Grassdogs

by Mark O'Flynn

  ‘Ivy’s in the cellar

  By Glory can’t you smell her

  With snot dribbling down her nose

  Dribbling down her nose to her toes.’

  Or was it Sophie? He was remembering his girl. One of them chewed her nails. Edgar nibbled his quicks.

  The dogs were more chaotic and more organised than the cats. Within seconds they had found the hole in the fence and jumped through it. He did not bother to rope any of them. They deserved a bit of a run after being cooped up.

  ‘Garn.’

  Only the sound of their barking remained in the night.

  At the back of the last enclosure Edgar discovered, with a sigh of sadness, the three-legged Labrador lying on its side. It was cold and stiff. Dead as a dodo. He kneeled by its side, patted its granite head.

  ‘You was a good dorg,’ he said, in what was nearly silence.

  As he passed the cage hanging in the tree the cockatoo leaned towards him and spoke:

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, yer stupid fuck.’

  Edgar opened the door of the cage, but did not shake the bird out.

  He left the pound. The cow still as a statue in the far corner of the front yard, eyes alert to all the fuss it had seen. He headed along the back streets out of town. Occasionally faint barking drifted over the tops of dark houses. He crossed the rickety old Hampden Bridge over the river. The sliver of moon was now higher in the sky, but even without it he was confident he could find his way to the shearing shed. He felt happy. He felt he’d done good. The long grass on the northern side of the river brushed against his legs as he moved through it. He was filled with the private triumph of the breakout, and he did not notice how low the Southern Cross had come in the sky until the familiar shape of the shed rose from the grass. He raised his hands up against the light of the stars. It was impossible to distinguish where the sound of mopokes came from and as he approached the shed two of the dogs ran out to greet him.

  In the pitch darkness he recognised by touch that his companions were two of the grown pups. They slept in the old fleeces, snuggled up for warmth. The wings of an owl ruffled in the rafters, before settling. It was used to them now. He thought it was a boobook.

  They dreamed in spasms of running and of long grass. By dawn the owl was gone. Before the new day was broken, two more of the dogs had returned. The smell of lanolin was comforting for them all, and they sniffed every corner of the shed. In one of the stalls he found Meacham’s empty rum bottle. And his hat. It was a good hat. Over the course of the day three more dogs returned, including Rex and Bex and the battle-scarred bull mastiff with tattered ears. There was riotous reunion between them all, rolling over the ground, grovelling and wrestling, the mock battles for status, running like mad things around the shed. Edgar cuffed them over the ears and flung them away when they jumped on him. If they combined their efforts sometimes they were able to knock him down, but they never bit him too hard, and if they did he kind of liked it. Edgar knew how to do battle with dogs. When he threw them off they sprang back and in the manner of this play, reasserting their pecking order, the days passed.

  A few mornings later the old silky wandered back on short, weary legs, then a couple of the mongrels, so that Edgar had nearly half his pack. He thought this a pretty fair ratio and expected to pick up more the next time they went to town. However when this would be he did not know. Town. Some of the shopkeepers, it seemed, were cranky with him.

  ‘The thing is, dorgs,’ he said to them, ‘looks like we’ll have to keep our heads down fer a bit.’

  They tried to live as best they could on what they hunted, which was not much. The possums had all been cleared out of the ceiling. So too the rats. Underneath a sheet of roofing iron they found a hibernating snake, whose sluggish movements at being disturbed did it no good at all. However a snake or two did not go far amongst those hungry dogs. The bull mastiff ran down a young wild pig which, after the thrill of the chase, Edgar finished off with the knife. His heart pumped fit to bust. He found the curl of the tusks very interesting, but Edgar, like the silky, was a fussy eater. He did not like pig.

