‘You look mad,’ Lloyd said and drained his drink.
Lloyd limed the empty pens while I tubed paste into the new lambs.
‘What’s next?’ he asked; the visible parts of his face between his hat and his beard were flushed.
‘We just keep watching,’ I said.
‘How long before they go to market?’
‘Shhh,’ I said and turned away. ‘When they’re ready.’ There was a long silence, just the noises of Lloyd raking out the pens and the occasional bleat from an occupied stall.
One ewe with triplets was not interested in the smallest one. It struggled to get close to her and got squashed out by the other two. After a while it settled itself down on its own and cried. I picked her up and she didn’t struggle, wrapped her in a blanket and gave her to Lloyd to hold while I made a bottle ready. ‘Not sure she’ll make it,’ I told him.
‘Why is this all so sad?’ he asked. He stroked the bony head and the lamb nuzzled against his jumper looking for a teat.
Back at the house, we wrapped the lamb in a blanket and put it in front of the stove on Dog’s bed, and locked Dog in Lloyd’s room. I set the timer on the stove so we’d wake to feed her, and Lloyd went into the sitting room and made a fire. We sat on the sofa watching the flames.
There was just the hollow ticking of the kitchen clock. My head itched underneath the bandage, but there was no energy left in my arm to scratch it.
A knock at the door.
Don stood behind Samson, who had had a wash since I last saw him. Then Marcie stepped out of the dark, holding her arms around herself and looking embarrassed.
‘Caught these two out by the woolshed,’ Don said.
‘Doing what?’
‘Pissing about.’ Don’s face was hard. He gave Samson a small shove in the back and Samson stumbled over the threshold. Marcie followed and Don closed the door behind them.
‘What were you doing?’ I said turning to Samson. He looked at the floor.
‘We were just looking at the lambs, that’s all,’ Marcie said.
‘Did you hurt any of them?’
‘No!’ She sounded upset, but Samson was just quiet.
‘He had firelighters on him and matches,’ said Don. There was a slight swelling on Samson’s face, a redness about his eye like he’d been hit.
‘We were just—’
Don interrupted Marcie. ‘Shut your trap, I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Please don’t tell my dad,’ she said quietly and started to cry. Samson moved his hand across to her and held on to her little finger. All of us watched that.
‘Samson,’ I said quietly, ‘what were you doing up there — what were you going to do with those firelighters?’
He looked up and I saw suddenly Don’s old face in his, and I felt sad.
‘We were just up there to watch over them. That’s all. Was going to make a fire — outside — to sit around, and just watch them. Keep them safe.’
‘Safe from what?’ asked Lloyd, but Samson didn’t reply, just chewed his lips and looked at me, held my gaze until Don chafed him on the back of the head.
‘Well, answer him,’ he muttered.
‘It’s okay, Don,’ I said. Marcie sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Mascara muddied the whites of her eyes. ‘No harm done.’
Once they’d gone, Don marching them out, telling Marcie she was getting driven back home and a word in the ear of her parents, Samson all the while gripping on to her little finger, we sat down at the table.
‘God almighty, what do you think they were going to do?’ Lloyd said.
‘I think they were going to start a small fire to keep warm and sit around it and watch over my sheep. I think they might have smoked cigarettes and drunk beer and had a pash.’
‘You’ve changed your tune. What happened to the kids chopping up your sheep?’
‘I think Samson’s seen it.’
‘Seen what?’
‘The thing out there that’s getting the sheep.’
‘The fox?’
‘It’s not a fox.’
There was a long silence.
‘I get the feeling,’ said Lloyd, ‘that you’re very tired.’
The buzzer on the stove sounded.
26
Flora Carter’s memorial service is attended by everyone in the town other than her father. We fill up the jetty, and I imagine it creaking and then collapsing, throwing all of us into the water. Hay Carter stands alone, with space around her, and all I can think is that I’ve never seen her in black before. Only cut-offs and white singlets with the bra straps showing. Today nothing shows, she is swallowed by the black dress, bodyless, just her feet poke out the bottom, heels that she will struggle to walk back down the jetty in, that will stick in the cracks of the soft sun-bleached wood.
People say different things about Flora. Someone sings the song from the Titanic movie. The triplets fidget next to me, whisper to each other and then Iris smacks one of them on the back of the head and they are quiet again. I don’t hear any words, but I do hear the splash of the wreath as it’s thrown into the water. I see Denver’s mother is watching from the edge of the trees. I think we look each other in the eye. She takes three slow steps backwards into the shrub and she stands still. The human eye senses movement before all else.
Back home, Mum pours a glass of wine, does nothing about making lunch for the triplets who bang through the cupboards, looking for food. Iris is already upstairs, out of the way of us all. I perch at the kitchen table with Mum, and Dad opens a beer and stands with his back to us.
‘That kid ever wakes up,’ he says, ‘he’s in for a helluva shock.’ I look up at him, his fists on his hips and his hat low over his eyes. ‘Steve Warren says they’ve put round-the-clock security at his bedside — reckon people might get ideas.’ He turns around and looks at us, swigs his beer. ‘Reckon they might have the right idea.’ Mum looks up sharply.
‘John! Don’t say things like that.’
‘If that was my daughter, dead in the ground, it’d take more than a couple of cops to stop me getting to the little hoon.’ When he says the word ‘daughter’ my father rests his hands on my shoulders.
‘Don’t swear in front of the children.’
‘Hoon?’
‘They don’t know he did it,’ I say quietly. Mum and Dad stop arguing and both look at me.
‘Jake. Don’t you get all lefty here — they found him over where the fire started, reckon he was after Flora all along. Who knows what he did to her before he started the fire. Covering his tracks more than likely.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Mum snaps in a way that seems to surprise her, and she stands up, leaving her wine, to get on with the laundry.
From what I have heard about comas, they reckon you can still hear, even if you can’t move. I wonder if Denver lies there listening to all these people talking about what will happen to him if he wakes up and if it will make him decide to die instead.
I follow the burnt trail down to the beach, but I go the long way round so I don’t pass the spot I last saw Denver. I stop when I come across a wombat, swollen and on its back. He looks like someone has taken a blowtorch to him, all his hair is missing, and his skin is flaky charcoal. He looks like he would pop if I nudged him with my foot. I nudge him with my foot and he doesn’t. There’s still a smell to the bush, like it’s thinking it might go up again, and I know I’m not supposed to be there. The trees don’t want me there, they are black stakes and behind lots of them are small piles of ashes that could be the remains of animals sheltering. There is not a single bird to make sound, not a cicada or a cricket, not even a mosquito to whine at my ear. Down by the sea, there’s a blackness to the water and to the beach, ash rolls in the waves and dead birds have washed up out of it. Flies are the only things that have made any headway out of this, and they rise in flocks when I walk by the bodies that must have dropped out of the air. Some of them are perfect, a kookaburra, a honeyeater, a bowerbird.