That’s how we set off, Mum on the bike with Emery on the back, going slowly so Roochy just gallops off after them with the other dogs following.
Mum has to go slow anyway coz she’s only got a little torch for a light, coz I smashed the headlight on that bike.
None of us have slept more than an hour, but at least the dogs are fed on that old roo, that little hollow behind their ribs not as deep as yesterday, and our water bottles are full. We head off across the wide bare plain, the wind in our faces like it’s warning us there’s nothing for us out here, like it can turn us back.
After a couple of hours, the motorbike rolls to a stop. Mum pushes it behind a pile of rocks, unrolls the solar recharger and plugs it in.
‘I’ll come back for it,’ she says, already swiping at the dust landing on the solar roll. She helps Emery back onto the cart and gives him more headache pills.
We go on across the plains, Mum jogging alongside Maroochy, and Emery starts up groaning.
Mum yells, ‘Woah!’ to Maroochy, wipes the dirt from her eyes and squints around.
There’s a hay barn way over on the side of the hill, and a bit of a ditch with a few scraggly ti-trees and some rocks nearby. Mum points at the scrub, coz I guess anyone following would choose the hay barn, and I yell, ‘Gee, Rooch. Gee!’ and turn the dogs towards it.
Mum and me get the tent set up in the bottom of the ditch and camouflaged with sticks and branches of scrubby trees by the time the sun is hot on our heads and shoulders.
Then we give the dogs water, unclip them, cover the cart with branches, and crawl into the tent. We’re a mass of fur, and snores, and sweaty sleepy arms and legs and paws stretching for room and the coolness from the zipper door or tent’s vents as we sleep the day away.
In the late afternoon, we wake all thirsty and our big bottles of water run out real quick.
‘I’ll go get some more,’ Mum says.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Emery says.
Mum shakes her head at Emery. ‘You just lie still. You can’t keep bouncing around with that head injury and broken arm.’
Emery opens his mouth to argue.
‘No,’ Mum says. ‘Let me help you. Everyone needs a bit of help sometimes, Emery.’
I don’t say nothing, coz this is old arguments between Emery and Mum. Her saying he needs to listen to her. Him saying she’s not his mum. But this time Emery don’t push back. This time maybe he really does need her help.
I go to stand up to go with Mum, but she shakes her head at me. ‘I need you to take care of Emery and keep the dogs quiet, so he can rest,’ she says.’You can’t go out alone!’
‘I’ll take Bear,’ Mum says.
And that makes me hot, like a slap to the face, because why would she take Bear and not Maroochy if she’s sure she’s coming back. She knows we need Maroochy to lead the cart. She knows we can get there without Bear. Which means she knows it’s dangerous.
‘I can do it,’ I say. ‘I been out there looking for water and keeping everyone safe for days.’
‘I know, Baby Bell,’ Mum says and pats my shoulder, like she’s here to do all the hard stuff now and I can go back to being the baby of the family. It’s me now feeling like Emery used to. Me feeling like I don’t need help.
Mum also takes the rifle and the knife, and leaves me with the handgun. The bruise on my forehead aches from remembering the last time I used it, so I don’t know what I’m s’posed to do with a weapon I can’t even hold. Just makes me madder but I can’t say anything. I’ll burst into tears.
It takes me a while to convince Rooch that she can’t go too, as Mum slips away. But eventually Rooch gives up nudging the zipper, and I can let her collar go.
‘I’ll take the dogs for a walk,’ I say to Emery.
‘Just two at a time,’ Emery says. He’s lying with his good arm across his eyes, elbow sticking up, like he’s hurting bad.
I find leads for Maroochy and Wolf and clip them on, convince Oyster and Squid to sit so we can squeeze out without them.
Maroochy trots ahead, head up, nose to the evening breeze, tail stiff. She’s looking around in the low light for anything that might get us, or maybe which way Mum went. Wolfy is slinking along hard up against my legs, head right down low, looking from side to side, licking his lips like he does when he’s worried. He gets distracted for a moment by a bit of branch that needs peeing on, so we stop. Further along the ditch, Maroochy spots something and growls, sending Wolf banging back into my legs. The thing sees us too. It’s some kind of rat thing, and it leaves the bottom of the ditch and scrambles away up to a hole in the bank, and the flash of a white-tipped tail is the last thing I see.
