The Best Australian Stories 2017

by Maxine Beneba Clarke

  ’Shot, someone says.

  Fynn is already fumbling at the zip on his jacket.

  Sit down, I tell him. Finish your drink.

  Raf, we can’t stay here.

  Well, I’m finishing mine. I take a long, purposeful swallow to show him.

  Fynn doesn’t reach for his. Is he looking?

  Christ, I’m not looking to see if he’s looking.

  I can’t just sit here and pretend like … I should go say something.

  What’s to say? I told you, there’s nothing. Just finish your drink, for fuck’s sake. (When what I’d meant to say was: Brother. Be still. We’re okay here.)

  Fynn sits down, visibly shrinking inside the jacket’s bulk. I watch this, and I don’t know what good I’m trying to force. Or even if it’s good.

  Right, I tell him, setting my glass beside his. You’re right. Jiggety-jig.

  The way home is all roadkill and scarpering night creatures – future roadkill – streaking through the high beams. Bundles of fluff and mashed feathers at the side of the road.

  Acquitted, I remind him. Everyone knew it was not his intention to run three quarters of a family off a sandstone bluff. Everyone understood that. At least officially.

  Okay, yes it’s awful, it’s tragic, but it wasn’t your fault.

  How much quiet is there before Fynn clears his throat and goes, Listen. Raf? There never was any dog.

  I say, How do you mean, no dog? Because I had seen the dog. Just as clearly as if I’d been riding shotgun for that nightmare. Fynn’s described it a hundred times – that mongrelly, grey-houndish thing, ribs on display through its sorry sack of grey skin. The way it skittered out of the scrub like a wraith. Looking back over its scrawny shoulder, as though something back there had spooked it senseless.

  There just wasn’t. I don’t … Can we leave it at that?

  No, I think. No, we cannot leave it at that. But I drive the dark highway and keep quiet. Where had it gone then, the dog? Fynn had looked for it, in the first hundred versions of the story. He’d stood at the mangled safety barrier and called 000 – that part is fact; that part is on the record – and wondered, moronically, he said, where the fucking dog had got to. Because I wanted to kick it. His right knee bloody and ragged from where it had been crushed up against the ignition. A BAC of .03. Two beers, sober enough. This is also on the record.

  If not the dog?

  I roll us in silent to the driveway, past Fynn’s rental car which has been tipped up on its side, exposing its shiny undercarriage. We get out and stand beside it without speaking for a moment, the air full of insect and sprinkler music.

  Happens all the time, I lie. It’s what these kids out here tip instead of cows.

  How many people would that take?

  Probably doesn’t weigh much more than a cow. Should we flip it back?

  It only takes a half-hearted shove. The car lands with a crunch that brings a flurry of curtain movement all up and down the street but nothing breaks and no one yells out. The passenger door is scraped up and the wing mirror is cactus.

  Insurance?

  Fynn just breathes in long and deep through his nose.

  No way it’s connected, this and the blokes at the bar. They were still there when we left. Just one of those freak coincidences. I’m saying all this to Fynn and he’s saying nothing.

  Inside, Ti has left the couch made up with sheets and pillows, and the coffee table – Fynn’s coffee table – made up with a glass of water and a pack of aspirin.

  Keeper, Fynn says, with a smile so pissweak I have to tell him g’night.

  Ti gives a little moan as I slide in with her, fit my knees into the backs of hers. My chest against her spine, face pushed into her hair. Her hair smells like the ocean. I slide my hand between her thighs, not really to start something, just to be there, and we stay tangled like that, drifting nearer and further from sleep, until headlights flood the room.

  It’s nearly three a.m. when he shows up, swaying out there on the lawn. The father, the widower. So drunk he’s practically dancing, a boxer or bear.

  He pounds the door fit to unhinge it, but his voice is surprisingly soft when he says, It’s not right. It’s not right that it’s me coming to you.

  No, I hear Fynn answer. I know it’s not.

  There’s the click of the screen door as he steps onto the verandah, before I can tell him, don’t. Don’t say shit. About the dog. About the complete lack of dog. He doesn’t need to know.

  I drag the sheet with me into the hallway, holding it around my waist. Through the flywire I watch the two of them cross the lawn towards the street, then further on into the night air, away from the house. Away from help. My brother wading out into the dark and the dark folding over the top of him like a wave. No right thing now, no best thing. Nothing so easy as lifting a child onto his shoulders and carrying her safely above the grabbing sea.

  Nose Bleed

  David Oberg

  By the time I got to my mum’s house I was already starting to think there might be something wrong with me and then Mum asked me how I was and I told her I have this cyst on my back that hurts when I touch it, and Mum said that’s disgusting, that’s disgusting, how are you going to find a husband if you keep talking like that, if you talk about your body like that, and I said Mum, I don’t need to find a husband, I don’t expect to find a husband anyway, I tend to only have sex with drunk guys, and Mum grimaced and told me that if I don’t respect myself I’ll never find a good man, and that if I just met a good man I wouldn’t have to humiliate myself, and I said no, Mum, you don’t understand, I only have sex with drunk guys because when I cum I make this guttural noise with my throat, it feels like it’s coming from my stomach, like a kitchen sink when you drain the water, or like a dying toad, I’ve had it ever since I was a teenager and it’s done nothing but escalate in volume and depth, when I lost my virginity the guys I was with were kind of grossed out, but drunk guys don’t seem to notice it because they’re drunk and they’re usually already asleep by the time I cum, so we all get along, and Mum stood up and pointed to the door and said I told you not to talk like that, get out, and I said all right, and as I walked down the steps I called out and asked if she would prefer it if I lied to her and she said no, I don’t want you to lie to me, I just wish you were different.

