I put the red end of my joint to a leaf and it eats it up with no flame, just like someone has taken the leaf out of existence, like it was never there in the first place. In my head starts a countdown, like the kind they do when a rocket is about to take off, or when you’re ten seconds away from the new year. The birds are louder still, or I am stoned, and I do another leaf, Bzeee-bzeee-bzeee-bzeee, Tsip, tsip, tsip, tit-tzeeeeee, Zray, zray zray zray sreeeeeee, Tsyoo-tsyoo-tsyoo-tsyoo-tswee, Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-tsyoo, Drink your teeeeee, towheee, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet-and-sweet, and then I take out the lighter and somehow the path is on fire and I don’t know if I meant it to be, and it goes up, and the birds scream, they scream at me, Chip, chjjjj, chewk, Jaay and jaay-jaay notes, Tool-ool, tweedle-dee, chi-chuwee, what-cheer… Wheet, wheet, wheet, wheet. Chip, chjjjj, chewk, Jaay and jaay-jaay notes, Tool-ool, tweedle-dee, chi-chuwee, Tur-a-lee, Purdy purdy purdy… Whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit, what-cheer, and before I can scream back, before the birds can take flight, it is up, sucking up the trees, with the sound of ice breaking, it goes up, and no amount of stamping will help, I can see that, I just watch it like I am part of it. The birds are loud and then it is just roar and I run for the rocks. Down the path I pass Denver who has sweat on his face in pearls. He roars as he passes but he doesn’t stop to give me the beating of my life, he runs like murder into the fire and towards the Carter house, and I want to shout, Stop, don’t go that way! but the sound of the birds and the noise of the fire roaring take the sound out of my mouth, and he goes into the hot trees, and I can’t follow.
I swear I see a bird, bright and on fire, rise out of the trees and just keep on going up like it’s a rocket going for Mars.
31
Lloyd fed the sheep, left me and Dog under a blanket on the sofa. I got up once he’d gone, and stood in front of the mirror and looked. My eyes blinked at me. I took off my bandage and underneath felt tender.
I washed my face, and then dipped my head in the sink, poured warm water over my hair with my cupped hand. The water ran out pink from the cut. I wrung out my hair and draped the hand towel over my shoulders. I opened the kitchen door and looked out at the hillside, then I closed the door, and leant the gun up next to it. I found the kitchen scissors and sat at the table to wait for Lloyd.
‘What’s this?’ he said when he came in.
‘I want you to cut my hair.’
Lloyd was still for a moment looking at me, and then he came and stood behind me.
He pulled his fingers lightly through my hair.
He worked in silence, and lengths of hair dropped in my lap and crept down my back, and his fingers at the nape of my neck and at my temples were warm. I kept my eyes closed, and listened to the clean sound of the scissors.
After a long time, Lloyd put them down, laid his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve made you look so much worse. We’re going to have to find a hairdresser’s.’
In the truck, Lloyd wrote a shopping list. ‘Shall we have some wine?’ he asked. ‘I feel like I’ve overdone the whisky lately.’
‘I’m not going to a hairdresser,’ I said.
‘Oh, come on. You need to go.’
‘It doesn’t bother me. You can have another go later on if it makes you feel better.’
‘It won’t make me feel better — it won’t make you look better.’
‘It doesn’t worry me. I don’t feel worried by it.’
‘God almighty, you look more like a local than the locals do. I can’t live with seeing this disaster I’ve created every day.’
‘It’ll grow out. I can wear a hat.’
‘Wait,’ said Lloyd in a new voice. I pressed the brake but didn’t stop.
‘What?’
‘Stop the car, stop the car.’ He turned to the back window and pressed his hand against the glass. I pulled into the lay-by.
‘What is it?’ Before the truck had properly stopped, Lloyd was outside. I slid out too, shutting Dog in — he panted in fury. Lloyd had crossed the road and started to move into the woods.
‘Lloyd!’ I called and he just held up one hand to silence me. I followed him, through the sticks and brambles, Dog yipping in the truck behind me. When I got closer, I saw Lloyd’s cheek was bleeding where a branch had whipped him. He ploughed on; my ankle turned down a rabbit hole while I tried to keep up with him, the back of his jacket moving in and out of sunlight.
‘Stop,’ I hissed, not sure what I was being quiet for. He stopped dead. When I caught up he was still apart from the breath which moved his back up and down, and which puffed around him like smoke.
I swallowed. ‘What is it?’ I stood next to him and he put his finger to his lips and then pointed into the newly unfurled bracken.
‘I see it,’ he whispered, and I looked and saw a shadow beneath the green canopy, where maybe something moved.
‘What do you see?’
‘It’s huge,’ he said in a voice that did not sound like his own. ‘It’s here — it’s just here.’
‘And you see it?’
‘It’s just in front of us.’
Something crunched in the undergrowth.
‘Should we run?’ I said, but I didn’t think we would.
It moved deeper into the woods and we stayed standing, watching and listening.
‘My god,’ said Lloyd quietly.
I looked down and saw that we were holding hands.
32
On the beach at low tide after a storm, the sharks that have washed up are the small ones that don’t need to be towed onto the sand spit first. They are just finned on the boats and plopped back into the drink. There is a blue with its long and pointed snout, looking like a worm without its fins, and I squint at it trying to imagine it swimming, ever.
Soon I will go home, and there’ll be Mum squirting cream into her drink. The place will smell of chip fat and laundry. Iris will be out the back in her version of a bikini, and the triplets will be complaining that tea is too far off and that what they need is chocolate milk, even though there is never any chocolate milk in our fridge. Dad will pull up in his car and there’ll be the sound of him dropping his keys on the kitchen sideboard. I might ask for a dog again, just to join in. Dad opens the fridge and takes out a beer and it hisses open and this is how life will always be, and I will always be here.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Mary Morgan and the Hereford sheep farmers who generously let me watch them at work and ask boring questions. Also to Sally, Pig and Sir Colin McColl for looking after me so well.
To Nikki Christer and all at Vintage Australia, and all at Pantheon in the US for their hard work and very helpful edits. Special massive thanks to Diana Coglianese.
To everyone at Jonathan Cape and Mulcahy Associates, particularly Alex Bowler, Joe Pickering and my agent Laetitia Rutherford, for their exceptional skills and for being such kind friends.
Thanks Mum and Dad, Tom, Emma, Flynn, Jack, Matilda, Juno and Hebe, Roz, Roy and Gus.
Thanks Jamie for dealing with me and also for helping me write.