  They managed to kill an old wether out in a distant paddock, far from the shed. After letting them devour what they could out there in the open, Edgar-the-butcher sliced and chopped up the remains of the carcass and, stuffing the bloody chunks into his knapsack, carried it back to the shed. One of the dogs rolled in the offal. The sheep lasted them a few days, but the fact was, they were growing leaner. Their meals came further and further apart, but Edgar would not leave the protection of the shed. The ribs of the dogs began to feel more prominent to his touch, but it was touch at least that kept them together. Sometimes the dogs turned on one another, and Edgar had to separate them with a stick or his boots. The silky, being the oldest, had the sense to stay out of these squabbles. Once one of the younger dogs snapped viciously at Edgar, drawing blood. Edgar gave it a good kick in the slats, and when it snarled it almost spoke with a human voice.

  Days passed. Rainy days and not-so-rainy. Sunny days and not-so. Edgar knew it was inevitable they would have to return to town. He also knew that they would have to target one of the other supermarkets. Mr Ashcroft had poisoned the well for sure. That snake had probably been in cahoots with Kate Shoebridge all along. There had been a conspiracy against him: the dog-catcher had probably been in on it as well. And didn’t Ivy Cornish know the dog-catcher? They set off happily with a cloud of flies hitching a lift on the knapsack. In a couple of hours they arrived at the river and turned in the direction of the bridge. They might have swum across, but Edgar knew the silky did not really like the water, and there was no reason that he could think of to save time. Time, as always, belonged to him whether he wanted it or not.

  The levee on the far side of the river shielded them from the gaze of anyone passing. But there was no one. He tossed clods of dirt into the alarming calm of the river, watching the ripples widen into rings that floated downstream. Their speed belied the smooth surface of the water. Occasionally paddocks came right down to the water’s edge, but on this side they ambled through grass and weeds. The dogs bounded off through the roots of willow trees and she-oaks, snuffling into every hole. Edgar dawdled behind, his feet flattening the grass. His stomach grumbled with hunger. He found himself savouring the prospect of a chicken. A cormorant shook itself loose from the exposed knuckles of a river gum’s roots. Over the treetops further along the river crows burst into the air. Somewhere a duck quacked. Or was it a dog?

  In time, for it was not sudden, Edgar realised that he was alone. The dogs had run far ahead. He heard their faint barking, growling. He quickened his pace through the grass, calling out:

  ‘Dorgs.’

  Through the trees he saw them and was reassured. They’d found something. They’d stopped running and were feeding, snapping at each other. He saw they were eating quickly. Edgar ran up to them.

  ‘What have yez gort?’ he barked at them.

  The bull mastiff turned its head and snarled at him. Growled at him, the ungrateful bastard.

  ‘Growl at me, will yer.’

  He tried to beat them apart with his knapsack, which had the hatchet in it. They would not part. He took the hatchet out and flailed at them with the blunt edge of the head.

  ‘Git orf of it.’

  The axe head cracked on something.

  One of the pups yelped and ran off through the grass. Edgar jumped into the midst of the pack, whacking at anything that moved, until finally the dogs yielded and moved back, teeth bared and snarling, as Edgar looked down at the carnage of what they had found and recognised the hands.

  THREE

  ‘All stand.’

  The clerk of courts rose and there followed a general shuffling of chair legs and shoe leather. The judge, resplendent in his wig and red robe, entered from the side door and sat on his velvet cushion. So too the retinue of court personnel, the prosecuting attorneys of the DPP, their lackeys; the defence barrister, M
s Henry, and her solicitor; the sundry public and a bevy of journalists. (I read all the details later in the trial transcripts.) So too rose the custodial bailiff and court security warden who had stools behind the accused, who was seated in the dock. The Sydney diocese of the NSW Supreme Court was in session. Edgar did not stand. He was asleep. In fact, according to one of the tabloid journalists, he was obscenely asleep. His head lolled back. His jaw agape, giving the entire room full view of the inside of his mouth. Its toothless, naked gate. His tonsils. His scar. No need to look further for the mark, if such a mark helped explain the inexplicable. Such comments found their way into the simplifications of proceedings. Indeed some of them were so keen to impress editors as to invoke, in one weekend magazine supplement, a quasi-phrenological analysis of the prisoner’s whole demeanour, trying hard to rationalise the machinations of fate.

