Fog a Dox (2 page)

That's how Brim got her name. Old Grandad Shorty told a story about his own grandmother Daisy being born under a tree on the bank of Lake Brim. Old Shorty remembered Granny Daisy bringing him up on a diet of condensed milk, bread and Golden Syrup … and stories, bush stories: why the red gums grow where they grow, why the magpie is black and white, and a bit of a rude one about why dogs sniff each other's bums. One day all the dogs went to a big fancy dress ball and they left their tails …

‘Ah, I'd better get back to work,' Albert told
Brim, ‘but I'm glad to see you've got your own tail, my old darlin'.'

Albert stumped his way up the hill where his axe and wedges waited on a day's hard labour. The hills and valleys soon chimed to the strokes of his axe and the ring of the mallet on the steel wedge as he split posts. It was hard work, but pleasant enough, with the company of a yellow robin perched slantwise on a trunk, watching with eyes like little black pearls, sharp to any grubs or larvae exposed by Albert's work.

The kookaburra, kuark, was usually there too, a beak like a pair of tin snips kept sharp for any lizard or snake silly enough to come out in the open. Currawongs and magpies stood by with a show of disdain for human endeavour but their greedy beaks never refused the big white wood grubs that Albert dislodged from their tunnels in the logs.

For Albert it was like being surrounded by friends and relations, some of them close and confidential, others haughty and a bit superior, some frantic to fill their bellies or, like the grey
thrush, harried to exhaustion by a coronet of gaping beaks squalling their hunger.

Even the goanna would sidle up from time to time, sometimes saggy and baggy in dull grey flaking skin, but after he'd rubbed that off against the coarse bark of a messmate he appeared bright yellow and black, like an enamelled prince.

Albert loved the bush. Some would say it was a lonely life, eating a solitary lunch on a rocky hillside surrounded by the debris of fallen logs and split posts, but most times Albert had Brim to talk to and on the rare occasions when she couldn't, like when she was suckling pups, there were the animals; bird song glinting from the tree tops, butterflies winking at him with the opening and shutting of brand new wings still damp from the cocoon.

Albert rested against a stump he'd cut in … now, when was it? Before Brim was born, yes, even before her mother, old Kudja, about a year or two before the last big flood, so it'd have to be, yes, 1972 or thereabouts, a long time anyway. The tree he felled today would be that tree's sister,
and thirty metres away there was a tree that he might cut in another twenty years … Well, maybe. Maybe he'd still be swinging an axe in twenty years, or a chainsaw if he ever lowered himself to use a chainsaw, or could afford to buy one. Eight hundred and eighty dollars they were, and that's 160 posts or two week's work, nah, stick to the axe, Albert, cuts all right … and quieter too.

Brim would be coming with him again in a few days because the pups were getting bigger and she'd be wanting a rest from them soon, the little devils. Their father was one of the bush dingoes, as Brim's own father had been. The dog that mated with Brim was nearly pure dingo, dark like the mountain dingoes are, a kind of golden chocolate with swatches of near-black at the nape and flanks. He was a beautiful dog, sharp as a tack. He'd quiz you with his eyes, trying to learn about you: if he could trust you, whether you were the kind of bloke who shot creatures out of arrogance, just because he could, just because he had the power of death within the reach of his finger.

They'd only caught each other's eye a few times,
but each time it felt to Albert like an interrogation. What sort of man are you? How do you treat your dogs? Do you keep your chooks locked up at night? Would you get cranky if I fell in love with Brim or are you prejudiced against dingoes? That sort of look. They respected each other but they'd never be mates, a wild animal and a man, never mates, deferential acquaintances, but never mates, because when a dog became the mate of a man he lost his wildness, lost the freedom to decide where he slept at night and the right to grab rabbits by the back of the neck.

With his hat tipped over his eyes and his mug of tea cooling beside him Albert damn near dozed off before he roused himself from contemplation of the canine universe and let his hand fall on the smooth, hard shank of his axe, his uncomplaining work companion of thirty-five years … Well, it'd had nine or so handles and this was the third head, but it was still the same axe.

He rose, his knees creaking, and slowly arched his back, stretching the tired muscles of his shoulders before striding over to the fallen log and
belting the wedge into a radial crack, driving it deeper and deeper until the post sprang out of the log like a miracle.

‘Good splittin' wood this stringybark,' Albert mused for the thousandth time, then fell silent as a strange whining, piping cry reached his ear. He twisted and turned about to fix the position of the cry, wondering if it was the little communal mew that currawongs peeped to each other as they searched for food, or the choughs who liked to march about together like a band of scarlet-eyed horticulturalists, turning over the forest litter, and remarking convivially on the fascination of moss and liverworts, mushroom mycelium and scrub worms.

But if it was choughs they'd eventually march into the clearing in their neat parade and if it was currawongs you'd never mistake their gangsta rap. No, it was an animal. He listened again … A baby animal.

He leant the mallet against the log and walked quietly toward the noise, careful to avoid standing on twigs that might snap or dry eucalypt leaves
that might betray him with their crunch. He stood still and waited, sure he was close to the source of the noise. A group of granite boulders stood only twenty metres from him and he moved forward and to his right so that he might see around them. He met the fierce eyes of a goshawk, defiant, challenging.

The bird at first lowered its head in a show of aggression but when Albert stood his ground, trying to see what the goshawk gripped in its talons the raptor stood to its full height, puffing out the hackles on its neck and chest and lifting its wings, trying to produce the illusion of having doubled in size. Despite the mad yellow glare of its truculent eyes, Albert refused to be intimidated.

