‘Oh my God, and what do we have here!’ It’s Treppie. He’s coming down the passage in nothing but his shirt.
‘Isn’t it a little early for this kind of thing? I say, poochy-smoochy! Let me pass, I have to pee!’
Treppie pushes past them into the bathroom. ‘Shorrrr’, he pees into the open toilet. As he pees, he looks down to his left, at Gerty.
‘Seized up!’ he says. ‘Total systems failure! Complete black-out! So, aren’t you two even going to clean up this mess? Why you standing there like that? Mol, you should’ve put this stinking dog of yours out of her misery a long time ago. Now look what you got.’
Treppie pushes lightly with his toe against Gerty.
‘Sis, yuk, fuck!’ he says, pinching his nostrils with his thumb and forefinger.
‘Please, Treppie,’ says Pop. She sees how Pop motions to Treppie with his eyes, he must stop it now. So now she knows it’s actually her who must please stop crying. She wipes her nose with her hand. Her housecoat that she slept in hangs open in front. Pop reaches out to close it for her. She takes hold of the flaps herself. Now the last button’s also off.
Treppie makes a face, as if he suddenly understands. He pushes past them again on his way out.
As he walks away down the passage, he lowers his voice to a deep bass, and then he sings like Jim Reeves:
‘Across the bridge there’s no more sorrow.
Across the bridge there’s no more pain.’
Pop’s taking the lead this morning. First he sat her down on a beer crate next to the fridge and now he’s fixing bread for all of them. The water’s boiling on the Primus. Here comes Lambert.
‘Bread with honey,’ says Pop. ‘You want some?’
‘Huh? Yes, fine. What’s up?’ says Lambert, dragging a crate closer and checking them all out. ‘Huh, what’s going on here this morning?’ he says. ‘You two look like the dogs took your food or something.’
‘Gerty’s dead. Here’s some bread for you. Your coffee’s on the table,’ says Pop, sitting down next to her on a crate.
‘I see,’ says Lambert. ‘So, what now?’
‘Now nothing,’ says Pop. ‘Eat your bread.’
‘One man’s bread’s another man’s honey!’ It’s Treppie, standing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Don’t I get any?’
‘Make your own,’ says Pop. ‘There’s the honey, there’s the knife and there, on your sides, are two arms. You’re man enough and you’ve still got many years left in you.’
‘Take that!’ says Lambert, slapping his leg with a flat hand.
‘Well, smack me with a wet fish!’ says Treppie. He lifts up his hands, looks at them, and then drops them again. ‘I must be dreaming,’ he says. ‘Come again?’ He cups his hands behind his ears and makes a face like he doesn’t believe what he just heard.
Everyone ignores him. It’s dead quiet in the kitchen. All you hear is Lambert’s chewing and swallowing. Pop drinks little sips from his cup. Her bread and coffee stand on the floor in front of her. She’s not hungry. Toby sits next to her with his ears pricked. He looks from face to face to see what the people will do next.
Treppie comes and crouches in front of her, holding his hands against his head, like dog-ears.
‘How much is that doggy in the window? Whoof whoof!
The one with the waggily tail,’
he sings in her face. Then he puts his hand on her knee, pretending to comfort her. She pushes it away.
‘Sister dear,’ he says, ‘what’s in a dog? I mean, in the grand design of things, your life, my life, dog’s doily, cat’s backside! It’s all the same, not so, in Triomf or Parktown North, Honolulu or Siam!’
Treppie wants to get up, but before he can steady himself Pop stretches out a long arm, grabs him by the shirt-front and pulls him up towards his face. Treppie half falls over her food. He knocks over the enamel mug. She leans back a bit. She wants to think about Pop’s dream now, but she can’t get up to speed. The picture of Gerty lying like that in the bathroom keeps coming back into her head.
And now Gerty’s in the sheet. Here at the back, in the shadow between the prefab wall and the house. Pop wiped everything nice and clean again. And he held her tight. Pop understands. But he mustn’t over-exert himself now.
‘Treppie,’ he says, ‘have you no respect? Are you the very Satan himself, straight from hell? You stop now, you hear me? If you want to go looking for trouble, go find it with one of your own kind. Go look till you find someone like yourself, that’s if you’ll ever find another one like you. Just leave us alone here today. We’ve got business to see to.’
Pop pushes Treppie against his chest so hard that he ends up on his backside in the middle of the coffee.
‘Whoof!’ says Toby.
‘Lambert,’ says Pop, ‘take Treppie to his room and make sure he stays there.’
‘Right,’ says Lambert. He likes what he’s seeing here, she can see that. He didn’t know Pop could still cut Treppie short like this.
‘Wha-wha!’ shouts Treppie. Now he’s acting like he’s three years old. ‘I doan wannoo an’ I’m not gonnoo!’ he screams with his thumb in his mouth. Lambert’s got him by the collar. He drags him down the passage, into his room, with his feet still half off the ground. They hear Lambert locking him into the room. Lambert brings Pop the key and Pop puts it in his pocket.
‘Wha-wha!’ Treppie shouts again from behind the closed door. Then he’s quiet. After a little while there’s a muffled ‘whoof-whoof’, then nothing.
‘So much for that,’ says Pop, standing up. He puts the cup down on the sink. Then he takes a rag and wipes up the coffee.
Pop’s a different person in the presence of death, she thinks to herself.
‘It says in the Western Telegraph,’ says Lambert, ‘that they cremate dogs for free at the SPCA. In Booysens. No charge. They’ve got a crematorium for animals there.’
‘Ja, ash is nice and light.’
‘Ja,’ says Pop, ‘ash …’ He thinks a little. ‘I’m just thinking. Then we’ll have to sign all kinds of papers again.’ He thinks a little more. ‘How about here at the back, in the yard. Then it stays our business. Then she’s still here with us. What you say, Mol?’
‘The earth is hollow.’
‘Come again?’ says Pop.
‘Just now she falls through. Down. Through a sinkhole.’
Lambert catches on quickly. ‘That story was just a lie, Ma. It’s all right. I promise. The earth is still very hard here in Triomf. Packed hard. It’s all just bricks and cement from the kaffir-houses. She won’t just fall through. I promise.’
‘But we must wait till dark,’ says Pop. ‘Otherwise everyone stares at us. Or next door complains. And we don’t want the police here again, hey, Mol?’
Mol shakes the tin of yellow spray-paint. It doesn’t want to come out so nicely. She can’t see what’s going on, either. It’s getting too dark. But she told them they must have the funeral and get done with it. She doesn’t want to spend the whole night lying awake, trying to think of something nice to write on Gerty’s grave.
Lambert’s gone to see if he can find another tin of spray-paint and Pop’s fetching Treppie. He must’ve cooled down by now, says Pop. And shame, he also knew Gerty. What’s more, Treppie’s a man with a text for every occasion. Pop must’ve noticed — she doesn’t know what to say or write.
Now the paint’s coming out better. ‘So, Toby, what should the missus write here on the wall, hey?’ Toby stands next to her. He knows very well what’s going on. When they marked out the little grave with stones and tins in the late afternoon, Toby stood and watched them with his ears pricked. It was only when they started digging that he got some life back into him. The digging was a struggle. The earth was full of rubble, and they had to use a pick to wrench loose and lift out some of the big blocks of cement. They got only three feet deep when Pop said enough. He was tired and Gerty didn’t have to go six feet under, she was only a dog, after all.