Grassdogs

by Mark O'Flynn

  Edgar recalled comics he had seen. Huckleberry Hound, or Finn, or someone, asleep on a riverbank, fishing. The picture must have come from a book the mother had read to him. Or someone. So he too tied a piece of string about his toe, baited with a piece of parson’s nose impaled on a makeshift hook at the other end. He tossed it in and lay back. The sun warm on his face, the orange inside his eyelids. His own snore woke him. Nothing happened except that his toe turned dark and he quickly had to cut the string and rub some circulation back into it. He attempted fishing from different spots along the river, using different toes. He was getting a lot of sleep. Eventually he was wakened by the softest of tugs on his little toe. He hauled in the line, hand over hand, and found he had caught a crayfish refusing to unclasp its claw from the meat. Other times, on different toes he caught yabbies, carp, even a young Murray cod.

  After he cooked and ate, he walked. The dogs came at his whistle. If they lost track of the day they would walk at night. Sometimes they gathered together under a tree and slept. Edgar would climb amongst the branches and find eggs. He was a good climber. Cattle fled at their approach, a great tremor rumbling in the ground. Where necessary Edgar restrained the pups with pieces of rope, but the older work dogs knew better than to cause panic in a herd. The pups learned quickly from Rex and Bex, and more often than not they did as he commanded. Edgar found that his brain recalled the father’s instructions to the dogs: the whistles and gestures. If one displeased or disobeyed him he would pick it up by the ear and shake it furiously, flinging it away into a tussock of grass, only to have it come fawning back to lick his boots and roll on its back and offer its throat. But he also knew how to reward and favour. He was their master. He was top dog.

  Once, in a paddock far from the house, they came across a lame sheep. He did not know whose paddock it was. The beast had been separated from a flock which had fled when the dogs appeared. Too old to keep up. The dogs circled it, manoeuvring it into a corner framed by two intersecting fences. The sheep bleated helplessly at them. With growling threats and imprecations Edgar held the dogs back. A low rumble like the hum of idling machinery came from their throats. They were hungry after their meanderings. The ewe was frozen in terror. Everywhere it turned a dog took a pace forward, the cattle dogs with their hypnotic eye. It bleated again, watching Edgar as he stepped from the pack. Watching as he took the hatchet from his belt, watching as he raised it high and brought it down. Her legs buckled. Knowing it would come to this, Edgar took a step back, and with no more than an attitude, the turn of his body, let the dogs in.

  So began, in a modest way, their life of rustling. A heifer or ewe would last the pack several days. After they had eaten their fill out on the plains Edgar would chop up what remained with his hatchet and carry it home in a knapsack. Blood sometimes seeping out of it. He became proficient at slicing up portions for himself with his knife. Edgar-the-butcher. Local farmers blamed feral dogs that lived in the scrubby hills. Bones were found.

  Ant-hollowed skulls. Stories returned about a puma descended from ones released by American soldiers after the war. Edgar too had sometimes wondered if the father’s stories of the puma were as true as the ones of the beheading of Hanging Rock. Kengol. He had never come across a puma. He would do a Tarzan job on it if he did. In truth, what feral dogs there were, came and joined Edgar’s pack. Now he had a Rottweiler, a pitbull, a collie dog, a three-legged Labrador all living happily with him under the one roof, too. Edgar ruled them all. He knew their habits and their predilections. But for a bit of rough and tumble, the dogs, in turn, lavished their love on him. Sometimes he saw Dungay, in his battered hat, come to their common fence and stare across at the house. If Dungay whistled for Rex and Bex, they did not go to him.

  One day, resting in the cool of the lounge room, listening to the occasional drone and the snap that silenced a fly, he saw a forest of ears prick up. The low grumbling began in their throats. Hackles rose, then Edgar too was able to hear the sound of the engine approaching.

  ‘Shuddup.’

  They waited. He placed aside his empty tin of beans. Through the window he saw a car turn into the yard, heard its slowly turning tyres puff the dust before them. Heard the motor cease. The doors open. A man in a suit stepped from the passenger side. Was it the same suit? The same man? Maybe Edgar needed to get a suit? A woman, similarly dressed, stepped from behind the wheel.

