It takes me three goes to ring home. The first time I dial the number and hang up immediately. Then I let it ring once. The next time, Iris is quick and answers on the first ring.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it’s you.’
I struggle to get my voice out. ‘Hi, Iris. How are you?’
She snorts. ‘Never mind that. You get the money? I didn’t think Mum should’ve given it to you, but we didn’t know how else to get a response.’
‘What’s the money from?’
‘Dad’s dead. An accident at the marina.’
The last time I saw Dad, his face tight with anger, and then a time before when just the two of us went surfing, when I was ten. He had salt in the sun-creases of his eyes. My mouth struggles to open.
‘When?’
‘Nine months ago. Give or take.’
I am dipped in silence. ‘I can’t believe it,’ is all I can say.
She snorts again. ‘Yeah, well. I can’t believe a lot of things that go on.’
The silence is broken by the pips on the phone and I put in two more dollars. The news has not hit my body yet, or my brain.
‘How’s Mum?’
‘She’s batshit.’
‘Is she there?’
‘No.’ But Iris keeps her voice low and quiet.
‘The triplets?’
‘They’re meatheads. Look, I’ve got stuff to be doing.’
‘Will you tell her I rang?’
‘Sure,’ says Iris, and I know, I remember the tone that means she won’t. ‘Just what she needs is a good long chat with you. You’ve always been so supportive.’
Iris hangs up without asking how to contact me. I don’t even know how Dad died. An accident at the marina? Was he still at the packing yard? Was he drunk?
On the drive back to the station, Dad feels like an orange in my sternum. I repeat the words over and over in my head, Dad’s died, Dad’s died, until they don’t mean anything. None of it means anything if I ignore it; my father was alive until I went to the bank and saw the money there. I won’t tell anyone about the money, or that my father is dead. I won’t touch the money unless I have to.
9
I woke curled around the stool, with a headache. Dog was in the bed, under the covers.
The shed was empty. The blanket was folded neatly and hung from the teeth of the rake. Up on the paddock crows dive-bombed something, seagulls formed lazy circles above them. There was spit in the air, but dark brown clouds hanging low promised something more impressive was on its way. Here and there on the slope of the field were old tree trunks whose roots had been too deep to pull out when the land was cleared, long, long ago. Some were split and hollowed out, eaten by wasps, and grew a fungi that Don called Jew’s ears. Those trunks sitting there, with the wars starting and finishing around them, horses being overtaken by tractors, the birth of Don, probably the birth of his father, certainly his father’s death. It made me feel lonely to think about it, that old English history in the dark and the wet, the short days with no electricity. It made me want to go and sit in the truck, rev the throttle, just to remind myself of my century, just to feel the modern dry heat of the engine. My feet squeaked inside my boots, wet already. I lit a cigarette to dry the air around me. Sheep followed behind, with lazy questions about feeding time. At the top of the hill, I watched a merlin sweep the edge of the woods, like she couldn’t find a way in, like no tree was quite the right tree to settle on. She let out a screech and was suddenly gone. A burst of small birds jumped out of the treetops and then sank back in. The trees appeared to swell and shrink with the rhythm of breath.
Over the other side of the hill, I found a pregnant ewe stuck in the drainage. Her muzzle was black with mud, like she’d been trying to lift herself free with her face. I lowered myself down to her, trying not to make sudden movements, but she thrashed about anyway honking like a goose.
‘Calm now,’ I said, ‘come on.’ But she took no notice and things weren’t helped by Dog, who raced up and down the edges of the drain barking shrilly.
She was in up to her armpits, and while I wrapped myself around her middle and pulled hard, she shifted only the smallest amount and when I let go the mud sucked her deeper. Her feet had already made holes for themselves and she farted back into them. I caught my breath and looked up at Dog who was still barking.
‘Will you shut the fuck up, you arsehole?’ I shouted, and he lay down and whined. I moved around the sheep and tried pulling one leg out at a time, but the rest of her sunk deeper in. I could feel the panic in her, and that I was hurting her. After fifteen minutes I was sweating and worried that if I left to get help, whatever that might be, she’d drown.
‘Hi there.’ A shadow fell over me; it was him. I strengthened my grip on the sheep like I could use her to swing at him. Dog stood up and wagged his tail and for a moment I was speechless. The man looked at me down in the ditch. ‘I wondered if you could help me out.’ Sober, he had the voice of a news reader. He took a mobile phone out of his pocket. ‘There’s no signal here — I was using the map but it’s gone.’ He held the phone up and squinted like he was reading something from it. ‘I’m a bit stuck.’ He had dark rings around his eyes. He squinted at me. ‘It was you last night in the shed, wasn’t it?’ The ewe let out a wail. ‘I recognise your… hair.’ He cleared his throat. The blood in my calves was cut off by the weight of the sheep, but I could feel the pulse in my legs fast and heavy.
I swallowed. ‘I could really do with your help.’
He suddenly looked like he might just run away. ‘With the sheep?’
‘That’s about what I was hoping.’ I tried to keep my voice steady but didn’t manage it.
His arms hung at his sides. He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘Won’t it work its way free on its own?’
I felt the rattle of the sheep’s heartbeat and she shifted her weight further down into the mud. I tried not to shout or swear.
‘I need to get this sheep out,’ I said in a clear and careful way.
‘You’ll need to get that sheep out,’ Don called. I turned and saw him leaning against the fence at the top of the hill with a perfect view. He jabbed a finger towards the sheep. I gave Don the thumbs-up for a moment too long, and he gave me a double thumbs-up back, smiling broadly.
‘Couldn’t you ask that guy? It’s just I don’t know all that much about sheep. He looks like he would know an awful lot more.’
‘Please,’ I said. Teeth. ‘If you don’t help me my sheep will drown in the mud.’
A look of helplessness passed over his face, but he took his jacket off and laid it on the ground. He lowered himself down the bank. Dog got up and put his mudded undercarriage onto the jacket.
‘Right,’ he said, and fell to his knees, landing with a smack in the mud. The sheep let out a horrified mew and wobbled about, straining to get away from him. He stood up, squelching.
‘Right,’ he said again and tried to offer a hand to shake over the sheep. I looked at the hand; it was a large man’s hand with puncture wounds on it from Dog. I was glad my arms were underneath the sheep. He retracted the hand. ‘Name’s Lloyd.’
‘Jake.’ I nodded at him and he clapped his hands loudly, making the sheep lurch forward, then rubbed them together.
‘Where do you want me?’
The sheep foamed at the mouth.