by Joy Dettman
I am alone here.
Afraid now, I approach Pa’s room, open his door, and a wave of fetid air greets me. Reflexes fling me back. Reflex movement causes my hand to go to my mouth, my nose, to cover them. Having not expected to find him in bed, I am bewildered by the huddle of bedding and his white hair on the pillow.
‘You are sick with the aches, Pa?’ I speak from the passage, from behind my hands. He does not reply. I creep in to the mound of bedding, prod it with an index finger. ‘Pa.’ He moves, a little, and I sigh out a long-held breath then return quickly to the passage to replace it. ‘I can not find Lenny,’ I say.
Again the mound moves. Then the slick black bodies of two rats glide from beneath the bedding and scuttle to the corner, and through the rotting wall.
I scream. I scream and run from that place, slamming the door behind me, locking the rats in with their ungodly feast.
Pa is dead and Lenny has gone. Pa is dead and Lenny is gone. Backing away. Backing away. I near fall from the verandah, then I swing around and run to the barn, running blind, running to nowhere. Nowhere to run.
Except to the dogs. They are from the same litter, they eat, play, hunt together. Now they wait to die together.
But they are not yet dead. The female lifts her thick head from her paws, sensing my approach. Loyal to the end, she will guard her master’s property. She recognises me and her head droops back to her paws, while glazed eyes beckon me to her side.
‘Pa is dead,’ I say to her. ‘Pa is dead.’ I cry on her but I do not think she cares, so close she is to following her master to that place. And the other one. He does not lift his head.
I half fill a bucket from the water tank, surprised at a weight I would have carried easily on the day I gave water to the sowman, and I pour a measure into the food containers and move them within reach of the brutes. The female whimpers her gratitude, then laps spasmodically at the bowl, slowly building a rhythm. The male has gone beyond that place. Using my hands as a cup, I trickle water over his muzzle, once, twice, then I see his tongue reach for it. I fill my cupped hands with water and hold them to the brute’s mouth. He licks and his eyes thank me. He lifts a snake-like tail a bare millimetre then allows it to fall.
‘Poor dog.’ My finger smooths his scarred nose. ‘Good dog. I will find you eggs if the hens have been laying. Pa is dead and Lenny is gone. Poor dog. Good dog. We are alone here. But you are here and I am here so we are not alone, eh?’
It is well that I have need to move, to function, to fill my eyes with images of starving dog and hen – though the hens and the crowing red rooster have fared well. Unpenned, they have foraged for their own food and water.
I find four eggs in the red hen’s nest, and as I hold them in my hands, they make me aware of time. If that hen had laid every day, then her eggs had not been collected for four days, but that red hen is old. She does not lay every day.
How long had I been in the cave before the infant burst free? It had seemed like an eternity, but time, as my mind, had become lost in that nightmare. I remember the light from the grey men’s machine on the night I had gone to the cave. The dogs were never tied when they came. If the city men had taken Lenny, he would not have gone willingly, so why are the dogs tied?
With my mind again making questions, I toss corn to the fowl and break their eggs for the dogs. The female licks the hand that feeds her, then head down she laps in time with her tail’s thump-thump. The male needs encouragement; I hold the container to his mouth, feed him egg from my fingers. He licks, and soon works at the bowl alone, but his eyes never leave me. I think, if we live, these two will become my protectors for the rest of their lives.
Although I do not want to return to the house, the rain is still falling. My overall is not so warm now and my hair grown wet, my feet chilled. I stop beside the woodpile and collect as much as I can carry.
I will not think of Pa. Not now. I will not weep for him. Not now. He is dead, and I must live. I will think only of fire and stove and warmth and food. Lenny has gone off searching for me; the kettle will be boiling when he returns. This is what I will think.
But he tied the dogs. He tied the dogs. Why are they not with him if he searches for me?
In the kitchen I look down at the garments I had thought to throw away. Perhaps they might be cleaned. I move them from my path with a muddy boot. I stir them, striving to still the circling of my mind, to give it focus, and a pathway it may follow from this circle of Pa and dogs, of Lenny – and this fear.
When the generator thumps the air-tub cleanses the most foul of Lenny’s overalls. When we have the chem-wash powder, we add it to the air-tub, and it has near washed the blue flowers from my half-dress, and the yellow one it has turned to white. Thus, my mind wanders off to a safer dreaming place, to the long white garments the grey men brought for me, to the wet wood on the floor and back to my defiled clothing beside it.
I pick up the brown cloak I had worn to the cave. It is still wet and smells of wet dog. I hang it behind the door, beside Pa’s cape.
Lenny’s hide cape is not there. It is not there. So, he has gone to the hills to search for me, and has fallen, as Jonjan fell. And the dogs came home, and Pa tied them, for the rain was too heavy for him to search for Lenny. And in the night Pa died – of natural causes and . . . Yes, that is why the dogs are tied . . . it is possible. Tomorrow I will go to the hills with the dogs and search for Lenny.
But I do not think the dogs will walk far tomorrow.