  ‘A woman?’ he said to the dogs ‘—wearin’ duds.’

  It was as much a mystery to Edgar as it was to the dogs. The two picked their way through the turds in the yard. Disappeared from view. At the far end of the house there was a knock. One of the pups yapped. Edgar punched it. It yelped. Edgar stood. Every dog in the room rose to its feet.

  They stood gazing at each other, the stuffing spilling out of the couch, the curtains ravaged. Tufts of dog fur scattered all over the floor. There was another knock. Edgar opened the door into the hall and squeezed through the crack. The dogs tried to slip through with him. He blocked their exit, leaving the barrier of his leg as the last thing he pulled out after him. They whined and scratched at it. One of them gripped his pants leg. They didn’t like to be thwarted. He shook his leg vigorously. He dragged the door shut behind him with a soft click. At this small sound there erupted a riot of howling and barking from the muffled confines of the lounge room. Edgar marched down the hallway. He flung open the door to the wide-eyed surprise of his visitors. Visitors. Here on the step. He didn’t want to let them in. The house was such-a-mess. The ruckus from the dogs. They stared at him through the shredded flywire, before the woman spoke.

  ‘Mr Hamilton?’

  Edgar looked at her lapels, her trousers. She had to make herself heard.

  ‘Mr Hamilton, my name is Kate Shoebridge, I’m from the Department of Community Services—’

  She held out her hand and Edgar saw that the colour of her nails—there seemed to be so many of them—looked as though they had been dipped in honey.

  ‘—And here are our cards,’ said the man, presenting two identity cards which Edgar did not take. He showed the man his fangs. The dogs in the room behind him were going berserk. The man took a step down from the porch.

  ‘We were simply wondering,’ the woman, Kate Shoebridge, continued, ‘how you were getting along after the—er, isn’t it silly but you can never just come out and say it, you know what I mean, the, er, passing of your mother.’

  ‘Dead as a dodo,’ he agreed.

  What was a dodo?

  Edgar listened to the further words of condolence but found it hard to understand. He added a few of his own.

  ‘Me dorgs is hungry.’

  ‘Yes, things must be very difficult. To get to the point, your mother was collecting a pension at the time of her, er, passing. Which included financial support to help with an intellectually disabled son. I guess that must be you, Mr Hamilton.’

  ‘Me dorgs is very hungry.’

  He kept looking at her nails. Her duds.

  ‘Let’s go, Kate,’ said the man, nervously. ‘Do this over the phone.’

  ‘What we were curious to know is why you haven’t continued to access this support through our office? There is a relatively substantial amount of money, which has not been touched. We wondered if you still continue to require the Department’s assistance at all?’

  ‘Whafor?’

  ‘For meeting the daily costs of living, rental, transport, et cetera. We have recently altered our banking arrangements and procedures in order to facilitate—’ she looked at Edgar ‘—in order to make it simpler…so as to—’

  The dogs barked furiously, throwing themselves at the inside walls of the house.

  ‘What can I feed me dorgs? The chooks is all gorn.’

  ‘This keycard will enable you to access a range of different services, for an automatically deducted fee, provided by or in association with the Department.’

  Kate Shoebridge flipped open a smart leather wallet and took out an envelope. The man had sh
uffled down three more steps. There was dog shit everywhere.

  ‘For example,’ she was speaking faster now. Edgar came out onto the porch, where they could see his face clearly.

  ‘For example, with this keycard you can set up an account with a number of local businesses that will direct debit your account, plus offer you a pensioner discount on a range of services.’

  He took the envelope and brochure that she handed him. ‘I’ve got tea,’ he said. They ignored him. He could tell they wanted to leave. They were both at the bottom of the steps.