Maroochy pulls us over to where it was. Nose sniffing and snorting like mad, she follows the trail up to the hole and sticks her whole face into it. Back where the rat thing was sitting before we scared it, the floor of the ditch is covered in scratches and they’re darker than the rest of the dirt. Mud! The rat found mud. Where there’s mud, there’s water!
I let Maroochy go on with her snorty sniffs and drag Wolf back to the ditch. I scoop out the dirt in the bottom of the ditch and there’s soft mud underneath. I get down on my hands and knees and scrape and dig like a dog. Maroochy runs down to see what I’m doing, like maybe I found another rat thing, but she licks the mud and she gets stuck in too, digging around the edges of where I’m digging.
‘Good Roochy!’ I tell her. Her paws are really built for digging. Humans are so useless at digging unless they’ve got tools. What must Rooch think of me and my stupid little claws?
This ditch must be part of a winter creek or something. Maybe there’s usually water here, which is why the rat thing set up a home here, but now, with everything so dry, it’s just more bare dirt and a few tufts of bulrushes, brown and dead on the outside, one or two green spikes in the middle.
Soon water is sliding down the sides of our mud hole and collecting in the bottom, and Wolf sticks his head in and laps up some water, like we’re doing it all for him, and we don’t mind or growl, coz he’s needs a bit of looking after.
Maroochy laps at the water too, and it’s just me digging and scraping till my fingernails hurt. I find a stick and use that to loosen up the mud in the bottom before I drag it out of the hole and stack it up all around. The dogs are knocking mud back in with their paws, but soon they’ve drunk enough, and I stack it all up on the sides again.
I get Wolf to sit beside me and Maroochy goes back to check out the rat hole, as I watch the dirt settle in the water. The sun’s getting really low, dragging the heat across the land after it in a breeze, but there’s enough light left that when the top looks clear, I get down on my belly and put my head into the hole. The water is gritty in my teeth and tastes like dirt, but I suppose that’s not the worst thing it could taste like, and maybe the grit will fill my empty stomach and stop it from aching.
I don’t even remember what it was like to feel full. Strange ideas of food pop into my head all the time, a tiny memory of taste, ice-cream and pizza, banana and mango, like my brain is trying to tell me to go get that thing, like it’s forgotten that only mangoes exist now, and last time we bought one it cost forty dollars and we had to split it three ways to share, and chew the flesh off the pip like dogs gnawing on a bone. I try to fill my stomach on gritty water instead.
I head back to get the pot from the tent.
‘Emery! We dug a hole and found water!’ I say, unzipping the tent and shoving my head in, and through the licking faces of Oyster and Squid.
‘Really?’ he asks.
‘Really! Take Rooch and Wolf and I’ll take the other dogs to get some water.’ I’m so excited, I’m just bundling Wolf into Emery’s arms and grabbing the pot and pulling Oyster and Squid so I can clip leads on them too.
‘I wanna see,’ he says, pulling Rooch in and getting up to his knees.
‘You’re supposed to be staying still!’ I say.
‘Don’t you start!’ he complains.
I pull the dogs out and zip the tent closed on his complaining at me, saying I’m like Mum. And I don’t mind if I am like Mum.
‘Oh!’ Emery yells. ‘If there’s water, there will be bulrushes. Pull them out and bring them to me!’
‘They’re mostly brown,’ I say.
‘Just dig out the green bits then,’ he says.
There are bulrushes, so I grab the green stalks way down low and rip part of the plant up, then I’ve got to use the pot handle to kind of dig them out. At the bottom where the stems turn to roots, there’s parts that are all white. I take them back to the tent, dragging Oyster and Squid who want to be going the other way, not back where they came from, bouncing and dancing about like they haven’t just spent days hauling a cart around.
‘This?’ I ask Emery.
‘Yes!’ he says, and grabs the clump and separates it up, gripping it with his knees, peels a bit out with his good hand. ‘Chew on this and spit out the bits that turn to string in your mouth.’ He shoves the stem of a bulrush into his mouth and chews it. ‘Mmm.’ Then he holds a stem out to me.
