We watched rain start across the valley. Marcie dropped her cigarette on the ground and pressed it into the mud with her heel.
16
We drive through an old flaky wooden gate and up to a homestead. I turn to look in all directions, but there is nothing to see — some black hills long and far in the distance, a backdrop for the desert. I can see flies in the air, and my window-side arm is sunburnt.
‘Well, here we are then!’ Otto says brightly, and I can tell he’s excited to show me the place. An old dog, far older than the photograph he showed me from his wallet, lumbers up to us.
‘This must be Kelly?’ I say in a voice I reckon a dog would like. The dog looks at me blankly through clouded eyes. She’s got a grey muzzle and patches of dry skin show through on her flank. Poor old thing, I think.
‘Kelly, meet Jake,’ says Otto, and I squat down to make friends, but she keeps her distance. Just gives me that look like I’m not there, and turns and heads back behind the house, her ears flat to her head against the flies. ‘She gets cranky when I leave without her,’ he explains.
I get a small tour. ‘Like I said, we’re pretty much self-sufficient here,’ says Otto, and I wonder if there’s a greener patch around the back for vegetables. There is a hairy-looking paddock next to the house, but it’s dry and wild. ‘We slaughter our own sheep, and so really it’s just basics we shop for, twice a month or so. Bread, eggs and beer. I’ve tried a few chickens, but they don’t last long — Kelly doesn’t take to them too well.’ I wonder if ‘we’ means there’s someone else around the place or if he just means his dog. There is no green space around the back, there’s just the dunny and then beyond that, the rest of everything. The watering hole has dried up because of the drought, he tells me, and it doesn’t seem right to say anything more on the subject. The house is made of splintery weatherboard. It’s small, the kind you see carted up and down highways on the back of road trains.
Otto shows me into a bedroom. It’s an odd room, there’s a Winnie the Pooh poster on the wall and the narrow single bed’s doona has a faded pony on it. The room is painted pale blancmange and there’s a smallish window with no glass but with mosquito netting nailed over it. It smells of air freshener.
‘Did it up meself,’ Otto says with pride.
I start to get twitchy once the sun goes down. Otto makes bacon sandwiches for tea, which smell and taste of other meats. I don’t know what the plan is, what he’s expecting from me. ‘You like Shortland Street?’ he says as he pats the sofa next to him. I sit down and he puts a hand around the back of my neck so that I can smell the undercarriage of his arm.
‘Never seen it,’ I say, and he looks at me like I’m telling him I’ve never seen the sea. The theme tune comes on, and Otto looks at me with meaning as he sings it.
Is it you or is it me?
Lately I’ve been lost it seems.
I think a change is what I need.
If I’m looking for a chance I’ve a dream.
Shortland Street…
His eyes mist over and he holds the last note long enough that the television has gotten well into the second verse before he’s finished. He shakes his head. ‘That’s just beautiful,’ he says, ‘that song. Just beautiful.’ And for the next half-hour we watch comings and goings at a hospital. Kelly is sitting outside looking through the fly-screen at me.
Once the programme is over, Otto stretches and says, ‘Right-e-o, time for bed,’ and I think, Here we go, this’ll make things clearer. He leads me into the pink room and sits on the edge of the bed chatting about what we’ll do tomorrow.
‘I’ll take you into town so you can get acquainted with the general store, then we’ll go and show you the sheep. Kelly needs some tick drops, so remind me about those.’ I don’t know what the protocol is, so I change into the T-shirt I sleep in while he’s talking. I don’t turn my back to him when I take my top off but he just carries on, and so I sit next to him on the bed and he tells me about his sheep. ‘The ex-wife’s show sheep — merinos, she insisted on, even though I told her, too dry out here, they take looking after. She went on and on, and then once I got them for her she lost interest. Expensive buggers they are too. And then, well, she went, and so I just use them for meat. I told her, right off the bat, those sorta sheep are no good out here where there’s no grass — need a desert sheep, something tough and wiry. She wouldn’t listen though, just like with her poofy little dog she brought along. Me and Kelly were clear to her about that dog, we warned her. No good with your peking-fuckin-eses, a farm. Carpet snake I reckon, took it under the house, probably swallowed the nut whole.’
He laughs and his stomach shakes. I smile at him, hoping it’s a joke, and slide under the sheets, which are crinkly and new. Otto stalls in his chat and looks at me. He sighs and wipes his large old hand over my cheek. ‘Jeeze,’ he says, ‘I always wanted a daughter.’ He smiles and his eyes are filling, and he raises a finger to his eyelashes before pulling himself together. ‘Wait there a second,’ he says, and disappears out of the room. When he comes back he is carrying a plush brown bear holding a velvet heart, and a disposable camera. ‘For you,’ he says, with that same soppy look about him. I take the bear and I smile.
‘Thanks, he’s really nice.’ I say and sit the bear on my lap. Otto walks back a few feet and aims the camera at me. I smile, hug the bear. He uses up all the film in his camera just on me and that bear.
‘Sweet dreams then, pet,’ he says and I get a kiss on the forehead. I smile back at him and he sighs again from the doorway, looking back at me with those wet eyes before he turns out the light and closes the door. The window throws a chequered light on the Winnie the Pooh poster.
In the morning, because the land is so flat, I can see that the sheep, far off in the distance, are penned.
‘You can have the use of the push-bike till you learn to drive — there’s a spare truck in the shed I’ve been fixing up and that’ll be yours once you know how.’ Otto pinches my arm like he’s a fun uncle. I smile at the idea of it — owning a truck. I could pick Karen up and bring her for a visit, once the waterhole fills again.
We drive off to meet the sheep. As we get closer I can see how ill they look — patches of wool missing, ribs poking out. There’s a smell of shit and you can see the maggots eating their hindquarters. Man up, I tell myself, he’s an old bloke, he’s doing the best he can.
The flies are fierce, they try and get at the wet in our eyes, and I breathe through my teeth in case I suck one in.
Otto shows me out in the pen how to catch one and keep her down, and I can see he’s pleased when I manage to grab hold of one and flip her onto her back without too much of a problem. I can feel her heartbeat through me, and she smells bad. Otto stands with his hands on his hips.
‘Knew I’d chosen a goodun, by the size of you,’ he says and slaps me on the thigh.
Otto keeps the sheep penned next to the woolshed which, he shows me, is also at times a slaughterhouse. ‘Can’t let them just roam off when it’s me on my own out here,’ he says. ‘Don’t like to get strangers in here to shear — that’s when things started to go bad with Carole.’ There’s an uncomfortable pause, and I look at the old blood that has turned dry and black on the floor under the meat hook. The place smells of stale vomit and bleach. ‘An’ this way they don’t know if they’re getting a hair cut or if they’re getting their throats cut, so really it’s calming?’ I try to look like I agree with him.