I make a slow beginning. The stove is lit with newsprint and a small portion of a used black wax-light. Saturated wood takes long to catch, but catch it does. I fill the kettle and set it over the flame. Soon I will have hot water and heat. Soon I will make my legs carry me to the black hen’s nest. There will be eggs there. Perhaps I will dare to count them for she is young and lays every day.
I think much time has passed since I left, perhaps a week in the birthing and the days beyond it, and my days in coming down and my sleeping when I returned, and for all of this time Lenny has been lying out in the rain.
This thought disturbs me. I shiver. All thought disturbs me, but I can not stop doing it, or shivering.
Standing before the stove, watching the fire’s flicking flames, I think of Aaron’s mother who used matches to begin these flames. Granny never allowed the fire to die, for if it died in the night, she had only the old circular glass we must hold to the sun and guide its magnified light to dry bark until it made a flame. If there was no sun, then there was no fire. I must find that glass. I must look for it. Since the grey men brought the flick-flames we have not worried much about the making of fire.
Flick-flames do not last forever.
My hand reaches to the shelf over the stove. The glass is there. As it was in Granny’s time. Safe there I leave it.
I take up my overall, stained with blood. I pick up my half-dress, then slowly walk with them across the hall where I load both into the air-tub. Tomorrow I will try to make the generator go. And if I can not? For many years I lived in this house without the air-tub, without the city machines. We cleansed our garments in water – or did not clean them.
Away with my circles of thinking, when I hear noise from upstairs, for a moment I think the sound is from Granny’s ghost come to talk at me of rabbits. It is not her voice I hear, but the infant’s wail. I had forgotten it. In truth, I had forgotten it, and wish even now to forget it. Do I not have too much already to think of?
My feet begin to carry me away from the stove where the kettle is singing. I need warmth, and I need the warmth of food within me. I stand, listen to the protest from upstairs. Since my flight from Pa’s room the poor thing has been alone and no doubt sleeping in its wastes. Still, if I am to care for it and the dogs until Lenny returns, then I must see to my own needs.
I collect a bowl full of eggs from the black hen’s nest and do not count them, not consciously. I find a little of the city oil spread with which to grease the pan, then I break two
eggs into it. I make a chem-tea, stack the firebox and find the old board Lenny uses for a tray when he takes Pa’s food to his room. As I place my tea and eggs upon it, I recognise it as Granny’s calendar board, the paint near worn away and covered by spills. It has been here, in the kitchen, while I searched the house for it. Tonight it makes a fine tray for my dinner.
The odour is different in my room, and for this I am almost grateful. I give the wailer my breast, and before it is done with its drinking, I have cleaned my plate and emptied both mug and the crispbites packet.
Later, as we rest together on the bed, the infant stares at me. Perhaps it does not like my face. Such a funny frowning expression it wears, I am moved to smile, then I whisper the foolish sounds my mother spoke to me.
Oh honour her, Oh honour her,
Oh sleep and dream of day.
Oh honour her, Oh honour her,
tomorrow you may play.
There is peace in those words and comfort to be had from the warmth of another, even one so crumpled and small as this one. I let the words play over and over while I think of Mother, and I sigh and think, I am mother. But the infant has closed its eyes. It sleeps, and I must fit my sleep to its pattern.
I yawn, roll onto my side.
(Excerpt from the New World Bible)
The searchers returned to the mountain settlement. And in the second raid three females and two infants were taken. They were housed in the laboratories and held there in sterile conditions for ninety days where they were given the immunisations and the cleansings.
The infants did not survive the cleansings, but in time the breeders were put to breed.
The raids continued. And the searchers took what they would, for they had become adept at their trade. As the hounds of hell they found their prey by day then returned by night to the hunt.
And five females and three infants were taken in this way.
Two infants survived the cleansings and became docile. Of the five breeding females, three took their own lives. Two were got with child.
But when the hunters again returned to the settlement, they saw no sign of life upon the land.
Three years passed before movement was again sighted. It was female. And it was seen that she was old and in the latter stages of breeding thus she was guarded well by four males.
The males counted were at seven, being both man and youth.
And one was there, a female not yet of breeding size. And her hair was of gold.
It was seen that she was not well guarded. It was seen that she ran free in the fields and could be taken.
Seduced by the acclaim of the city, and by the riches promised to those who succeeded in bringing female fodder for use in the Seelong laboratories, the searchers would not be denied that which was their due.
INCONTINENCE
This morning, had I taken the infant in my hands and squeezed, it would have shed more water than the skies. Its bellow is huge, but it silences as I hold it. This incontinence of the newborn is tiring. I will have to find a better wrapping for it, or shortly there will be no paper towels left for me.
It drinks until it falls asleep at my breast. Silly thing, bellowing so hard for me, waking me from my dreams, but once its belly is full, it does not need my company, only soaks its wrapping again.
In Granny’s doctoring book, it shows a triangular napkin, held together at the front with a large safety pin. Granny had such pins. The garments we wore before the coming of the grey men required these pins and I have seen them in her room, in the wooden box with the rings and pearls. I will go there, and also collect the woven garments Granny wore against her skin. They might make useful wrappings for the infant.
So much to do. It makes me weary before I begin, so I sit and eat. I will not think of Pa, though this morning every breath I draw makes me aware of what is behind his door.
