the bag? she asked delicately. No, no, I can manage. She put her hand in mine, and my heart jumped, and her bag skipped off my shoulder and crunched into our wrists, hands. I hoisted it back up and held the strap. I mean, I felt really nervous. I started to feel as if I’d rather be any place but there. Yes, yes, Little Red Riding Hood was actually the wolf in disguise. Pathetic, isn’t it. Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?

  We weren’t far from Grandma’s house when I heard the metronome. Click … … .… click … … .… click … … … click.
I guess I didn’t really hear it, we were still a block away, but I could hear its ghost. And then I could hear the ra ra ra of the accordion and I could smell Grandma’s garlic. There was a vacant block near the house which we cut across to reach the front porch. My girlfriend stepped in front of me and said, Put the bags down. I did, and stared at her. We were exactly the same height. And she was short. My growth spurt hadn’t come yet. Her eyes were green.

  She said, Quickly, kiss me. I stared at her and then followed my stomach to the dirt and dropped down into a sitting position, crossing my legs. What’s wrong? she asked. I said nothing. Nothing at all. I just sat there, silent. She crouched down to look me in the eye, and in turning my face down, I accidentally glimpsed up her skirt and saw her blue knickers. I could hear my heart in my ears, and could feel it in my chest, beating as fast as it would after running the hundred metres; in my ears it went click … … … click … … … click … … … click. You know, you know.

  Nothing else happened. She just took her bag, and went up to the porch and inside, without looking back. I sat there until dark. I looked up at the window occasionally, and fancy I saw Grandma once, the corner of the dark curtain up, but who knows. I did hear the accordion, though. No ra ra ra, but a slow, sombre playing that sounded like a wounded animal. That’s a fact, and it’s what dressed the silence that hung between us for the next few years of school. There were no betrayals. Just nothing. I have no idea what became of her, what she does now; if she’s married with children or still plays the accordion. And no, I won’t tell you her name. You’re just too quick with the googling. No, I don’t trust you with this, sorry.

  A PARTICULAR FRIENDSHIP

  The working dogs were kept in a pen down near the machine shed. Three kelpies who lived their lives for sheep. Up in the house yards were two family pets – long-eared cockers that chased birds, chewed boots, and rollicked with the children in the dust. Occasionally one lot barked across the distance to the other, and if something at night set off one dog all others would follow, but otherwise they didn’t come into contact. And the children were forbidden to talk to the kelpies, the working dogs. No soft words, no playing around. The kelpies were to obey their pack leader, the farmer, and to keep their mind on work. If they get distracted by human feelings, he told his children, they’re never the same. No good as working dogs. You’ve got your pets – play with them. He sounds like a harsh man, and he was tough, but he loved his kids, and his wife made no strong complaints. Among his neighbours, he was considered reliable and generous. He was a good bloke.

  It was a family of four. The twins – Emmy and Jason – were eight years old. Jason was named after the Argonauts and Emmy, who was really Emily, after Emily Brontë. Mother was a high-school English teacher, so nothing surprising in the choice of names. Mrs Harvard was only teaching one day a week, so she did a fair bit around the farm when the kids were at school.

  The twins loved dogs. Sometimes they felt they were closer to dogs than any other living things, aside from each other. The friendship between the two of them was particular, and included Bluebell and Captain, the two cockers. In fact, the twins loved all animals, but from the earliest age they had imagined they were dogs – had played dogs, with dogs – and their room was full of dog books and dog pictures. The kelpies they loved from a distance, watching them; sometimes they sneaked over to scratch under chins through the chicken-wire pen, though they’d been told to keep away from them. Going out with their father to round up the sheep was especially good, because they could watch the dogs work. The kelpies obeyed the farmer’s every word or gesture, and when the twins scrambled into the front of the ute next to him, the kelpies would leap onto the traytop like lightning. They were fast, agile and excited. But ‘disciplined’.

  Through the rear window, the twins watched the kelpies bark at everything passing, occasionally slobbering on the glass or yapping, which made them squeal with delight. Settle down, kids, Father would grump. Then they’d turn their attention to other things. They’d sniff the hessian and oil and oats and mud in the cabin. They’d play hand games, ask their father questions, and then, unable to contain themselves, swing their gaze back through the window, to see what the dogs were up to.

