Grassdogs

by Mark O'Flynn

  ‘Who knows, Ed, maybe one of those people I’ve come across in my time, maybe one of them might do some good in the world. Decide to become a doctor or something. Help people. No way of knowing how the dominoes might fall. Take tonight, Ed, no one knows what you’ll take from our little chat, how that might change your destiny. Or me too. Maybe meeting you is what I need to set me back on the rails. Take stock. Make my peace with Aileen. Maybe not. That’s the bloody stars for you.’

  There were no stars now. They had been hidden by a sheet of swiftly moving cloud, as the formative storm moved eastward. Clouds to the north lit silently with flashes of far-off lightning.

  Where was the sword now? he wanted to know.

  ‘Chucked it in the river,’ Meacham said. ‘Anything left in that bottle?’

  Edgar stepped down off the shed floor into the darkness. Several dogs looked up to see where he was going. The rest slept. He urinated into the grass. Insects hopped over his bare feet. The sound of frogs in a dam, hidden by spinifex. The frogs silenced by the hissing of ducks as they landed in the shallows. The sibilance and whirr as the ducks took off again. He imagined the water falling from their feet. In gaps between clouds they saw that the moon had moved well overhead, a bright ring around it like a cataract in an old dog’s eye. The moon-shadows of the animals lounging in the grass.

  ‘Ed,’ Meacham called out after him, ‘Ed, you won’t tell anyone you saw me here, will you?’

  Edgar shook his head. He understood. No business of his.

  Edgar watched Meacham traipse over the paddocks, heading north towards Junee. Again he urged Edgar to silence. (‘You tell people your dreams and they screw you.’) He kept his head down and did not deviate from his path beneath the open sky. Not a trace of storm. Was that his true direction? Was he rather not heading the opposite way, towards the river and the township? Was he lying about where he was heading? Edgar could not tell. The grown pups woofed at him once or twice, then when he had receded beyond interest, burrowed beneath the shed. Clouds of dust billowed out with their digging. They were hungry again. They searched the long grass, but there was nothing for them. They looked at Edgar mutely as if expecting him to magically produce a trolley full of food. He could not. He grabbed his knapsack and again they headed towards the town. The dogs, knowing their purpose, slid through the grass like eels, only the head of the Great Dane visible like some submerged sea monster.

  They bypassed the small township of Gumly Gumly and entered the precincts of the city along the Sturt Highway. The truck rentals. Warehouses. Cars slowed to observe them, but Edgar had each dog lawfully tethered to a piece of rope. In town they crossed the parklands over Tarcutta Street. A circus had arrived and set up shop in Bolton Park.

  ‘That’s one bloody big tent.’

  The dogs were beside themselves at the sight of five elephants chained by the ankles, outside the main tent bestrewn with light bulbs. The creatures rocked themselves slowly from side to side, their trunks snuffling the sawdust at their feet. Edgar had never seen an elephant, nor the size of their turds. He stood watching them for a while, hoping one might snap its chains and run amok. Eventually a man marched across the oval and called out to Edgar from a distance (he dared not come too close; there were some mean-looking dogs). He waved his arms and called out:

  ‘Piss off with them dogs, they’re spookin’ the elephants.’

  Edgar tugged on the ropes, and with some difficulty, the pack moved on. Edgar called back:

  ‘Well, yer elephants is spookin’ me dorgs.’

  The man did not respond. Edgar thought about this exchange. He had never considered before that he possessed anything akin to wit. He kept replaying the phrase over and over in his mind. Well, yer elephants is spookin’ me dorgs, yer drongo, yer useless halfwit, and other variations.

  It was the turn of the big supermarket in the centre of town. The last time he had been here it had been raining and the dogs left muddy paw prints all over the floor. He wondered if Mr Ashcroft was frightened of dogs? Everyone was most generous. No one went hungry as long as he removed the animals from the premises forthwith. It was a happy arrangement. All the other people he saw there must have come to some similar understanding of their own.

  As he arrived on the footpath outside the big brick building he heard a voice distinguish itself from the hubbub of the traffic around him.

