The Seventh Day (22 page)

 

And these things had not been seen before.

When last I walked this pathway with Lenny, old Pa supported between us, my legs were strong. Not so today. It is the weight of my belly that I can not easily push uphill. Surely it would have created a better balance in the latter months if the foetus were implanted on the back of the female instead of in the belly. I am forced to lean a while to catch my breath and allow my resolve to again grow strong – and allow my eyes to sweep the ravine and the rocks where I had cared for Jonjan. In the last week I have chosen to make him distant in my mind, and to accept the reality of my situation. In this place he will not remain distant. In this place sorrow always sweeps over me.

Lord. How different my climb today than on the day I took the animal track, running barefoot back to him, so certain he was waiting for me to come.

Only his bones wait for me now. Somewhere.

Lenny lives. He cares for me and the foetus and I have come to care for him and Pa. I must not waste my tears on the dead.

So my walk continues but I glance no more towards the ravine.

The land grows steep and the rocks larger, narrowing the pathway, then I am at the place where Lenny ties the bullock when he comes for water. It can not safely climb further or, more importantly, climb down safely, the heavy barrel behind it.

There is much green up here. I knew there would be. It grows tall, clinging to sheltered corners. I find no flowers, but they will return – one day. As will the kangaroo.

Granny once said that many kangaroos lived in the hills when the grass was long, that she had eaten their meat as a child, and when the men could find no more, they ate rabbits and wild pigs, cats, and then the rats. Still, they did not eat all of the rats, cats and rabbits, and I know in my heart that they did not eat the last kangaroo. He has only gone to ground until it is safe to again look out at the land where it has hopped since that time too ancient to recall.

This hill was a sacred place to those ancients who roamed this land in the time long before the three thousand came to dig for gold. Those wandering ones left their handprints on the cave walls, and in the smaller cave behind the place of the spring they have left a fine painting.

The wide cave mouth is protected by the weeping trees, which are not weeping today. Their leaves have long been lost to the wind, but they will grow more when the chill leaves the earth, for water seeps down from the pool to keep them green in all of the hot season. I love their green, and I love the cave they shelter, as I loved it on the day Granny brought me here and showed me its wonders.

She had handed me a stone axe, left for many hundreds of years on a natural shelf beneath the sketch of the kangaroo which forms a part of the art gallery of the ancients. It is only a narrow cavern, but one wall is flat and tall and has made a fine paint board for the ancients.

I recall walking close behind Granny that day as she told me tales of the cave. Though she had not visited it in almost forty years, she had known it well, walking with old knowledge to each wall, to each ledge, to each crevice.

‘Nothing has changed,' she said. ‘Only I have changed, girl.'

Little light enters here today; I visit first the art gallery, and the stone axe. It is where we left it. I stand fondling it, passing it from palm to palm as I search for the fading outlines of the kangaroo and wonder why I did not think to bring a battery light.

‘Next time.'

Carefully then I place the tool back on the shelf and return to the larger area, averting my eyes from the basket left here months before, though the white-painted handprints attempt to guide my eye to it.

I will bathe. Yes. I will be as the dinosaur of the books and allow the water to support my great weight a while; my legs do not wish to do it. Lord, the walk was far today. How Granny had climbed here I do not know, but there was a strength in her, a determination, and a will that would not be denied. She had spoken at me long that day as we bathed in the pool. I had shown more interest in the scars of her breast and back and buttock than I had her words.

‘Not a pretty picture, girl?' she had said to me. ‘So close your eyes. Listen. Listen and learn.'

The main cave is as large as two rooms, and near separated into two by a half rock wall. There is always a natural warmth in here, for the water bubbles up hot from beneath this mountain and always the pool is warm. I spread my blanket beside it, open my overall, take the boots from my feet, and how pleased are my toes to be free of them.

Outside the sun is fighting darker clouds, but I like the unusual light. It holds an eerie quality. The deep purple-grey sky would make a fine backdrop for a painting. One day I will come with a paint board and paint the house from this place, paint it as it was when it was new and Aaron Morgan lived.

