Where There's Smoke (27 page)

She covered her mouth with both her hands and in the same movement sank to her knees. ‘Oh, my poor boy. My poor Nigger.' She took the dog's head gently in her lap, and its long tongue slid out and licked weakly, lopsidedly, at her hand.

She looked up at her husband, distraught, through wet eyes. ‘What can we do, Ben? What can we do? And what are you doing with that
bat
?'

He had no answer. His eyes met hers for a long moment, then he stepped back inside the house, and kept walking through to the bedroom. He climbed the stool, and took down the shotgun. He slid three plump, red cartridges into the magazine, and loaded one in the chamber. The gun could hold more, but four already seemed like overkill. He pocketed another three cartridges all the same. To be found wanting once was once too many.

‘What are you doing?' Meg demanded when he reappeared.

He couldn't meet here eyes.

‘You're going to shoot him
again
?'

‘Look at him, Meg. What choice is there? He must be in misery. Dragged himself two miles back to the house. What else can I do?'

‘Can't we give him the night at least? Something to eat? Maybe he'll recover.'

This time he looked at her, if still unable to speak.

‘It's not right, Ben. You put him through this. You and your father. And isn't there some kind of law? If you survive the execution you can't be convicted again …' How had this nonsense popped into her head? She abandoned it as soon as it popped out of her mouth. ‘If you'd done it properly the
first
time …'

‘You think I don't know that?'

The dog was shivering. She took off her towelling robe and tucked it over and around him.

‘Get some water, Ben.'

He leaned the shotgun against the wall inside the door, and filled a saucer in the kitchen. The dog ignored it, or was unable to control its head enough to sip.

‘I'll warm some milk,' Meg said. ‘You bring him inside. Put him on the spare bed.'

At least the dog seemed in no pain. Paralysed down one side perhaps, and unable to speak any dog words, unable even to whimper, but uncomplaining as he was wrapped more tightly in the swaddling of bathrobe, and lifted into Ben's arms. The burden was surprisingly light – dehydration? blood loss? – and by bending his knees Ben was able to grab the shotgun also. Meg had vanished, naked, into the kitchen. For a moment he paused in the doorway, half inside the house and half out. Nigger looked up at him, and licked his hand. Blue was out in the yard, facing them; as Ben stepped down off the veranda the younger dog ran between him and the utility, and turned, crouching, and turned and crouched again, as if trying to herd him back into the house.

‘Stand down, boy.'

He laid the bundled dog gently in the tray, then took the shotgun into the cabin with him, placing it carefully across the backrest. He had started the engine and turned towards the grid when Meg walked out in front of the ute. He hadn't seen her emerge from the house; she had pulled on boots and jeans and a thick pullover. Instead of the promised saucer of milk she was carrying the garden spade, cradling it across her chest like a weapon. Was she, also, refusing to allow him to pass? Over my dead body, Ben? Instead she walked around and climbed into the passenger seat, nursing the spade between her knees, perhaps – the thought came to him – to keep it out of sight of the dog. She reached over and squeezed his hand, briefly, but without looking at him. Sensing that she couldn't bring herself to speak, he kept silent himself as the ute rumbled across the grid and into the home paddock. She climbed out to open the first gate and climbed back in after he had driven through, still without speaking. After the second gate, she climbed back onto the tray instead, and sat nursing the dog's head in her lap.

He opened and closed the third gate himself.

He parked facing the same stand of scrub, leaving the headlights blazing. The shallow grave had imploded; he dug it out quickly while Meg remained up in the tray, murmuring soothing sounds at the dog. He worked hard and fast, digging out another entire hole's worth of dirt, wanting to be certain this time, before tossing the spade aside.

‘I'm ready,' he finally said.

‘You'll need to lift him out,' Meg said.

He took the towelling bundle from her and carried it around into the headlights, keeping the dog's head towards the ute, not wanting him to see the stand of gums, or the gaping hole – although Nigger surely knew exactly where he was.

He set the dog on the ground and, as Meg knelt and fondled his ears again, walked back to the cabin of the ute for the loaded gun. He checked the breech as Meg tugged a corner of the robe over the condemned dog's eyes. Nigger licked her hand once, but as she stood back, the right side of his body, the working side, began trembling, violently.

‘He's scared,' she whispered, hoarsely. ‘He knows. Do it quickly, Ben.'

Not too quickly, he reminded himself as he aimed the gun with more deliberate care at the masked head. He squeezed the trigger slowly, and with such forced concentration that he barely noticed the hard, bruising kickback of the stock against his shoulder, or the explosion of the shot itself.