I shove it into my mouth and chew, and at first I think I’m getting nothing, but the white bit of bulrush breaks down into juice and something nutty tasting. I chew and chew as I take the dogs back to the waterhole.
I get the pot full of clear water before the dogs push more mud down into the hole again trying to get their share.
‘Good little doggos,’ I tell them, even though they’re not little at all, they’re just not huge like Rooch. ‘I know it’s harder for you to pull the cart than Bear and Roochy, but you’re doing great.’ I give each of them a big hug. Us little guys gotta stick together.
There’s a ‘woo-ooo’ sound and Bear comes galloping out of the dark making my heart thud a couple of hard beats even though I recognised him right off.
He’s panting, tongue hanging out, and happy to join Oyster and Squid head down in the hole.
Mum’s following along behind, and I put down the pot, spit out the stringy bits from my bulrush meal and run to meet her.
She shakes an empty bottle when I get closer. ‘Dry as a bone out there,’ she says.
‘No, it’s not,’ I say, giving her a shrug and a grin. ‘I dug a hole and found water, straight away!’
‘Oh, Ella! You’re amazing!’ Mum says. She’s hanging onto something strung over her shoulder and when she slides it off, it’s two goannas. ‘Tastes like chicken,’ she says and nudges their bodies with her toe. ‘Maybe.’
I laugh and lead her to the waterhole.
She drinks half the pot and I take the rest back to Emery.
Mum digs a hole in the bank and makes a tiny fire and puts the legs and chopped-up bits of tail in there and covers the fire up with branches and her old T-shirt. The rest of the goannas goes straight to the dogs.
They’re definitely happier and fuller by the time me and Mum and Emery are sitting in a huddle in the dark, gnawing on bits of bone and meat. My tongue hunting out the meat in the knobbly tail bones, my teeth nibbling off every little loose bit, then I show Mum the bulrushes Emery said we should eat.
Mum’s finished and sucking meat from her teeth. ‘Maybe we should stay here for another day and wait for your dad to catch up. I don’t know how far away the next bit of water is.’
The way she says it, I can tell she’s worried for him.
‘What was the plan again?’ I ask.
‘He was going to sneak out after I was away. I don’t think he could have made off with a vehicle, but still, even walking, he can’t be far away now.’
‘What if he goes right on by us in the dark?’ I ask.
‘It could happen,’ Mum says.
‘Nah,’ Emery says. ‘Rooch would know. Rooch always knows.’
‘He’s right,’ I say. ‘She knows.’
‘If the bike is charged by now, you should maybe go look for him,’ Emery says.
‘No!’ I say. It was bad enough when she was out there looking for water nearby. And I feel bad right away, coz now I’m saying, no, don’t go rescue Dad who’s out there all alone.
Emery frowns at me, but it’s not his mum, it’s mine, and I’ve only just got her back after so long.
‘I mean,’ I say, trying to think how to say what I really mean. ‘We’re safe here, and we’ve got water, and Emery needs to rest, so if you need to go, just for a day to look for Dad, that’d be okay. But I think we should stay together.’
As first light edges over the land, Mum checks both the guns and stows the rifle back into the cart.
‘You’ve got two shots left,’ she says. ‘There’s three in the handgun, so I’ll take that.’
I nod and blink away a tear, and a lump grows in my throat. I swallow that lump and I swallow the idea that Mum was gonna stay. Maybe I’m being a baby wanting her. I just gotta get back to doing what I been doing a while longer, caring for Emery and the dogs.
Mum sees the tear. ‘Bell, oh, Bella. You’ve done such an amazing job of keeping everyone safe and finding water, and we’re almost there now. We’re almost all together and safe, and I know you’re just worried for me and for Dad.’
I nod. ‘We’re a family,’ I say, ‘and we all gotta help each other. You go get Dad. I’ll keep on looking after Emery and the dogs.’