The dogs have been set free. They are weak and slow, and I do not fear that they will eat the hens. The poor things lie on the rear verandah, before the kitchen door. I think they do not wish me to escape. All day I feed them eggs and boiled pumpkin, which they do not refuse. I must go down to the cellar, find them red meat to make them strong. I do not much like the thought of that meat which rots fast when the generator’s heart does not beat, but even rotting meat will do them more good than pumpkin.
Lord, I am so weary. If I close my eyes I think I will sleep where I sit. But I must not sleep. I must look at the generator. Perhaps Lenny turned it off to save the batteries. Perhaps he did not turn it off and the batteries have been sucked dry.
It is near noon when I go to the shed and find the new supplies. Lenny had not remained here long after the grey men, for the supplies have not been unpacked. But they are here. Lord, they are here and there will be paper towels and batteries. There will be batteries.
Fast now, I cut the strong cord that binds the stores. I find sweetened milk, and cornbeans, sugar-sweet and chem-tea, and the chem-wash, for which I am truly thankful. Surely they have brought batteries. Surely. Tonight I will have power and light and I may use the air-tub. The infant is not clean in habit.
I find many packs of crispbites and cornbread, two large sacks of corn, V-cola, and Pa’s pills, and Lord, I do not want to see them. I shiver, delve deeper, tossing sealed packs of fruitjell to the side. And I find paper towels and new overalls. I toss them aside, and think I am as the Aaron child, squatting before the last Christmas tree of his old world, but I search not for game or book, but for batteries.
And there they are. Eight of them. Quickly I rip away the wrapping and withdraw two of the slim cylinders. They are no longer than my hand, but heavy. I hug them to my breast. Tonight I will have light.
It is with much difficulty that I remove the used batteries and replace them with the new. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Twice I choose wrong, but when the things fit into their places a light winks at me, and the machine begins to hum. I lean on the lever that sends power to the house. And it lives. A light shows on the verandah.
I count the remaining batteries. Six. This figure haunts me. I do not like six – but if I include the batteries I removed from the generator, then there are eight. I like the twin circles of eight, and if the sun will only shine, the new batteries will last long for they gain power from a panel on the roof of this city shed.
There is a way to make old batteries new again. Lenny tried it many times in the last weeks. It is a fiddling of the old batteries into a connection at the rear of the generator, and this must be done while the thing goes. I do not understand it, nor did Lenny, for he could not make sense of the writing that is there. Perhaps I may. I will read it, but tomorrow. From the supplies I gather the items I have immediate use for and carry them to the kitchen.
‘Such a pile there is. Certainly we will not starve,’ I tell my ugly brutes who sniff at Pa’s doors that once opened onto the rear verandah, though they have not been opened for many years. It is as if the dogs understand that he is in there. I know he is in there too, but I do not wish to know it, for when the brain wearies itself with the unsolvable, it does not think well on other problems. I will continue with my unthinking labour of transferring the supplies, and when that is done –
I hunger, perhaps because of this great store of food. I rip open a packet of crispbites, eat one, and feed one each to the dogs. I thought them thin before, now their great rib bones near wear holes in their hides. We share the remaining crispbites and when I return to the shed, they follow behind me, wanting more. We empty another packet; we each eat a can of beans, as backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards we go, their legs trembling, as do mine, but I can not stop to rest, so they do not stop their following of me.
It is on my fifth trip to the kitchen that I remember the wheel-sled. How dull is my mind. Lenny used the sled to carry the grey scrub and greenery down from the hills. It is light and its wheels run easily. I am moving it from the corner when I see Jonjan’s vehicle. I can not stop my hand from touc
hing the seat, and the box behind it, and the strange silver wings, and I can not stop my heart from aching with memory of the one who flew this beetle machine, or of his golden hair. My weary eyes begin their foolish weeping and the dogs sit close to my feet and on my feet, and they moan, too, for their ill treatment of him. Funny things. Their foolish sad faces dry my tears, and I turn my back on the vehicle.
The wheel-sled works well for me. When the final load has been transferred to the floor of the kitchen, when a huge pile of wood drips on the crumbling masonry of the rear verandah, I close my kitchen door and delight in warmth.
Tonight I will bathe, but before I do, I will spread a little of the chem-wash powder around Pa’s room, and on his bed. Perhaps it will reduce the odour, and tomorrow – perhaps tomorrow – my wheel-sled may be used to move Pa down to the graveyard.
Lord, how I fear opening the big freezer, but it has been humming now for most of the afternoon and when I lift the lid, the parcels of meat are soft but cool. Lenny must have found the young bullock and slaughtered him; the meat freezer is packed to the lid, which barely closes over it. I am glad tonight of the generator’s light and its company, though I doubt that what is freezing will be fit to eat, other than for the dogs. I choose two parcels of steak for them.
While Granny lived we worked by day, rarely lighting her pig-lard light, which made much smoke and smell. Firelight, moonlight, offered her poor features more sympathy. While Granny lived, we had no freezers. We drank fresh milk from the cows and ate cheese and the hens’ eggs, and sometimes the broth and meat from the hens. And we ate pumpkin and in season the red tomatoes.