Meg's gasp of horror was barely audible to his deafened ears; she had already turned away to lean against the bonnet of the ute as he lowered the gun. He could look no longer than a second himself. He leaned the gun against the wheel of the ute and dragged the dead dog by the hind legs to the edge of the hole, keeping his face averted.

Then he took the spade and cleaned up the fragments of shattered bone and brains, still trying only to look out of the corner of his eye. He had scraped two small mounds of dirt and remains into the hole when nausea overcame him.

‘Here,' Meg was saying somewhere, far off, although apparently close enough to take the spade from his hands. He squatted on his heels, with his head between his knees till he stopped feeling faint. He could hear her working somewhere, and by the time he felt safe to rise to his feet again she was banging down the earth on top of the grave.

‘You OK, Ben?'

‘Getting there. And you?'

A long silence. ‘Do you think we're cut out for this?'

‘I think you are,' he said, and she offered up the glimmer of a smile.

They drove back to the house as they had driven out, in silence. Blue was waiting at the grid, prick-eared, pacing relentlessly about. As they climbed out, he was already looking past them from the tray to the cabin and back again. Ben left the shotgun in the cabin, but tossed the spade into the toolshed and closed the door; he would hose it down later. Blue followed Meg up the steps onto the veranda, searching her face for a sign, looking back at Ben's face, looking past them out into the night, looking and searching everywhere.

At the door Meg turned, and spoke to him. ‘No, Blue. Stay.'

She held the door for her husband to step through, then closed it in the dog's face, slowly but firmly.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE

CHRIS WOMERSLEY

Once, when I was about nine years old, I was kicking a football around in the back garden late in the afternoon. I was alone, as usual – or thought I was – and the day was nearly over. It was late autumn. The air was still blue and smoky from the piles of burning leaves in the neighbourhood gutters. Shooting for goal from an impossible angle, my football bounced into a tangle of bushes beside the high wooden fence that bordered our neighbour's house and when I crawled in to retrieve it, I discovered a woman crouching there, damp leaves stuck to her hair like a crown. She clutched her knees, which were bare and knobbly where her dress had ridden up. I was too stunned to say a word.

‘You must be Nick,' she said.

I nodded. My scuffed football was just behind her.

‘How did you know?' I said when at last I found my voice.

She glanced up at the old house, at the lighted lounge-room window warm as a lozenge in the failing light. Soon one of my sisters would draw the curtains and the house would be absorbed into the falling night, safe and sound against the cold and dark. Realising I was clearly not the sort of child to run screaming upon finding a stranger in his backyard, she took a few seconds to adjust her position, which must have been quite uncomfortable.

‘Oh, I know
lots
of interesting things about you.'

I heard Mrs Thomson singing to herself in her kitchen next door, the
chink
of cutlery being taken from a drawer. Having stopped running around, I was getting cold and a graze on my elbow where I had fallen over on the bricks began to sting.

‘I know that you love football,' the woman went on, looking around as if assembling the information from the nearby air. ‘Aaaaand that you love
Star Wars
, that you've got lots of
Star Wars
toys and things. Little figurines, I guess you'd call them.'

This was true. I'd seen
Star Wars
four times, once with my dad and then with my friend Shaun and then twice at other kids' birthday parties. In addition, I had a book of
Star Wars
, a model of an X-Wing Fighter, comics and several posters on my wall. The distant planet of Tattooine – with its twin suns, where Luke Skywalker had grown up – was more real to me than Darwin or the Amazon.

I inspected the stranger more closely in the fading light. She was pretty, with long hair and freckles across her nose. She wasn't as old as my mum, but maybe a bit older than my teacher at school, Miss Dillinger.

It didn't seem right that this woman was sneaking about in our garden and I was mentally preparing to say something to that effect when she leaned forward, whispering, her red mouth suddenly so close I felt her breath on my ear.

‘I
also
know that it was you who broke Mr Miller's window last month.'

A chill seeped through me. Several weeks ago, Shaun and I were hitting a tennis ball around in his grassy garden when we discovered a much more interesting game; by employing the tennis rackets we could launch unripe lemons vast distances. Green lemons the size of golf balls were the best and, if struck correctly, would travel across several houses – maybe even as far as a kilometre, or so we imagined. With no one around – who knew where Shaun's parents were? – we amused ourselves in this fashion until the predictable happened and we heard the smash of a distant window, followed by furious shouting that went on for several minutes. Terrified, we stashed the tennis rackets back in the shed, cleaned up the lemons and scurried inside to watch television and listen out for sirens or the blunt knock of a policeman at the front door. We heard later that the police were indeed summoned, but no one thought to question us about the damage because it happened so far from our houses and who would have dreamed we could throw lemons so far? Nothing was ever proved and he vehemently denied any involvement, but blame was sheeted home to an older kid called Glen Taylor, who lived closer to the Millers and was known to be a troublemaker. Our apparent escape didn't stop me from dwelling on our crime most days and even now, weeks later, the sight of a police car filled me with dread, with terrifying visions of handcuffs and juvenile detention.