Mum hugs me for a long time. Maybe she’s considering not going. ‘I wouldn’t go if I thought there was any chance someone would find you here,’ she says, like that’s what I’m worried about. I’m not. I’m worried about losing her! ‘If I’m not back in a couple of days, don’t let anyone get in your way. You and Emery gotta get to Christmas’s, no matter what happens. Just keep getting up and going on. We’ll catch up. Promise me!’
The way she says it, it makes me think there’s more trouble for us ahead, and I don’t want to stop hugging her. ‘I promise,’ I say.
Mum hugs Emery and makes him promise too, then she waves and turns away. After eight months and twenty-four days apart, and two days together, we are apart again.
‘Find us!’ I shout at her jogging back. ‘Find Dad and find us again! I love you!’
‘It’ll be okay, Ella,’ Emery says. ‘It’ll all work out. Jacks is real smart.’
And it’s nice to hear Emery call her Jacks.
He used to say he don’t need another mother. Dad was always having to say, ‘Do what you’re told,’ to him whenever Mum asked him to do something, coz Emery was angry, I guess, that he got sent back to the city to live.
Now though, with my mum the only one who can get Dad, and all of us split up, Emery’s worried just as bad about his mum and grandparents. I guess we’re all gonna just be happy to be safe and together no matter whose mum is whose.
Emery rests and I do too for a while, then I walk the dogs, telling Emery I’m taking them to get water but really, I’m checking the horizon in case Mum is on her way back with Dad, or in case anyone else is out there. The land is as dry and red and lonely as Mars.
The wind starts up late in the afternoon, and dust swirls and sticks to my skin and makes my hair thick and even dirtier. I can’t even remember what clean feels like no more.
Me and the dogs spend a while trying to dig that rat out of the bank for dinner, but it’s too hard and we just wind up even dirtier, and finally I decide the rat thing is a better digger and deserves to live quietly and not be hunted down by a pack of dogs. I name him Ratty WhiteTail and wish him good luck. I bet he’s glad we dug him a waterhole. He’s probably so glad that he’s sneaking out when we’re sleeping, having a fine old time swimming about in our drinking water.
The sky gets as red as the land as the sun goes down, and giant black clouds whip up into dark foamy peaks and tear across the sky, none slowing down enough to drip a single drop of water.
The wind billows and flaps the tent in the night, waking m
e up all the time, making Maroochy sit up and look around, making the other dogs wake up and move. So I give up on sleeping and just lie and listen to the wind, hoping to hear the hum of an electric bike.
The sun rises and the wind just keeps on going, getting hotter and drier as the sun gets higher. It’s hard to get clean water from the hole. There’s nothing to eat except the brown bits of bulrush and they’re not tasty. It’s too hot and dusty, and dirt stings my eyes whenever I leave the tent to check the horizon.
‘Waiting is the worst!’ I groan to Emery, and flop down beside him in the tent. All of us zipped in here to keep out of the dust, too hot, too hungry, and too grumpy.
‘Maybe she’s picking up pizzas?’ Emery says, making me laugh.
‘You’re so stupid,’ I say and elbow his good arm. ‘Tell me a story of what it’s like living at Christmas’s place with your grandparents?’ I ask.
‘Well, Ma, she’s real bossy, and her and Grandma are always up and off to the shed or the caves to look after the mushies or deliver the mushies, so she leaves lists of jobs to do, and if you don’t do them you’re in real trouble.’
‘Really? What kinds of jobs?’ I ask.
‘Just dumb things, like the dishes, and hanging up washing, and making sure I get to the school bus on time. But the thing is, they’re up at the caves or out all day, so they don’t know what me and Ba was up to.’
‘What was you up to?’
‘Ba was relearning the old ways of growing and storing grain.’
I laugh coz it’s not the answer I thought I was gonna get. ‘What do you mean “relearning”?’
‘Ba grew up in Sydney. Far away from country and his family. And he was a welder. He was no farmer. He didn’t know nothing about land. But when he married Grandma she’d been working and saving for a house, so they had some money, and Ba convinced her to buy this land coz it was home. And coz of the old gold mine. He thought they’d strike gold. Grandma says they did, once she started to use the tunnel for growing gourmet mushrooms.’
The Dog Runner Page 10