  ‘Mr Hamilton?’

  It was a woman. A small woman. He looked around. Mr who? There was no one else on the footpath.

  ‘Mr Hamilton?’

  ‘Yerp.’

  ‘Mr Hamilton, my name’s Kate Shoebridge. We met out at your parents’ farm.’

  Edgar remembered. Duds. He had her keycard in his flyblown knapsack. With wagging tails the dogs surrounded her. She stood very still, looking distraught as they snuffled at her trousers, but soldiered on.

  ‘I’m so glad I found you here. I have some news, which might be of interest. It’s about your parents’ property as a matter of fact. Your property, I mean. It’s not normally the province of our Department, but you couldn’t be found, and we were approached. My fiancé works in real estate, you see. Someone wants to buy it. An offer has been made. Do you have time to come with me and I’ll explain the benefits to you and the implications for your pension? It’s just around the corner. These dogs, they’re not savage, are they?’

  Did he have time? Edgar thought about this. She looked as though she was sinking in dogs.

  ‘Not ter me are they savage.’

  ‘Do you think we could disentangle ourselves and walk to my office? I can offer you a cup of coffee.’

  She laid a cool hand on his arm. Her fingers were covered in rings. She seemed to have more twinkling fingers than were necessary. Look at the colours she had painted the nails! She was very brave. The dogs watched her every move. They saw she wasn’t going to attack him. Edgar expertly tied all the rope ends—was it sixteen or was it more?—to the poles of two street signs. Edgar thought the presence of the dogs outside the door would remind the staff inside the supermarket to fill a trolley for him. Save time. The two groups of animals almost blocked the wide footpath, barking crazily as he walked away from them with Kate Shoebridge. He was strolling up a wide footpath with a woman—not a bad-looking woman, up a footpath, past shops. The morning sun reflecting off the second-storey windows. He was curious about the notion of whether or not he had time. One thing he knew, at that moment he did not have a care in the world. He wondered if she might touch his arm again.

  Her office was of an open-plan design, shared with a lot of other people separated by partitions into what looked like kennels. When he came in they suddenly seemed very busy, bustling about with pieces of paper, avoiding his eye. Edgar scratched a flea which gnawed his scalp. He did not understand the language Kate Shoebridge was speaking to him, but it appeared that one of the neighbouring farmers (Dungay) wanted to buy up his parents’ house and the few remaining acres. He understood that much. Then came…the financial remuneration of such a sale which would inevitably have an effect, as a result of the mandatory means test, on the level of his welfare support. Whew. Incidentally, was Edgar receiving any other form of income support and not declaring it? Nup. Did he still have the keycard she had given him? Yep. He patted his knapsack. Why hadn’t he read his correspondence? Can’t read.

  Did he take sugar? Yep. How many? Four. Edgar raised the coffee cup awkwardly to his mouth. Kate looked away. The coffee burnt his tongue. She passed him a tissue. He ate twelve biscuits. He was given a sheaf of papers to consider, plus the business cards of a number of real estate agents, her fiancé’s she particularly recommended. She did not offer to consider them for him. Of course he did not have to make a decision now, just to think about it.

  One thing that filled Edgar with dread was the prospect of choice. Couldn’t he just leave thinking about all this until later? Dungay already had a house. It wasn’t as though he and his bloody daughters were homeless. He put the cup down, stuffed
the papers into his bag, her tissue in his pocket. She gave the bag a horrified glance. They shook hands and he felt all the thin bones of her fingers. He left the office feeling less at ease than when he had entered. A bank of grey cloud had hidden the sun, in the same way that a neighbouring farm could swallow another.

  He trudged purposefully back to the supermarket. When he turned the corner into Baylis Street, he saw from a distance, with a jolt to his heart, that all the dogs were gone. A police car was parked on the footpath. He ripped the tissue from his pocket and threw it on the ground. Even the rope ends were gone. Through the glass doors, as he drew nearer, a plump Mr Ashcroft was talking to the jacks, who had their notebooks open, writing something, or perhaps they were drawing his picture?