The stranger sat back on her haunches, evidently satisfied. I felt the shameful heat of incipient tears. ‘Are you the police?'

‘Hardly.'

‘Then who are you?'

She coughed once into her fist and looked around again, as if she were unsure herself. ‘Don't cry,' she said at last. ‘It's all right, I won't hurt you. My name is … Anne.'

I wiped my nose. ‘But what are you doing hiding in our garden?'

A fresh pause, another glance towards my house. ‘I'm not
hiding
, thank you very much. I'm always here.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm waiting for my turn on the throne.' The woman looked at me again, and it seemed to me her mouth had tightened. ‘Princess Anne, waiting to enter the castle as queen at last.'

By now it was almost dark. The woman's dress was indistinguishable from the foliage surrounding us, so that only her pale face was visible, the deep pools of her eyes. She jumped when my mother called out for me to come inside for dinner – looked set to run off, in fact – before relaxing again at the sound of retreating footsteps and the screen door slapping shut.

‘Yell out you're coming,' she whispered.

Succumbing to the innate authority adults wield over children, I did as I was told.

‘Smells delicious,' she said a few seconds later. ‘Like lamb.'

I nodded.

‘I hear your mother is a
good little cook
.'

I was suffused with filial pride. ‘She is. She makes a beautiful apple crumble, too.'

‘Keeps a nice house. Tucks you in, reads you stories, makes
biscuits
.'

My mum didn't make biscuits. The curious woman didn't even seem to be addressing me but, rather, talking out loud to herself.

‘That's very nice,' she continued, as if I had agreed with her summation of my mother's housekeeping capabilities. ‘Why don't you bring me back some of that lamb later. Wrap a few slices in some wax paper or something. Let me try this famous lamb.'

‘I don't know—'

‘Go on, be a sport. And one of your father's cigarettes.'

‘He gave up.'

The woman sniggered. ‘Like hell he did. Look in his study. There's a green volume of Dickens on the top shelf of his bookcase.
Great Expectations
, naturally. It's hollowed out and there's a packet of Marlboros hidden in there. Bring me a couple. Don't forget the matches.'

I didn't ask how she knew this. I had become unaccountably afraid in the past minute or so and stood up as best I could beneath the low branches to leave. At school they advised us not to talk to strangers in the street or at the park, but no one said anything about finding one in your own garden.

‘I suppose you want your ball.'

‘Yes, please.'

She slung me the football. ‘Nice manners. Don't forget to bring me those cigarettes after dinner. I'll be right here.'

‘OK.'

‘Don't smoke them all yourself, will you, now you know where they're hidden? They're for grown-ups.'

‘I don't smoke.'

‘Good boy. It was nice meeting you at last. You can't tell anyone you saw me, though. Remember what I know about you and those lemons. A certain broken
window
. Don't want your mum to find out, do you? Or the police. Tell anyone you saw me here and I'll blow your whole house down. Just like whatshername, Princess Leia.'

I didn't bother to correct her version of who Princess Leia was or what she might be capable of and went inside for dinner. Afterwards, when everyone was watching TV, I went into my dad's study and found the cigarettes exactly where she said they were. I stood there a long time staring at them before lifting the packet out of the miniature grave carved into the book. The smell of dry tobacco was both familiar and exotic, full of dark promise. On the calendar stuck on our kitchen wall were marked the months since my father had smoked his last cigarette and the money his hard-won abstinence was saving our family. The ways of adults were as mysterious to me as a forest; they spoke often in their own unintelligible tongue. In the other room my family laughed at
M*A*S*H
, even though they were all repeats.

Without really knowing what I was doing – much less why – I withdrew a cigarette from the packet, put it between my lips and lit it. The flavour was strong and terrible. Smoke wafted into my eyes. My immediate coughing fit brought my two older sisters running to the study doorway, where they stood giggling with disbelief after calling out for our mum.

When she arrived, my mother slapped the cigarette away and demanded to know what the hell I was doing. My father was the last to arrive on the scene and he weathered my mother's tirade with his gaze fixed not on the book with its cigarette packet-shaped hole that my mother brandished at him as evidence of his flagrant dishonesty, but on the curtained window, as if expecting to see something unwelcome step in from outside.