Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (24 page)

‘They were playing cards in the waiting room when he had pneumonia and they're standing out there now waiting for you. Don't you worry, Herb, I'll fix them. I'll hose them.'

‘You're tangling your wool. Come back here!'

But she's gone, out that door and down the passage, three shades of blue trailing behind her as she steps out into the garden and the cold dank night.

The hose isn't where she usually leaves it. She feels for it with her feet. Can't see anything, can't see where she's going, but she sees the seesaw clearly, sees the misty shape of the children, hears their song.

‘Go away. Get out of here,' she yells.

Their rhythm increases, their voices grow louder.

‘You're not taking Herb, so get back to where you belong.' She looks around, seeking that hose. Her knitting in her hand, two lengths of wool lead from the back door to the fence. One ball, the dark blue, has followed her. It's soiled, dampened by the wet lawn. She picks it up, aims it accurately at the one in glistening white.

The player's concentration momentarily broken, the narrow plank wobbles. Arms spread wide, the child teeters, falls, and the seesaw stills.

‘You lose, Jes! You lose.'

‘It wasn't my fault, Luce. She hit me with something.'

‘And you fell off the seesaw.' Jes clambers back onto the plank, but Luce has lost interest. ‘Call your pick-up crew. I'm going.'

‘I'm not taking him.'

‘You won him fair and square. Enjoy.'

‘She hit me. It wasn't fair, I said.'

‘There's nothing in the rule book that says it's got to be fair. You fell off first, so go get your booby prize.'

‘I'll give you two of anything you want. You can pick anything I've got due in tonight – if you take him too.'

‘You haven't got anything I want. I told you at dawn that I needed a refrigeration mechanic, and you wouldn't give him up.' Luce is eager to leave but Jes follows, arguing his case.

‘He was a lay preacher, for God's sake. I'll give you the next two on my list, and throw in an air conditioning expert due in next week. I promise. Please, Luce. We wrote the rules of the game, so we can change the rules. Right?'

‘Wrong. He's yours.'

‘I'll toss you for him then.'

‘Tossing coins is gambling, you said this morning, an offshoot of one of the seven deadly sins,' Luce says.

‘Well you tempted me into doing it. Heads I take him, tails he's yours.'

Luce removes an ancient coin from her pocket and tosses it high. It glows red in the gloom, then falls at Jes's feet. It's tails.

‘You lose, Luce.'

They walk through the mist to the window where they peer in at the old man. His chest rises and falls, an old hand moves on the coverlet.

‘He's not dead yet,' Luce says. ‘It's almost midnight.'

Every year for fifteen years, the Flinders name has been cropping up on their pick-up lists. He's well past his use-by date.

They don't see poor Polly, prone on the lawn. Not until Jes skips off to redirect his clean-up crew to the next job does he see who they are collecting. She's sprawled headlong in the grass.

‘Oh, holy shit. He's gone and done it again,' Jes squeals. ‘It's that same old switcheroo. That old life force suckaroo, Luce. Death by metal knitting needle, in through the eye and a direct hit to the brain. Lethal Weapon, 3.5.'

‘Well, that changes everything. I can't take her downstairs. What am I supposed to do with a martyr?'

‘Start a knitting circle,' Jes laughs, then with a wave of his hand, he skips off into the mist, singing in a voice that would charm the angels, ‘Little Polly Flinders, sits among the cinders, making her pretty little clothes –'

Inside that house, the clock strikes midnight. The old man opens his eyes and rises from his pillows. ‘I'm peeing,' he whines. ‘I'm peeing me bed, Herb.'

I'd gone to see an old bloke about a dog; his kelpie bitch had a litter of six and I needed a good dog. There were black ones and red – I was thinking black, thinking male, but while I squatted there, watching that bundle of pups playing, one of them waddles over to check me out. She sniffs at my hand, then sits on my boot, studying me, her little head cocked to the side.

‘I'll take her,' I grin, scooping up a red female with a white bib. ‘I reckon you chose me, didn't you, pooch?'

The old bloke reaches for my pup, takes her and lets her lick his face. Then he looks at me, shakes his head. ‘Pick another one, son,' he says. ‘This one is . . . she's family.'