  Edgar spent a lonely night back at the shed. Every noise louder than before. No dogs returned. The next morning he marched south across paddocks in fury and grief at their loss. And in as much determination. He was convinced Kate Shoebridge was behind it, with her smooth words and cool hands. He kicked the grass apart as he moved through it. Ploughing had begun down this way, and Edgar marched brazenly across the rippled corrugations which had the same texture and pattern as the roof of a dog’s mouth. Great clods of dirt fell out of his way. He did not care who saw him. In his head he was hatching a plot.

  By the afternoon his mood calmed when, broaching a rise near the backroads behind Uranquinty, he looked up and saw the familiar blue sphinx of the Rock. When he reached the house, for he did not really think of it as a home (no smoke from the chimney), he discovered a number of calling cards shoved under the door. He hadn’t locked it. It had never been locked. Every time he came back here it felt emptier. The wallaby hide had fallen off the gaping hole of the lounge-room window. Dust and gum leaves had blown in. Where had the leaves come from? There were no trees within sight, apart from the old peppercorn over the shed. Purple thistles of Salvation Jane had crept right up to the walls of the house. There was bird cack on the kitchen table. When he opened the door of the combustion stove a mouse jumped out and skittered across the floor. Mudwasps had built nests in the corners of the ceiling. When he broke one open with a stick the numbed bodies of small spiders fell to the floor, their legs moving slowly in the air.

  In the shed Edgar found all that he needed to fulfil his cunning plan. He shoved everything into the knapsack along with the calling cards, the hatchet, his knife. That night he lay on his old single bed. The emptiness of the building without the dogs or the mother was oppressive. He thought of her dresses falling apart inside their wardrobe. The slap on the roof of a loose piece of tin. He heard the ants at work in the wood. Herds of rats rumbled in the ceiling, grinding their teeth against the beams in the wall behind his head. The step of the mother in every creaking floorboard.

  In this loneliness even his fleas were a comfort.

  At dawn, shivering, he broke apart a wooden chair and made a fire in the Bega stove. There were still tins of food in the pantry, behind a veil of spider web. He cooked in relative comfort, sitting before the open door of the stove, feeding twigs and other bits of rubbish into the flames. Real estate business cards and brochures. The emptiness he felt was not hunger, though he forced himself to eat. He did not ask himself what he ought to be doing now, he was doing it.

  In a while he heard an engine rumbling up the twin channels of the driveway. Edgar stepped out onto the porch, still chewing. The old ute stopped and a man unfolded himself from the seat belt.

  ‘Ed, I didn’t realise you’d come back.’

  It was his neighbour, Dungay, dressed in a bib-and-brace. Edgar looked at the vehicle. Was it the father’s ute? He could not tell.

  ‘I saw your smoke, Ed. Been keeping an eye on the place for you. Thought it might’ve been—’ but what he thought it might have been he did not elaborate. ‘There was some woman came looking for you. A gov’ment woman.’

  Edgar nodded. Dungay’s eyes were shaded under the brim of a large hat.

  ‘I told her you’d gone. Didn’t know where. The sister’s maybe. I guess you’ll be fixin’ the joint up again. Like your old dad had it running, eh? Like greased clockwork, ha ha. Needs a lick of paint but. The old girl’ll come up nicely in a new skirt.’

  He looked up at the sky.

  ‘Arse has fallen out of the wheat market.’

  Edgar looked at him. Dignity in silence.

  ‘Me dogs ran off, Ed. The ones your old mum sold me. You haven’t seen ‘em, have you? Good dogs they was. Trix and Bix. Paid good money for ‘em. Maybe the dog-catcher caught ‘em? Well Ed, better be going. Machinery to fix. Good to see you. Catch up some time.’

  Dungay fell back into the ute and flicked a finger in goodbye.