  ‘You’ll have to sign this form as proof of receipt, Mr—’

  Before she could say his name they heard the sound of glass breaking from around the corner of the house. The clamour of the dogs was immediately louder. After a rapid glance at one another, Kate Shoebridge and the man both turned and bolted for the car. One of the stupid mongrels had worked itself into such a tizzy it had chucked itself through the damn window. Bugger it! Edgar saw the pitbull charge around the corner. The fleeing ankles. He leaped down the porch steps and ran to intercept it, as Kate Shoebridge and her fancy fellah reached the car. He tackled the dog and rolled over the top of it, tumbling, pinning its head in submission against the earth. One on one was easy. It was the sort of game the dog enjoyed, even when Edgar sat himself on top of it, as the car wheeled a dusty arc around the yard and sped off down the track. Edgar slapped the silly mutt about, then let it pursue the car to the road. He picked up the envelope. He went inside to release the others and smash out the remainder of the window pane before one of them could disembowel itself through mistimed hijinks.

  He nailed up his old wallaby hide over the window. It was pretty ragged, but it kept out most of the wind. Whenever he opened the door the draught made the hide slap against the hole in the glass. Like what? He tried to find words to describe it. Like a drunken fuck.

  Crows learned to follow them when they set out across the grass on their wanderings. Burrowing through various crops of wheat, barley, canola, Salvation Jane. They were grassdogs. Farmers roved their boundaries at night in paddock-bashers with spotlights mounted on the roof, looking out for sheep duffers, or pumas. Sometimes in the dark silence he heard the snapping echo of rifle shots at the end of a hot day.

  It was difficult to find enough to feed them all. The dogs had started to snap at each other in hunger and boredom. The pups, which were nearly full sized, bore the brunt. Edgar had to think of something. There were too many dogs. Somehow he was responsible for them all. He was the provider. It was this vague idea of responsibility which disturbed him. There were over a dozen dogs now. The pups were ravenous. They would eat anything. They ate rabbits blinded by myxomatosis. They ate crows and other birds. They ate old car tyres. They ate cow shit. The fussier silky and the three-legged Labrador grew weaker. Edgar kept tidbits aside for himself and them. They hungered, but they survived.

  Eventually, one morning Edgar packed his knapsack with things they would need and headed off for town. It was not really a decision he made, but simply something his legs started doing. Tufts of elephant grass still crisp with frost as they set out, breath foggy from their muzzles. The orange sun through the mist, coated with mould. The dogs raced ahead of him and around him. The silky and the Labrador stayed by his side. No matter how fast he walked they did not lag behind. They strained without question. The burrs and grass seeds stuck to the dogs, matting their fur. When they stopped to rest, Edgar spent time combing his fingers through them, picking them out. The short-haired dogs fared better.

  Several other dogs joined them as they journeyed across the winter paddocks towards the big town. The pack was friendly. More the merrier. It took most of two days to walk the distance. However they did not take a direct route, nor did they have anything to hurry for. They were a river of dogs. Loose skeins of cloud drifted high above, floating to the east, foretelling cold nights. The paddocks rolled smoothly beneath his feet, they could not be called flat. Not flat like the flatness further west, out past Lockhart and Urana to Hay where the father had taken him in the ute. Out to Conargo and the Hay plain, to the flat earth. Out there the father had said it was so flat you could feel the holes in your shoes. A limp made you walk in circles. The people there wore ironing boards for hats. The horizon’s shadow shimmered. The flatness was oppressive to those who were not used to it. It did not have the same smells he knew. Edgar did not head in that direction. When the landscape undulated, as it did around here, he knew he was in what the father called his own sweet hole.

  They travelled overland, crossing the Olympic Way unseen, as if to intersect with the course of the sun. They sniffed out and lapped the water in shallow, brown dams. Once they startled half a dozen mallards, which flapped into the air, dripping pearls of water, each catching a scratch of sunlight. The air was filled with the rushing of wind over their wings, as he and the dogs stared upward. Edgar watched them out of sight, quacking nasally, seeing in his mind’s eye the silver drips fall from the sun. They rested against the windbreaks of fallen trees. They slept in the lee of a half-built haystack. Left the next day at dawn before its builder returned. While he was daunted by the demands of his responsibilities, Edgar loved this companionable, aimless end. He wished it might never finish. When they reached Ladysmith, Edgar knew they had walked too far. No matter, there was no hurry. They turned north-west, to the guttering sun, and back towards the big town. They slept. Three other dogs joined them: a frightened Doberman, a moulting Afghan, a one-eyed mongrel. Edgar lashed them with rope as they walked, so they would learn that he was the centre of their meandering orbit. The others ran ahead investigating clumps of bracken, snuffling down old rabbit holes. Their barking resounded off the sides of hills, echoing out of gullies. They frightened rabbits out of grass-clumps. But when he whistled, they always returned to his side, like a disparate swarm of bees.