I stand, step back. Having seen her, I want only her. Maybe if I offer an extra fifty. He looks as if he could use it. His shack is ancient and it smells of dog, and he looks older than his shack, looks as if he's got a thousand tales to tell and no one left to tell them to. I want that pup, so I reach across, give her a scratch on the belly.

‘Family?' I say. ‘Is that right, old-timer?'

‘It's right all right. Sit down,' he says. ‘The world's in too much of a hurry to get to a worse place than where it's already at. Different when I was a lad.' The pup is sitting on his hand, chewing at his shirt buttons. ‘Me and my brother Jack – he's gone now – they're all gone now. Any rate, back in thirty-one, me and Jack and the old man had took a mob of sheep down to Mortlake. We was on our way home when the old man's horse stuck his foot down a rabbit hole and threw him, broke my old man's leg in two places. We cart him off to the hospital, and before they take him away, he gives Jack the cheque he got paid, plus five bob. “Take this home to your mother, lads,” he says. “Tell her I'll get home when I can.”'

‘We had two old nags, one for riding and one to pull the wagon, we had an old dog, and the fearlessness of youth, so off we head for home. We're about five mile outside of Ballarat when this red kelpie bitch starts slinking along behind us. She was a nice looking dog, shy like, but she had good eyes, like this little girl. She was whip smart too. We knew someone would be missing her, so Jack tried to hunt her off. She stayed well back, but kept coming after us. When we camped that night, she camped ten feet off, just laying there, head on her paws, sort of watching us eat.

‘We hadn't thought much about tucker when we left the town, but we had tea and water and a bit of bread and jam, which was a better tea than many we'd had on the road.

‘My old man and lady were battlers, always struggling for a crust. Me and Jack was their oldest, thirteen and fifteen at the time, and there were five more at home, just as hungry as us, so we were gunna get that cheque and that five bob home to Mum or bust doing it. Five bob was a fortune back in those times, you know. Now you can't buy a beer unless you've got six of them.

‘Any rate, come the next morning and the rains set in. We harness up the nags and head off, taking turns driving or riding, that red kelpie still tracking us. She tracked us all that day. And Christ, me and Jack were dog lovers from way back. By this stage we're thirty-odd miles out of Ballarat, and not a soul in the world bar us, so I offer her a bit of bread. She licks me hand, her eyes sort of saying, thank you very kindly, much appreciated. Then she takes her bread away and eats it like a lady.

‘The next morning we share what's left of the bread with her and our dog, then we all head off into the rain, and haven't gone more than a mile when two coppers turn up in a car.

‘“Where did ya get that red dog?” the old copper says.

‘“She followed us,” Jack says. “She's been following us since a few miles out of Ballarat.”

‘“Where'd you get your rig? Get it a few miles out of Ballarat too?” The coppers are both looking at the horses, checking out the old wagon.

‘“It's our old man's,” Jack says. He's doing all the talking, him being the oldest. “We took a mob of sheep down to Mortlake, then the old man broke his leg, so we're going home to Mum,” he says.

‘“You're not going nowhere,” the old copper says. “You're coming along with us while we do a bit of checking up on your story.”

‘“What about the horses? What about me dogs?”

‘“You only got one dog. The other one is evidence,” the old bugger says.

‘Any rate, they tried to take the little kelpie, but she kept backing off, showed them her teeth, then she turned tail and went bush. Rain was bucketing down and the coppers were getting wet, so they tell us to drive our rig to a property a mile or two back. We're used to doing as we was told, so we did it. The property owner says he'll look after our dog, if he's tied, so we chain him to the wagon, let the horses out in a paddock, and off we go for a ride in the copper's car.

‘First time me and Jack ever rode in a car, so we was like kids at the fair, until the old bugger locked us in a cell. After a bit we didn't mind that too much either. It was dry and they give us this meal of corned beef sandwiches and mugs of tea, then a couple of scones with thick plum jam on them. Best scones I ever ate, they were. I never forgot them. Anyways, we settle down on the beds, one each we had, and we slept and waited to see what was gunna happen to us next.

‘They fed us again that night, a proper meal with potatoes, gravy and meat, and plenty of it, and this bloody great big bowl of plum jam roly-poly and custard which I'd never tasted the likes of before – or since. Come morning and they're at it again, big bowls of porridge and toast too, plum jam and tea. Me and Jack had never had it so good. To tell you the truth, we didn't know there was that much flamin' food left in the world.