I allow my eyes a brief glance at the basket. I have brought only a can of fruitjell and a slice of cornbread in my pocket, but I will not starve if night comes too soon and the white blanket clouds again fall low over the land. There is food in that basket. One can of cornbeans I think, sweetened milk – if there were crispbites, they were not well sealed and will have been eaten by rats. I do not remember clearly what was left in it on the day I found Jonjan gone, and I have no wish to look, for it sits up on its ledge like a serpent, hissing at me, stirring a place within my mind.

I turn my back on it and, wearied by my climb, lie on my blanket to rest a moment.

And I sleep.

New night is creeping across the land when I am awoken by a great pain in my back. Near dark it is in the cave now, and half-awake and half-sleeping, I spring to a crouch, my eyes searching for my assailant. I think of the sowman. I think of the searcher as I back to the rock wall. But I am alone. No panting breath beside me, no night thing moves behind me.

When the pain eases, I gather my blanket and walk with it to the cave mouth where I look down to where the house should be. Only a white mist wanders there. I have slept too long.

‘Lenny will come for me with his battery light – or I will wait until morning.'

I am eating my cornbread and fruitjell when I am felled again by the invisible hand. The pain is such that I have not known before. I crouch at the cave mouth, a cowering thing, afraid of the swirling mist, afraid of the day disappearing too suddenly into night, afraid of the ghosts, but more afraid of the pain.

‘Lenny!' I call. My voice sounds hollow in the empty cave. ‘Lenny!' I disturb a night creature, wishing to shepherd her young to the spring pool. She spits her disapproval. ‘Lenny!'

I wait long for him, but only the pain comes. It can not be the time. It will not be the time – not here. Not in this place and alone.

Granny's book said that in the latter months there is often false labour. It also said that there should be no mating in the latter weeks, but I did not know these last weeks might be the latter weeks.

The pain returns, again and again; it is a cruel thing, and each time it leaves, it leaves me weakened. I wait long at the cave mouth. Full dark comes and there is much scuttling of many strange feet. I hear too a muffled thunder, and at first do not recognise it – until I see its light floating on the mist, creating swirling ghosts in twisting gowns of white. Then I recognise it and my heart beats fast and my eyes, unblinking, follow the light to where the house would be.

It is the grey men. They have come for the finished infant.

I hug it to me, hold its pain within me, and call no more, and I think no more to leave this place and find my way down in the dark. Instead I spread my blanket close to the pool, in the deeper dark of the cave, and I fall down onto the blanket and cry. Pain eats me, coming in waves that wash my strength away. I cry as a child, hopelessly. I cry too for Lenny and for Pa. The grey men will not be pleased that I am not waiting for them. They will not be pleased.

Perhaps Lenny will come soon. He will run from them.

And Pa. Pa can not run. And I can not rest long in one place, and I can not walk, nor sit. I think I can not live through this. On hands and knees I crawl to the cave mouth where I listen.

Perhaps Lenny will bring the grey men and the one with the gun.

No. He will not bring them here.

I wait.

For a time I listen for the leaving of the copter. Certainly Lenny will come for me when they leave.

If he lives.

For a time I believe he lives and will come.

I do not hear the copter's leaving but I see the glow of bright light. And I wait. Then I stop believing and waiting and I remember Pa's pills in the pocket of my half-dress. In the next lull, I swallow two with warm water from the pool. Pa swallows two and grows sleepy. I remove a third and drink it down, then crouch low, on hands and knees, my hair in the sand.

The pills dull the pain but do not take it away. I rest on my side, my face turned to the mouth of the cave until I can not see it. Only black. All around me is black, so I close my eyes, hide from the black.

Unsure of where my consciousness ends and nightmare commences, I see Lenny running from the fire. The house is burning. I watch the smoke coil and I see Lenny melt like a lump of lard Granny rendered down in the cooking pot so she could make the blocks of washing soap.

So hot. Too hot. Spitting bubbling hot.