  Edgar snored. His adenoids spluttered loudly and occasionally he woke himself with a start. The jury stared at him in disbelief from across the room. This had been Edgar’s pattern of behaviour throughout the trial. To fall asleep; to snore; to wake suddenly; to rant and rave. The nomenclature, the courtroom idiom was a complete mystery to him. How could it not be? It was like some mad barking. The minutiae of forensic analysis, or the testimony of expert witnesses, it was grisly and clinical. It didn’t seem to bother the journalists, beyond its capacity to claim a headline. It was all gobbledegook to Edgar, who for the most part sat fast asleep, his ugly gob wide open. Snorting. Like a grampus. If you please. Your Honour.

  Judge Crowther ordered the prisoner awake—to cease that snoring and pay attention. Poke him, if you must. There was important business at hand. The bailiff prodded Edgar, who, starting awake, blinking at the light, immediately leapt the polished rail of the dock in front of him, knocking the microphone askew, and attacked the prothonotary who appeared before him. He knocked the clerk down and bolted for the exit. People screamed. Bailiffs and custodial officers ran from two doors. Code One. They surrounded Edgar and clasped him, jumping as one, like pals celebrating victory at a sporting contest.

  There was a short recess.

  Down in the holding cells they gave Edgar a few in the breadbasket to be going on with. It took a lot of them to hold him down.

  When court resumed the prisoner was suitably restrained in cuffs and shackles. Edgar saw, or dreamed he saw, sitting at the back of the public gallery, the woman he’d seen at the mother’s funeral, who said she was his sister. It was.

  My mother had taken a great deal of interest in proceedings concerning her brother since being informed of them by a journalist at her doorstep. My father said he did not care if I knew or not, he had washed his hands of his crazy brother-in-law. I was old enough to make up my own mind, and if I had any sense I’d forget about him too, past being past. I was still at school then, and did not care about anything much beyond the range of my own pimples, but I remember my curiosity being tweaked by talk of this shameful uncle—hadn’t I met him?—from the backwoods. I remember the tension this caused in our household, as an obsession took hold in my mother’s heart.

  I did not go with her. Why? I had places to be and girls to chase.

  Lynne tried to remain hidden from him, seated behind other members of the public. The judge asked if Edgar was now persuaded to attend to what was going on around him, to proceedings that impinged on him particularly.

  ‘Do you understand me, Mr Hamilton?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The seriousness of the matter that faces you.’

  Edgar belched loudly. People in the gallery had given up sniggering. Edgar struggled against his chains for a while, then, as testimony proceeded, fell asleep again.

  Sometimes it seemed to those observing that he pretended to sleep.

  Sometimes he sang. Or whistled. Or made bird noises. Or clucked like a chicken. Or quacked. At other times he did push-ups, or squats in the dock, or yawned loudly, baring the full extent of his cleft discrepancy to the jury. Or else he farted. Or threw pencils and jelly beans about the court, including at his own defence counsel. Ms Henry couldn’t control him. He showed his muscles and posed like a statue for the court artist who was sketching him. The early humour of all this had vanished. He seemed to have no idea of the image he was presenting to anyone else in the room.

  He either slept or he raged. Even with his wrists handcuffed he managed to clout one of the wardens who was escorting him to his place in the dock. Ms Henry, the Legal Aid-appointed defence counsel, argued, basically, that the accused had no idea what was going on around him. He was clearly unfit to plead, and unfit to be tried. Full stop. The prosecutor argued the converse, that Edgar knew perfectly well what he was doing, disrupting proceedings in order to exculpate himself in the only way he knew how. His behaviour was ingenuously counterfeit.

  Edgar suspected the day outside was windy, although he had not felt the wind for some time. Light pulsed in from the high windows, throwing swift rags of shadow across the panelling of the walls. Clouds on the move.

  ‘Mr Hamilton,’ the judge said to Edgar suddenly, at yet another submission from the defence, ‘do you understand what issue is at stake here?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Do you know what we’re talking about today?’