‘Well, around ten that morning, we're sitting there, rubbing our hands and wondering if they're serving morning tea, when the old copper comes in and lets us out.

‘“On your way,” he says.

‘“Why did you lock us up?” Jack asks.

‘“Get going before I change me bloody mind,” he says.

‘“How we gunna get going? Our rig's thirty mile out.”

‘“The best way you can, I s'pose,” he says.

‘We start walking. We're six or eight mile out when this horse and buggy comes up behind us and stops. We climbed up, and he turns out to be one of them blokes who never stop talking, and maybe the reason he picked us up was to have someone to talk at, but we were pleased to be sitting, so we listened and said “yeah” from time to time.

‘So, after a few miles he gets around to telling us how an old bloke got himself murdered down near the five mile bridge, and how this morning they'd found his rig, and the bloke and his missus who had done the murdering. He told us about the missing red kelpie too, and how it would probably end up a sheep killer – told us a lot of stuff before he dropped us off, still five miles short of the property where we'd left our rig.

‘It's late before we get there, and they're all in the kitchen, eating dinner, which we could smell from halfway down the track. We were planning to thank the owner very much, hitch up our horses and get back on the road, except the big bastard who's chewing on a rabbit's spine isn't going to give up our horses, is he?

‘“You owe me money for your dog and your horse feed, boy,” he says to Jack as he wipes gravy from his whiskers.

‘“The copper told us to leave them here.”

‘“You don't pay me, I keep your horses.” He stuffs half a spud in his mouth, talks and chews. “You get yourself in trouble with the law, then don't you come looking to me for handouts.”

‘Jack had that five bob still jingling in his pocket, but by Christ, that was Mum's money and that hungry bastard wasn't getting it. “We'll work it off,” Jack says, looking at the potatoes floating in enamel dishes full up with rabbit stew. Eating regular is a bit habit-forming, and we'd got the habit these last two days.

‘“Are you any good at fencing?” the big bastard says.

‘“Yeah. We done plenty,” Jack says.

‘“Righto. Two days' fencing for two days feeding your horses and your dog.”

‘“What are they gunna eat for the next two days?” I ask, watching his kids sucking meat off rabbit bones. Then his missus asks, “Are you hungry, boys?”

‘“We don't want to owe you nothing else, thank you kindly, m'am,” Jack says.

‘“I can't see growing boys go hungry. Sit yourselves down,” she says, and the next thing we know we're sitting at the table piling into rabbit stew and lumps of spud and thick hunks of home-made bread and dripping.

‘We end up doing three days' fencing and four nights of trapping rabbits. We must have caught hundreds of the buggers, which his missus fed to us, fried and baked, curried and stewed. We never ate so much rabbit in our bloody lives, though we ate good. But after a couple of days of it, it got to the stage where every time we started eating, we'd start thinking of Mum and the other kids, knowing they wouldn't be eating so good. We had to get that money home.

‘The bloke's missus give us a loaf of home-baked bread and two baked rabbits; we'd squirrelled away a half a dozen raw carcases. She gave us a bit of sugar and a bag of spuds, so off we head down that road again.

‘Well, we'd gone no more than two miles, and what comes out of the scrub than that little red kelpie. She's wriggling and licking and kissing us like you never saw a dog kiss. She's yelping and saying, “Where have you been, lads? I got to worrying meself sick about you two.”

‘I loved that dog. I had her for years before I went off to that bloody war. She must have been sixteen or more before I come home again, but she was waiting for me, knowing I'd come home. She died two weeks later, her old head on my lap.

‘These pups here was bred from her stock, but only this little lady has got her eyes.' He kisses the pup, fondles her ears. ‘But a man isn't going to live long enough to raise her the way she ought to be raised, is he? No use fooling yourself when you get to my age. You're a working dog, aren't you Lady,' he says to the pup.

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing.

Then he hands her to me, like he's giving away something precious. ‘It wouldn't be fair on her to keep her from being what she was born to be.'

‘How much?' I say, reaching for my wallet.

‘You don't sell your family, son. You look after 'em – and you'd better look after her for me, or by the bejesus, I'll come back and haunt you,' he says. ‘Now get going before I change my mind.'