  Father had not been away from the farm for more than a day since they were born. So when he had to go into hospital for a few days to have an operation, they found it particularly unsettling. Mother reassured them he’d be fine, and they could visit him. The city hospital was three hours’ drive. The small district hospital was only staffed by a few nurses, with the odd GP visit. So Mother was going to stay down in the city to be with Father, and the twins would be looked after by their aunt, who would take them down for a visit on Monday. The twins were confused and a little frightened, but they loved Auntie Jean, who would always let them do what they wanted.

  The house seemed so empty, even though the cockers frolicked as if nothing were different. As long as the twins were around, they didn’t pine. On the Saturday morning, the twins went out of the house yard and straight down to the kelpies. They had been given the job of watering and feeding the working dogs, but were still under strict orders not to play or talk with them. The twins let themselves in to the pen and spent two hours before lunch romping with the dogs. They spent much of the time stroking the kelpies and telling them their real names.

  Over lunch, Auntie Jean asked what they’d been doing. Not much, they said. Their aunt had spent the morning out on the back verandah, knitting. The dog pen was a long way from the house and couldn’t be seen from the back verandah. It’s a lovely time of year for being out in the fresh air, she said. Will you be knitting out there this afternoon, Auntie Jean? Probably, sweetie, knitting or reading. What are you going to get up to? Thought we’d take the cockers for a walk. The cockers were rarely let out of the house yard because it made them go loopy, but Auntie Jean didn’t know or didn’t remember or just didn’t say much other than, That’ll be nice for them.

  So they took the crazy cockers leaping and yelping down to the dog pen. The kelpies shook with excitement and yapped at the playful cockers. The cockers trembled. Emmy opened the pen gate, and Jason herded the cockers in.

  *

  Their father spent much longer in hospital than expected. There were complications. The twins’ visit was delayed, because he couldn’t see anyone but Mother. When they were eventually taken down, he was propped up in bed with tubes coming out of him, and looked like a ghost. They were both a bit scared, but they let their mother nudge them towards the bed and they each leaned down in turn and kissed his cheek. When he spoke, his voice was very faint. They thought he sounded like an impostor and looked at each other carefully, with fright in their eyes. They saw he noticed, and they put their heads down, embarrassed. Nothing much else was said on that visit; mainly they played cards at a table in the corner, and their mother sat holding their hands, and their aunt knitted in a seat by the bed.

  Driving back, Auntie Jean said, Your father will be home next week but you’ll have to be very good for him and not upset him with any of your goings-on. They wanted to say, We’ve been good, but thought better of it and just stared out of the window as the sun set and the white sheep in the yellow paddocks started to turn the light inside out. Soon the sheep were blanks in the darkness.

  *

  Father was unable to work for a few weeks, so the twins looked after the dogs and did all the chores they could around the place. A hired hand came in three days a week to look after bigger things, but that was mainly when the twins were at school. The hired hand brought his own dogs to work the sheep; Father wouldn’t let anyone else handle his kelpies. When Father finally left the house to look around, he walked kind of funny.

  The first place he hobbled to was the dog pen. The dogs were overexcited, and he struck the wire when they leapt up. Down, boys, down! He had trouble working the gate latch because his coordination was a bit out, but eventually he managed – damned kids doing it up that way! – and t
he dogs ran straight past him, across the dirt all the way up to the house yard where they barked and rubbed against the fence, Bluebell and Captain on the other side doing the same. They sniffed and licked each other and the wire separating them, ignoring the farmer’s shouts.

  *

  When dogs go wrong it’s a kind of sickness, he told his wife, who was in tears. The farmer grimaced as he pulled his withered leg straight and pushed himself back into the chair. He couldn’t give them away. Damaged goods.

  He didn’t shoot them. True, he had taken the Winchester from the cupboard and carried it out onto the verandah, but his wife’s screams had jolted him. She was yelling at him to stop. Not a way for a fellow to be treated when he’s been at death’s door.

  So he poisoned them. Strychnine. He killed the kelpies. He killed Bluebell and Captain. He fed them baited meat and watched them die. Their death throes looked like a bizarre game, something the twins would play. It has to be said, his children were odd.

  It took him hours to drag the corpses to the well that had gone dry during the Meckering Quake, and topple them over the stone rim. The stink would be strong, but eventually be lost in the smells of the farm. His wife pleaded with him not to tell the children. When the twins, home from school, rushed in calling, Where are the dogs? he just said, They’re gone. And keep away from the old well. The twins stared. They blinked very slowly. They trembled and clutched hands. They whimpered.