  Anyway, I think whatever is wrong with me started when I was a little girl, back when my father died and I didn’t cry at his funeral, before I developed the cyst on my back.

  I didn’t mind leaving my mum’s house early because I was meeting Scott for coffee since it was my day off and the sooner the better because I wanted to see a movie afterwards, and I didn’t mind Scott but he tended to talk a lot, he talked a lot after we had sex even though he was drunk, which was a shame, and although I considered us at the very least acquaintances, I think it’s impossible to like everything about a person, especially if they run out of things to say, which at the rate Scott spoke was more than likely, and we met in the mall and he asked me how I was going so I told him about the cyst on my back and how my mum reacted when I told her about the noise I make when I cum and Scott said that’s disgusting, you should see a doctor, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to see a doctor because of the cyst or because of the noise I make when I cum but all I said was I don’t need to see a doctor, and he said please, do it for me, and I laughed, and I don’t think he liked that I laughed, and then Scott got really serious and he looked down at his chocolate milkshake with a degree of angst and he said do you ever feel bad about enjoying something?

  Did I ever feel bad about enjoying something.

  I knew what he was talking about. Feeling nothing when something good happens, never really being in the moment, someone tells you they love you and you aren’t in the room. Sure, I understand that. I understand feeling like your default state is the point of origin on a graph, that no matter how far you go in any direction you’ll always end up back at the beginning, feeling nothing. There�
��s a happiness I haven’t felt since I was a little girl and I think it is because I grew up, more than anything, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when I do something that used to make me happy but no longer does, I understand how that’s upsetting. It works both ways. At my father’s funeral I was elsewhere, and that made me feel like maybe there was something wrong with me.

  Then Scott said I feel bad when I spend time with you, I enjoy spending time with you too much, and I said why the fuck do you feel bad about that? You should feel good about enjoying something, why the fuck would you feel bad? And he said no, no, you don’t understand, I have feelings for you, I feel affection towards you, and I said I like it when people are affectionate towards me, it makes me feel good, and Scott said then do you want to be together, and I said no, not really, and he said I can make you happy, and I said what if I’m already happy, what if I don’t want to be happy, and if you don’t like being affectionate towards me then I think you should just stop having those feelings. He was definitely upset then, and he said something about how his emotions were valuable and I said, are you crying? and then he just got up and left, and I thought damn, I thought he would talk more, and now I have an hour to kill before the movie starts.

  There was only one other person in the movie theatre, a fat woman who sat up the back eating popcorn. The trailers started to play and occasionally I would hear her high-pitched laughter from behind me whenever something silly happened onscreen. I started laughing too. Then we started yelling things out. That looks like shit. I love musicals. By the time the movie started we both got out of our seats and met in the middle. We watched the movie and riffed on it. We made fun of the story, pointed out plot holes, told the characters what to do and chastised them for disobeying. Then I got a nosebleed, and I put my hand to my face and said sorry, this hasn’t happened since I was a little girl, and the woman told me not to worry, it was fine, and she handed me her handkerchief. She started to tell me about how her kid gets nosebleeds sometimes while I wiped my nose but then I started to gag, I had tipped my head too far back, and I coughed up a clot of blood covered in mucus into the handkerchief. I laughed loudly then because that’d never happened before. When I looked up at the fat woman she laughed too. She laughed with me, with my face covered in blood, and I didn’t know if she was laughing out of shock or genuine amusement but I didn’t feel the need to ask, nor did I feel the need to tell her about the cyst on my back or the noise I make when I cum, and I offered her the handkerchief back and she said no, no, you keep it. When the movie ended she left because she had to pick up her kid, the one with the nosebleeds, from school. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  I didn’t know what to do with my afternoon so I went to the beach, I didn’t really intend to swim or sunbathe or any of that shit, I just wanted to go there and be alone. When I got to the beach a storm was rolling in, and I could see families and couples fleeing up the sand dunes away from me. Then rain began to fall and the sky became completely grey and I could only see a few dozen metres in front of me because of the mist from the water and I thought finally, good, I am alone.