The dream alters, for I am in the house and Granny is there and her hand grasps mine, and together we plunge our hands into the pot of boiling lard. ‘Swear the oath of the sisterhood,' the circular wound of her mouth says, and she laughs at me.

My own scream wakes me and I know why I dream of fire. My belly is on fire and I have dragged myself around to face the pool; my hand is in the water.

I drink now, placing my face in the water, slaking my thirst as the wild things do. The effort exhausts me and I fall onto my back. Lord, I am so awkward. If this thing wishes to come out, then only let it come fast as Mrs Logan's infant had come fast in the night.

Twice I drink from the pool and swallow more of Pa's pills, then wait for the cushioning fog of relief that the pills bring. It is a race slow pills can not win; pain has settled into a screaming monotony with little space between. I wait for it, cower from it before it comes, howl with it when it comes, certain now that I must die of it, alone, in this cave.

Like a red beast, it rides me. I feel my spine snapping with the weight of it, feel each muscle dissolving, to be flushed away by newer pain. Is the head of this foetus too large? Does it have two heads? Is one jammed inside of me? Must I die here with an abomination rotting me from within?

I hate it. How I hate the pain of this thing.

Daylight comes slowly and Lenny does not.

Agony grows stale.

Four pills then I swallow, and for a time my stomach wishes to eject them. I will not allow it. I will not allow it. I drink more water, I eat the fruitjell so it may hold the pills down. And it does, and they settle, and the mind fog returns, and it is heavy.

How long I sleep the strange dance of pill dreams that lift me above the monotony of pain, I do not know. The cave grows grey and is day.

Lenny doesn't come.

The cave again becomes the solid black of night.

He doesn't come.

I am the storm. I am the screaming wind and the pouring rain. I am the cut of lightning and the beat of thunder's drum. I am the haze of grey twilight and the red light of pain. I am the shadows sleeping and shadows waking. I am the pain, and the pool, and old Pa's pills, the pills, the pool and the pain, and I know not dream from reality nor day from night.

I see the water on the cave roof and on the cave floor. I see the sowman dancing in the sparkling pool where I try to drown the red heat within me, but my heat boils the tiny pool, and do I dream I am in the pool, or am I there?

I will die here, Granny. I welcomed Lenny to my bed and knew the pleasure of him and I craved more. I am a thing of the city's making, Granny, an abomination. They planted me on the purity of Morgan land where I might grow strong, Granny. You made me strong for them, and I have defiled the purity of your land.

Let the grey men come for me and suck this abomination from me. Let them take this thing away. Only let them take this pain away from me.

Why is the rabbit at play with the kangaroo, girl?

‘Curse your frekin rabbit, Granny. Let the hounds of hell take him, rip his hide to shreds and suck on his frekin bones!'

Why is the rabbit at play with the kangaroo, girl?

‘Leave me alone, you hard old bitch!'

 

Pa has found a kitten with two heads. It is a tabby thing, meowing in duet. Pa has it on the verandah and its four tiny legs try to run in different directions.

Kill it, Lenny says, and he walks away, but I want to know what it is that they have found. For the second time I am swollen with the grey men's foetus and full up with their cordial, but I creep to the verandah.

Pa sees me. He does not speak, but beckons me to his side.

I stand at the door, half in, half out, afraid of the outside, afraid of that which swells me from inside. Always afraid.

He walks to me, offers the kitten. I reach out and pat its twin heads.

That's the future, girl. They make them two, three at a time now in their frekin city. In the future they'll make 'em with two or three heads.

The kitten has captured my interest, now his words capture me, hold me captive.

The old girl used to say they played with nature, but nature hits back. Nature always hits back, girl.

Kill it, Pa, Lenny says, then he snatches the kitten, wrings its twin necks and throws it to the dogs to rip apart. I weep, but silently, afraid. Yet something compels my eyes to open, to watch the dogs make a bloody mess of the dear abomination.

Lord, let me see worse so I do not see my own hell. Lord, let me know that death is worse than the three grey men who have filled my belly again with their foetus.