He leaned closer and could see at last what the bird protected so zealously: a baby fox, a tiny carcass from which the simitar beak had already torn strips of flesh. Albert scanned the area and saw the hole dug beneath the granite tor and the flattened area before it where the baby foxes had been playing, for yes, there were surely others in the den and they must have become impatient
waiting for their mother and ventured out to play in the sun.

Why hadn't the mother returned? She would have heard the goshawk's attack call. Had the mother taken a bait, been shot by bounty hunters, killed by an angry farmer who'd stayed up all night to see what had been raiding his chookpen? Albert backed away. There was nothing he could do for the little fox. The goshawk was probably desperate to feed its own young. Killing rabbits and mice was what goshawks did for a living but if a baby fox got too bold while its mother was away they'd swoop on that too. That's how the world goes around, rabbits eat the hearts out of Mrs Maloney's wattle seedlings and goshawks eat the rabbits
and
Mrs Maloney's chickens if she's out for the day, drinking strong black tea on another lady's front verandah. ‘Aren't the foxes bad this year, Mrs Maloney.' ‘And the hawks, Mrs Bortolotto, there's one been keeping a wicked yellow eye on my chickens. Give it a good whack with the broom if I catch him.'

But Mrs Maloney's chickens are safe for another
day because the goshawk's nestlings will feed on baby fox meat tonight.

Albert split out his quota of posts but before it got dark he returned to the granite boulders and inspected the beaten sand at the entrance to the den. No adult fox had snuck back to the cubs while he had been working. They were orphans.

He knelt at the entrance and the acrid fox scent was overwhelming. He reached his arm in and followed the tunnel as it curved sharply beneath the granite. He could just feel the fur of an animal … and its teeth. The brave little fellow was trying to bite his hand. He clasped the tiny body and dragged it from the den, a fine little male fox, barely old enough to leave the den on its own, the eyes still bleary from the weeks spent in the dark. He tucked the fox into his coat pocket and buttoned the tab before reaching into the tunnel again and finding another cub, and another. One, two, three little foxes. Brim should have been there to practise her counting … as she ate them: one little fox cub, two little fox cubs …

Albert looked at the last cub and felt it tremble
as it tried to bury its face in his hand, searching for the security of its brother and sister's fur. Poor little thing, he thought, should bump it on the head really, a fox, a chicken killer, goose egg thief, should kill it, but … I can't.

The pads of the little paws were pink and soft as a baby's toes. How could you raise your hand to kill it, even though you knew it would grow into a killer itself? He couldn't do it and that was that. Should never have reached into the hole, should have let them die of starvation, would never have known the little fellows, should never have looked into their eyes and through to their tiny tremulous hearts, and after his thumb sought out the minute pulse he couldn't have killed them for all the tea in China.

CHOUGHS

‘China,' the girl wrote, ‘is a big country with a lot of people and they grow tea … and rice.'

She looked at what she had written, fiddled with the pen, rotating the plastic tube between her thumb and forefinger. ‘China.' Her mother said she should keep up her schooling, even though she was sick. Too sick to be outside.

She looked out the window. Seven birds waddled into the yard with a gait that made their tails sweep and bob. They seemed to be talking to each other,
like women down at the shops.

‘Maria, have you finished your assignment yet?' Her mother said as she bustled into the room, always something bordering on accusation in her voice.

‘Yes,' Maria replied, knowing this answer would not be sufficient.

‘Is this it? Just this, “China is a big …”'

‘I was going to write more.'

‘You were looking out the window.'

‘What are those birds?'

‘What birds?'

‘Those ones, out there, talking to each other.'

Mrs Coniliopoulos went to the window trying to think of reasons why sick girls shouldn't waste time looking at birds. When do I ever get time to look out windows?

‘They … they're crows … scavengers, peck the eyes out of lambs.'

‘But they've got white on them.'

‘Well, they're still scavengers, waltzing about, think they own the place. Anyway it's about time you finished the China assignment so I can take it
up to the school. I don't want you falling behind. When you get well and go back …'

Maria stopped listening and clicked the Google icon on her computer. Birds, she typed, of Australia. Crow. She looked at the picture of the very bad crow.
Her
birds were not crows. Not ravens, either, or currawongs, or friar birds, or … Choughs, that's what they were, choughs. How were you supposed to say that? She scrolled down. Happy family birds.
The chough is a sociable bird that lives in close family groups and all members help …

‘Maria, that's not China,' her mother accused, looking over her shoulder, ‘that's those crows.'

‘They're choughs,' Maria said.

‘Oh, Maria, please concentrate, I'm not doing this to be mean, darling, you know I just want …'

Mrs Coniliopoulos began wringing her hands and Maria knew from experience that the wringing would squeeze tears from her mother's eyes.

Maria looked out the window. Happy family birds.

Mrs Coniliopoulos stared at the top of her
daughter's head where the hair was thin, sick looking, from the chemotherapy. What can I do, what can I do? The woman wailed within her own heart, I'm a single mother and my daughter is …

‘Maria, please, I'm begging you to finish the assignment, please, because when you get …'

Maria turned and looked squarely at her mother's face. She knew her mother was trying to do the right thing, trying to be the kind of mother that solved things, but instinctively she knew that her mother had only the vaguest idea what to do in most circumstances and since the illness had arrived she could only think about getting Maria to work. That's all the woman had ever done, that was the only solution she could think of to any difficulty in life. Work.