  I walked out on the pier and held my arms around my chest as the wind beat my shirt and I was thinking about what Scott said about wanting to be together and I wondered what that even meant. Being together. The last time I remember being together with someone, outside of fucking drunk guys with drunk dicks, was at my father’s funeral when my little sister held my hand so hard she cut into my skin with her nails. I didn’t know she was strong enough to do that, but that day she was. She held on so hard I thought she’d never let go. Then the rain reached me. There was a build-up behind my eyes and I wanted to cry but I couldn’t, I couldn’t cry. I wanted to cry and I wished that I wanted to cry because my mother didn’t understand me, and I wished that I wanted to cry because Scott thought he knew me, but the truth is I wanted to cry because I would never see the fat woman in the movie theatre ever again, and spending time with her was time without the expectation to fuck someone or to know someone and meeting her like that was the best it would ever be, it was the best it would ever be, because if I got to know her I would find something I didn’t like, or I would find something I couldn’t relate to, and maybe all we had in common was the handkerchief, and maybe that was enough for that moment, in that empty movie theatre, and at least I wasn’t elsewhere for that, and I was sure she would find the same of me, and I wanted to cry so much as rain soaked me through, so I decided to just pretend to cry and hoped the tears would appear on their own. I scrunched up my face and turned my mouth down and started breathing really hard and making little wailing noises like people do when they cry and I watched the rain spill off my face and into the ocean mist and thought that if anyone could see me right now they wouldn’t know I was pretending, they wouldn’t know the difference, and I thought fuck, I need to go home, I’m saturated and I can’t even cum, or cry, what’s the fucking difference, so I walked back towards the city but I slipped on the pier and I landed on my back and there was a sharp pain and a warm wetness that didn’t match the rain falling around me and I made a guttural gurgling noise with my throat and stomach that sounded like dirty water going down a drain or a dying toad.

  I was at work the next day when Scott walked in, which bothered me because I doubted he actually wanted to buy any soap. He had a real sour look on his face and I figured he was going through that sulky stage that all good men go through when they’re rejected and trying to find a way to salvage their egos and he saw me smiling and asked me what the hell was I so happy about, and I said, you’re looking at a girl who finally popped her cyst, and he said, that’s disgusting, and I said hey, you fucking asked.

  The Telephone

  John Kinsella

  They were close enough to the dregs of the river to have a water rat dead on their dead lawn. The neighbouring boy, Vaughan, came over to poke a stick at it and say, My sister has fur like that, and snigger. When Joel set up a homemade phone ‘network’ between his room and Vaughan’s sister’s, it was to talk with Vaughan and not Nina. But he was short of copper wire, so until he could afford more and get down to the city to procure it, or come across a piece of old equipment he could strip down and acquire extra wire that way, it was Nina’s room that served as the phone booth.

  Theirs was one of the Five Towns that dotted the Avon River’s winding way down through the valley. Their town was mostly dry and not much visited compared with a few of the others. The river seemed to run out of steam, or maybe just couldn’t get restarted outside the town waterhole that had sort of survived the river’s ‘training’, when the authorities dredged out the year-round waterholes the Noongar people had respected and benefited from. Maybe it was because the town was really closer to the river’s beginning rather than its end.

  Joel’s interest in electronics at the age of twelve was not usual in the district, especially in 1974. Guns and sport were the mainstays of the local boys and surrounding farms. Hanging around the linesman renewing the powerlines through the town, Joel got a taste for electricity. The powerlines reached out over the paddocks and vanished before reappearing alongside the road to the next Avon Valley town. Though their town was small, it had a phone exchange, a transformer and streetlights. All of this excited and inspired him.

  When he placed a ladder against the wall and window frame of Nina’s room, Mr Scalpini roared at him. What are you doing there, son? Peeking at Nina?

  No, sir, sorry, I’m just feeding these wires through the broken corner of the flywire. The window will still shut and everything.

  And then Vaughan stuck his head out of the open window, through an even larger hole in the wrecked flywire panel, and said, It’s okay, Dad, Nina said we could, and she’s down at Vicky’s place.

  Mr Scalpini scratched his beard and said, Well, I guess it’s okay. Just watch those damn asbestos panels, they crack just like that! He then vanished around the front of the house, and probably down to the pub. Joel was actually m
ore astonished to see Mr Scalpini at home on a Saturday afternoon than at getting a blast from him.

  Okay, Vaughan, pull the wires through and anchor them under a book or somethin’ and I’ll be in in a jiff to rig up the handset.

  It’ll be neato being able to talk in the middle of the night, Joel. I’ll sneak in when Nina’s snoring and we can whisper.

  Yep, neato, neato.

  The ‘handset’ consisted of two parts strung together – an earpiece ripped out of an old phone, and a mouthpiece made from a built-in mike taken out of a cassette recorder. On the Scalpini side of the network, these pieces were it – bound together with tape and wire, liable to disconnect if care wasn’t taken. Joel ran Vaughan through the steps, and through them again. The ‘exchange’ was on Joel’s side, naturally – the powerpack (consisting of two nine-volt batteries), the on/off switch, and a secretive little package of solid-state electronics which Joel insisted were key to the network’s success. He was designing a switchboard that would allow other neighbours to be added to the network if the prototype proved a success and some extra dosh came his way to buy bits and pieces. He had lots of stuff already – people were always giving him their broken electronic items. My electronica, he called it.

  Vaughan was bursting to give it a go, but got stuck on why he didn’t have a ‘switch’ on his side as well. You need to be trained, said Joel, and there can only be one central exchange.

  Okay, Vaughan, you wait here, keep your ear to the phone, and I’ll nip over to mine and give you a call.