  The name of the big town was Wagga. The crow town. It was a town of suburbs and knee-high fences. It was also a town of hospitals and schools and churches and death. The silky yapping in the broken glass on the linoleum floor, the white door swinging to stillness. At his feet the old silky kept pace, despite its greying fur, one ear turned inside out, tongue lolling towards the ground.

  They moved as one down the main arterial highway. Crossed Kyeamba Creek and circled behind the RAAF base at Forest Hill. Edgar leashed each dog with the pieces of rope he carried in his knapsack. He tied the rope ends together so that they pulled against each other. Together they hauled him along at a brisk trot. He had to dig his heels in.

  ‘Woah, Dobbin,’ he cried in the mother’s voice.

  To stop them he simply sat down, issuing imprecations. He was the fulcrum. Coming back to the highway they passed yards full of bulldozers, front-end loaders; truck rental companies and the stoneworks. Apart from the traffic, they met an increasing number of bemused pedestrians. They crossed Lake Albert Road towards the central shopping precinct of the city. Kerb and guttering. On Baylis Street they caused a minor traffic jam as they negotiated the crossing of the road. People stared. Shopkeepers came out of their doorways to watch them pass. Delivery drivers let jaws gape at the spectacle of one man with the mottled hotch-potch of dogs passing up the main drag.

  It was not difficult for Edgar to find a supermarket. He remembered waiting in the back of the ute while the parents went into one. Merely had to follow the traffic. There, ahead, he saw the massive car park. Then he followed the shoppers, who scurried before him, herded through the automatic doors. A shower of hot air fell on him as he passed through. Why? Inside Edgar stood by one of the cash registers. The dogs tangled around his legs. He blinked at the fluorescent light; the hum of commerce. The hairs on his arms sensed electricity. A girl behind the nearest till stared at him, fingers poised in the act of tapping at the keys. He could not name the look on her face, only that it was a familiar one. Same with the tidy queue of patrons.

  ‘Youcan’tbringthoseanimalsinhere,’ she shrieked.

  Edgar didn�
��t hear. He stood there with the twenty (or was it more?) leashes gripped in his hands. The silence spread. The pinging tills fell silent, their batteries running. Soon every person in sight, employee and customer alike, was staring at Edgar.

  ‘Isayyoucan’tbringthoseanimalsinhere.’

  Edgar raised the bouquet of rope ends he held in his fists.

  The public address system crackled and announced:

  ‘Mr Ashcroft, please report to register fourteen. Mr Ashcroft, please come to the front immediately.’

  Edgar waited. He liked waiting. Someone laughed. A shopping trolley clashed against another. The dogs were very obedient, even the mongrel pups, as if sensing their moment in the limelight, though some of them had their tails between their legs. They raised their snouts to all the wondrous smells inside the store. Edgar could smell chickens roasting in a rotisserie somewhere in the building’s depths. After a while a round man in a suit came bustling along an aisle towards the tills. Where did all these men in suits come from? The round man’s jaw dropped when he saw all the dogs. Edgar could see his tongue. He had been eating liquorice.

  ‘What on earth? You can’t bring those—What do you mean by?—Those animals are unhyge—’

  ‘Me dorgs is hungry.’

  ‘I don’t care what they are, you can’t bring them in here—Get them—’

  ‘Me dorgs is hungry.’

  Again Edgar held up the rope ends to show Mr Ashcroft. One or two of the dogs strained against Edgar’s grip. The click of their claws snickered against the polished floor. Taking a hasty step backwards, Mr Ashcroft held up his hands and squeaked:

  ‘All right, all right.’