  ‘How would I know what yer talkin’ about, yer great goose?’

  ‘Shh,’ said the defence.

  ‘We are trying to determine whether or not you are fit to plead to the charge.’

  ‘I’m fit, lookit me, look how muscly and healthy I am.’

  When Edgar’s outbursts continued Judge Crowther, whom Edgar had variously addressed as ‘a maggot’, ‘a nong’, ‘a shitbag’, ‘a drongo’, ‘a infestation’, as well as ‘a great goose’, was not impressed. According to trial transcripts ‘he also spent considerable time talking loudly about earwigs’. Crowther adjudicated on the side of the prosecution. Nothing new had been introduced to show that he was any less fit to plead than on the first day of the trial, nor indeed since the time of his arrest. The fitness hearing, conducted previously, and presided over by Judge Crowther, had determined as much. In fact he had found that the prisoner’s behaviour was ‘merely an attempt to assoil himself through calculated mendacity’. Edgar was fit to plead. The trial would continue.

  The incontrovertible facts were discussed in detail. The media loved those. My father too, from a distance, had a morbid I-told-you-so curiosity about the whole lurid affair; my mother a more complex emotion. The incontrovertible facts were of no consolation to Aileen Meacham, wife of the victim. She had lost a husband. Under terrible circumstances, it must be said, the judge elaborated. The newspapers seized upon his comments, even though she was quoted as saying, ‘He ripped me off blind’. The local community hadn’t been so galvanised since the disappearance over a dozen years ago of young…what was her name? And hadn’t the accused and his old man been questioned over that incident? The perpetrator of such a gruesome and callous, vicious and frenzied…Never to be released…Justice seen to be done…Capital punishment…

  Strong words, boyo.

  Probationary Officer Bewley described how Edgar had been arrested at a derelict shearing shed, where he had surrounded himself, and was defended by, numerous savage dogs. Police had had to shoot some of them. There were thirteen dogs all told, and three of these were pregnant. The accused was charged at that time with resisting arrest and escaping lawful custody.

  Would you mind telling the court exactly how he escaped lawful custody, Officer Bewley? asked Ms Henry.

  By wrenching his arm out of my grasp.

  Were you squeezing the arm tightly?

  Yes, I was, so as to prevent the possibility of an escape.

  Then it’s hardly surprising that he wrenched his arm out of your grasp.

  Relevance, your Honour, where is this line of questioning going?

  It was said that Edgar tried to crawl off through the grass. A gun was held to his head. He was later charged with the murder of Dennis Meacham,
who also went by the alias of Wayne Walsh. His blood was found on Edgar’s clothes. Indeed, Meacham’s dried blood was found clotted in the hair of the muzzles of some of the dogs at the shed. His watch was found in Edgar’s knapsack. His hat was found on Edgar’s head! This physical evidence was beyond dispute. The victim was purportedly unknown to the prisoner. Edgar struggled against his chains. The fact that the victim had a criminal history, which his wife later described in a glossy magazine article as ‘small time in every way’, did not ameliorate the seriousness of the charge which, while not falling into the worst category of homicide, was still a vicious and frenzied, gruesome and callous attack. (Fine emotive words for the jury to consider.) Death had occurred before the macabre mauling of the dogs, the motive of which could only be guessed at: an accident perhaps? The prosecutor speculated further: a clumsy attempt to disguise the cause of death coupled with, after the event, an attempt to remove, or even rid the body to a better place of concealment.

  This was laughed down as frivolous supposition by the lawyer who seemed most to be on Edgar’s side, a woman wearin’ duds. Edgar knew they were all working together. It was another conspiracy. The goose in the wig, the squawking eagles, and the rest of them, all in league together.

  The cause of Meacham’s death was a cut throat.

  Much later on, when I was asked to look over these files, there were questions Lynne, my mother, wanted answered. My initial brief from Mr Pennington was: ‘Find out what you can and we’ll take it from there.’ I took some transcripts home with me for the weekend.