  Edgar shouldered his knapsack and headed out later that morning. There was no hurry. He had all the time under the sun. He liked the metallic rattling noise he made as he walked. Like the couplings of a train moving slowly past the wheat silos at Yerong Creek. He kept thinking about Dungay’s hat. That was sensible. Edgar should get himself a hat like that, but Edgar wasn’t sensible. He followed the railway line and, for amusement, threw rail ballast at crows. Sheep crowded together in the doomed shade of single sugar gums. No train came. The various dams he saw were drying up, with margins of mud cracking around their edges pocked with hoofprints. He did not see any ducks. The railway followed a direct route. No lazy meandering. He had a plot to hatch. And the movement of his legs was part of its hatching. When he reached the city he left the railway line and made his way anonymously through the streets. He found a quiet spot to rest by the lagoon in the Victory Memorial Gardens. He watched the setting sun turn the surface of the lagoon green, fading quickly to black. Peahens chased each other between the floating water lilies. Gold flashes of carp beneath the surface. People passing through the gardens ignored him, or else gave him a wide berth. They had a reputation, these gardens. He watched the yellow streetlights flicker on; the headlights of passing traffic brighten as night was accomplished. He warmed himself by the eternal flame in the war memorial. The sounds of powerful engines grumbled up and down the main street. Tyres squealed. Mosquitoes found him. He passed the time by swatting them. Collected them in a little pile. When he felt it was late enough he rose and began his determined march out of town. Passing by the Friday night clamour of the pubs. The growls of argument. No one gave him a second glance. He felt invisible. The smells of the hamburger vans made him slow down and salivate.

  The business district disappeared behind him. He moved down Travers Street, past the fragrant Turf Club. He approached the council pound over the vacant lots that surrounded it. A few goats were penned in the outer yard. A cow. The fence lines were marshalled by skinny eucalypts. There were no houses within cooee. He had no idea of the time, but it seemed to be the right time. There was again a dismal yapping, which increased in tempo at the first snick Edgar’s wire-cutters made against the first strand of Cyclone mesh surrounding the compound. Hanging from a tree branch was a large cage with a sulphur-crested cockatoo inside it. It leaned over to him as he passed and spoke:

  ‘Hello.’

  Edgar did not deign to reply.

  There was a change in the rhythm of the barking. The moon was there on the wire. Edgar cut the inner fence from top to bottom, before peeling it apart like a silver scar, ribs opened up. Inside, across the shadows of the yard and within a long row of cages he recognised his dogs, and they recognised him. There were dozens of other dogs, fifty or more, whose new frenzy at his presence was gloriously deafening.

  ‘Quiet now, dorgs.’

  No neighbours’ lights went on. No cars cruised past. No fortuitously passing midnight pedestrians.

  Edgar moved past their enclosure to the cats. All quiet in there. Taking a pair of bolt-cutters from his knapsack he snipped the padlocks from the cages. They did not want to come out, so fierce was the noise from the nearby dogs.

  ‘Come orn, yer stupid cats.’

  He drove them all towards the gate, kicking kit
ty litter and drinking dishes everywhere. They hesitated at the exit, but Edgar’s flailing arms and feet drove them out into the night. He gave the lazy ones a boot in the bum. He had to show them the hole in the perimeter fence, where they hesitated before sprinting past him. Others found their own way over. He did not see them all go. They fled into the darkness, beneath buildings, seeking safety up trees. Edgar gave them a good head start while the dogs threw themselves at the wire. Rex and Bex licked his fingers frantically through the mesh. He had never seen so many dogs. Finally he cut the padlock and released the bolt. The place reeked of shit. He opened the bolt of each kennel in the compound. Some of the gates were flung open in his face. The noise did not let up for a moment. They ran everywhere. Into the cats’ enclosure and out again. Several of his own dogs leapt on him, then ran off. He watched them go—the staffy, the bully, the Afghan, the mongrel pups, their mother, all the others that he had not named. Even the silky stopped for a sniff, chased its tail in excitement for a moment, and then ran off. Outside the cages they charged around every inch of the perimeter fence. It was like the crowd on a footy ground after a match. As he worked he found himself singing a little song: