The Best Australian Stories 2014 (19 page)

He stopped on the boardwalk and waited for them to catch up. The three of them stood still for a moment, soaked and helpless, unable to hear each other speak against the intensity of the rainstorm. Liam's face was pale, his teeth chattering, and Graham thought that Jenny might even be crying.

He realised then that he still had the bluetooth around his ear. As he pulled it off and shoved it into his pocket, he knew it was ruined. He might as well have had a shower fully clothed. He wiped his hands across his face to try and see more clearly. You couldn't bring cars into the wetlands; he would just have to guide them back to the Homemaker Centre at the pace they could manage. They moved slowly on, their arms wrapped around their own bodies, Graham in front, then Liam, then Jenny.

Finally, they reached the sealed path. The rain pulled back as quickly as it had started and then fell again in random, singular drops. It became strangely quiet, as if the heavens were recoiling from their own outburst. Everything around them softly ticked, like a resting engine when the ignition is cut. Graham slowed his step so the others could catch up again and he reached for Jenny's hand. With a gait so lopsided, it was hard to hold her hand while they walked and he rarely did. He reached over and put his other hand on Liam's shivering shoulder. His thumb nestled in the groove above Liam's collarbone, and with his other hand wrapped around Jenny's, he could feel the racing pulses of both his wife and his son. They are alive and real, he thought. His family is alive and real. They are flesh and bone, sinew and fat. And Graham understood then that being alive meant that one day they would die, like everything else, like all these living things here. He felt a tickle in his throat and behind his eyes, and a great burden of love for them in his chest. But Jenny was right. They should have made Sophie come too. Graham realised that he missed her. He really missed her. He'd been missing her for a couple of years. He squeezed Jenny's hand and firmed his grip on Liam's shoulder. He wished he could think of something to say, words to explain how he really felt about his family. He wanted to put this feeling into words.

What he did know was this: Liam's school could get stuffed. Troy Campbell could get stuffed. The whole world could go and get stuffed. Jenny was right. They needed to do more things as a family.

They continued walking the last stretch of the path, almost back to the Homemaker Centre. All Graham could hear now was the rasping breathlessness of his wife and son beside him, and the odd chirp of all those unknown birds as they ventured timidly back out into the open.

The Stories I Read as My Mother Died

Ryan O'Neill

I was reading a William Faulkner novel when my brother called from the hospital. My mother had been sick for some time, but her condition had become much worse. The doctors had informed my brother that there was nothing more they could do.

When I arrived, my brother was talking to a doctor at the far end of the ward. I opened the door to my mother's room and went inside. She was lying on the bed raised upon five or six pillows. She was white. Her head rested to one side. Two drips on stands fed into the swollen veins on her forearms, and a small, square machine beeped beside her. I thought about all of the deathbeds I had ever read about:
Jude the Obscure,
Lord March-main in
Brideshead Revisited,
Smike. Pulling a chair out from against the wall I sat down beside her. I took her hand in mine. Then I pulled Faulkner from my pocket and started to read. When my brother came in, he snatched the book from my hands and threw it onto the floor.

‘Is that your idea of a joke?' he said furiously. ‘What if she woke up and saw it?'

We both looked down and read the title of the novel.

As I Lay Dying.

*

‘How can you write about life,' my mother once asked me. ‘What do you know about living?'

*

I went to the hospital newsagency to buy the newspapers for my brother. He wanted
The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald,
the
Newcastle Herald,
even
Farm Weekly.
At my mother's bedside, he would sit and read each paper from beginning to end, including the gossip columns, the business pages, the classified ads for prostitutes. I believe he wanted to know exactly what was happening in the world on the day our mother would die. This also meant that he did not have to talk to me. From time to time he would read a clue from one of the cryptic crosswords aloud. Although I was supposed to be good with words, I never knew any of the answers.

The newsagency didn't have many books. I bought a paperback: Agatha Christie's
The Man in the Brown Suit.
I didn't want a book with ‘murder' in the title.

‘Not seeing window covering,' my brother said, as I read.

I noticed almost all of the victims in the book died instantaneously. The most prolonged death, a result of champagne laced with arsenic, lasted for two minutes. My mother had been dying for four months.

*

She could never understand the stories I gave her to read.

‘But what are they about?' she asked.

‘They're postmodern,' I said.

She nodded, satisfied. Later, I heard her tell one of her friends that I wrote stories about postmen.

*

On the evening of the sixth day, my brother brought me a book: Tolstoy's
War and Peace.

‘You said that you always wanted to read it,' he whispered. We were very quiet, although we both knew our mother wouldn't wake up.

I thanked him, and put the book in the drawer beside the bed. I felt my brother watching me the next morning when I finished the Agatha Christie and immediately began a Mills & Boon book,
The Sheik's Secret,
I had found on the stairs of the ward.

I had come to realise that any book I read here would be tainted by the death of our mother. I knew I would never read another Faulkner book. I didn't want Napoleonic Russia to smell of disinfectant, didn't want all the hundreds of Tolstoy's characters to wheeze and gasp for breath, didn't want to be reminded that all of them, including the ones who survived the war, would die one day.

‘Very sad, unfinished story about rising smoke,' my brother muttered.

*

‘Can't you write something happy?' my mother asked. ‘Why all the doom and gloom?'

*

Sometime during the second week, my brother said, ‘Can't this. What can. Oh, Mum. Oh. Oh.'

At first I ignored him, thinking he was trying out another four-down, or eight-across. But he was crying. Then I thought, sobbing. Sobbing was the better word. I stood up, intending to go round the bed to comfort him, somehow. Perhaps I would tell him that in the book I was reading,
The City and the Stars,
by Arthur C. Clarke, my mother, my father, my brother, everyone on earth, had been dead for billions of years. But he glared at me, and I closed my mouth and sat back down again. I watched him as he wiped his eyes on his thick wrists.

‘Promise me,' he said quietly. ‘Promise me you'll never write about this.'

I promised.

*

A few years ago I wrote a story that didn't use the letter ‘e'.

‘What's the point of that?' my mother asked.

‘Because,' I said, ‘The words you don't say are more important than the words you do.'

‘Nonsense,' she said.

‘Talk to me about my father then.'

She said nothing.

*

One night, while my brother slept on the couch in the visitors room, I read to her. A patient in another room had just died, and one of the nurses gave me the book he had been reading. It was called
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?
by P.G. Wodehouse. For six hours I read quietly to her, finishing the story at seven o'clock in the morning. My throat was dry, my eyes sore, my head aching. As I shut the book, my brother came in, rubbing his neck.

‘Is that all you can do?' he complained. ‘Read books?'

*

‘I love you, more than words can say,' she said.

‘There's nothing words can't say,' I said.

*

My brother had left the room to phone his wife. My mother's breathing became louder and more ragged. I was reading a Gideons Bible, which I had found in the drawers beside my mother's bed. Quickly, I tried to find some comforting words, but all I could see were ‘begats' and ‘wherefores'. I took my mother's hand in mine, letting the book drop to the floor. She stopped breathing. My brother opened the door and walked in, and I said, ‘She's gone.' My brother knelt by her and began to cry.

Then my mother took a deep breath. My brother looked at me, and we both laughed nervously. He took hold of her other hand. She took four more breaths, and then stopped, this time forever.

*

‘Nothing is real for you, is it?' she said. ‘Not until you see it written down.'

*

I didn't cry that day, or when they brought the body back to the house and she lay in the bedroom in the open casket. I kept busy making tea and sandwiches for the friends and family who came to pay their respects. And I didn't cry at the funeral, the first I had ever been to. It was sunny and warm, unlike all the funerals I had read about.

A week later, when my brother came to visit, he found me weeping in the back garden. Squatting down, he put his arms around me, making soft shushing noises. But then he noticed the book on my lap. It was Dickens's
The Old Curiosity Shop,
opened at the death of Little Nell. He stood back from me then, and struck me hard, once, across the face. He started to say something, but then turned and walked away.

*

The next day I took the train to Hamilton, with the paperwork necessary to record my mother's death bookmarked in the Dickens. My brother had refused to go. He said he was too busy sorting out our mother's various bank accounts.

In the Registry Office I paid thirty-five dollars and within a few moments I was given a stamped and verified death certificate. I pressed it between the pages of the book and went outside, where I sat on the grass, in the sun. I read that my mother was born Mary Elizabeth McCandless on the thirteenth of September 1942, in Bellshill, Scotland, and she died on the eighteenth of October 2010 at Newcastle General Hospital.

And then I couldn't read anymore.

*

‘Why don't you write a story about me?' my mother asks me.

‘Because,' I tell her, ‘The words you don't write are more important than the words you do.'

The Sleepers Almanac

Sugar Bag Dreamin' Country

Mark Smith

It was midday when Cunningham drove into Peppi Crossing, a scattering of low-slung houses with no windows and open doors. Dogs lounged under the verandahs and the front yards and driveways were dotted with cars up on blocks or on their sides. The remnants of campfires smouldered on patches of open ground. It was easy for Cunningham to spot the police station, surrounded by a high wire fence with its gate bolted, and the caged Hilux parked at the side.

He gave the horn a tentative tap and waited. A man opened the front door and stepped out into the light, shading his eyes with his hand. ‘Bush copper' was the description Cunningham had been given, with all its connotations. The man wore a baggy pair of shorts, thongs and a Maroons rugby shirt that stretched tightly across his belly. Dust followed him in little clouds as he shuffled towards the gate with a bunch of keys in his hand.

Cunningham climbed out of the troopie and the heat assailed him, the dry wind carrying dirt and smoke into his eyes. As he stepped closer to the gate he noted the spread of capillaries fanning out across the policeman's cheeks.

‘Watson?' he asked.

‘Sergeant Watson. Who's askin'?'

‘Ray Cunningham, Sergeant. Northern Legal Service. Here to pick up the old bloke, Jimmy Sugar. Take him to the sorry business in Adelaide River. Bring'im back after.' The heat of the Territory had somehow invaded his language, burning off unnecessary words.

‘Don't bring'im back'ere. Let'im walk, all I care. Longer he's gone the better.' He wrestled with the key in his fat fingers and unlocked the gate, which creaked on rusty hinges. Cunningham stepped through and Watson slid the bolt shut before walking away towards the police vehicle. He spoke without turning around. ‘He'll still be pissed.'

Cunningham knew that he hadn't been long enough in the Territory to be taken seriously by a man like Watson. He had felt himself being appraised and dismissed through the wire fence before the gate was even opened. His pants still showed the creases he had ironed into them yesterday and his shirt looked fresh off the line even after six hours of driving. And he wore shoes. No one, it seemed, wore shoes up here unless they had to.

Watson was flicking through his keys again. He found the one he was looking for and unlocked the cage on the Hilux. He stuck his head inside, tugged at something on the floor and said, ‘You got a visitor,' before stepping aside.

Cunningham peered into the shaded cage and made out the shape of a man lying diagonally across the metal floor. He turned to Watson, who pushed his chin out, daring him to take offence.

‘How long has he been in there?' There was a slight quaver in Cunningham's voice. He cleared his throat.

The policeman squared his shoulders. ‘What's it got to do with you? Get'im out of my truck an' the two of you can fuck off.'

Cunningham stumbled on. ‘It's not appropriate to keep a man in these conditions, Sergeant. I'll have to report this.' He felt a wire was being drawn tight across his chest. His breath came in short bursts. Watson's eyes narrowed and he lowered his voice. ‘If I was you I'd cut my losses and fuck off quick smart before I get really angry.'

Cunningham couldn't hold his gaze. He felt little gobs of spit hit his face as Watson spoke. He reached into the cage and tapped the foot of the man lying prostrate on the floor. The man still didn't move and a deep dread spread through Cunningham's body. He tugged on the man's leg.

Watson pushed Cunningham to the side and dragged the man out by his feet. He sat him on the tailgate and shook him by the shoulders. The old man blinked and drew his arm up to protect himself. He stood up and, with his hands bracing the small of his back, swayed a little backwards and forwards.

‘What's goin' on?' he asked.

‘This bloke's'ere to take you to that sorry business.'

The sergeant turned his back on them, walked into the station and slammed the door. He opened it again and called, ‘Lock the fuckin' gate on your way out.'

Cunningham hesitated. ‘My name's Ray, Jimmy,' he said. ‘I've come to take you to Adelaide River. Are you fit to travel?'

The old man nodded and walked unsteadily towards the gate. He opened it, placed his hand on the bonnet of the troopie and said, ‘Toyota.' Then he walked around the back and heaved himself in. By the time Cunningham had locked the gate the old man was lying on the floor with one hand under his cheek and his eyes closed. ‘You can ride up front if you want,' he said, but the old man waved his hand dismissively. Cunningham closed the back doors, climbed into the driver's seat and reversed out onto the road. He shifted through the gears and felt the rumble of the big diesel.

He drove through the community looking for somewhere to buy food. He hadn't eaten since breakfast. The besser-brick shop sat squarely behind a sprawling Moreton Bay fig, the ground littered with rubbish.

‘You want something to eat?' he called to Jimmy, but the old man was asleep.

Inside, the white owner greeted him cheerily, the whole time looking over his shoulder at the kids loitering among the shelves. Cunningham grabbed a pie out of the warmer and an iced coffee from the fridge, then waited in line behind a young mother with three children who had piled the counter with packets of chips, ice-creams and soft drinks. He walked back out into the heat, sat on a bench in the shade of the fig tree and ate his pie. As people walked past him on their way to and from the shop they dropped their heads, avoiding eye contact. He placed the empty wrapper on top of the overflowing rubbish bin and climbed back into the troopie.

The red dust road curved around the community and veered off into the low scrub. It was two months into the dry season and the grader had been through to level out the wash-aways, but it was still three hours to the highway and another three to Adelaide River. He hoped he could stay awake.

He had been driving for about an hour when he heard Jimmy stir. Cunningham studied him in the rear-view mirror. The old man's face was hidden behind a grey beard and his hair hung down to his shoulders. He wore a soiled white shirt, undone to the waist, and a pair of dirty jeans with the cuffs rolled up above his ankles. His chest was marked with four deep, parallel scars. He looked up and caught Cunningham's eyes, leaned forward and said, ‘Need a piss.'

Cunningham eased the truck into the shade of a tree next to a small creek that still held water even this late in the season. The old man opened the back door and climbed out before Cunningham could get around to help him. He wandered off to the side of the road and Cunningham heard the steady stream of piss hitting the dirt. When he was done he walked to the water, squatted down and splashed his face, arms and hands.

‘Good spot for turtle, this one,' Jimmy said. ‘And barra.' He leaned over, put his mouth to the water and drank deeply. Then he stretched, walked around to the passenger side and climbed in. Cunningham got back behind the wheel and looked at the old man. ‘Okay?' he asked.

Jimmy was staring straight ahead, his hand resting on the dashboard. He nodded and raised his hand towards the road. Cunningham took his signal and pushed the big diesel through the gears again. ‘How long had you been in the cage?' he asked.

Jimmy mumbled something that was lost in the roar of the engine.

‘Sorry?' Cunningham said, but the old man stayed silent. They fell back into the rhythm of tyres on dirt, the sway of the big vehicle and an occasional lurch forward as they drove into a dip and out again. He stole glances at his passenger but the old man stared resolutely ahead. Cunningham rummaged in the console for his phone, plugged it in and scrolled through his music selection.

‘You got any of that blind man? That Gurrumul fella?' Jimmy asked.

Cunningham scrolled again and found what he was looking for. The first song was in language and he asked Jimmy what he was singing about.

‘Dunno. Elcho Island, that mob.'

They fell into an easier silence, the music allowing Cunningham to put a foot in a place he otherwise didn't feel he belonged. He was surprised when Jimmy spoke. ‘What's your name again?'

‘Cunningham.'

The old man seemed unimpressed. ‘You got another name?'

‘Ray. Raymond.'

‘Can't call you that. You got another one?'

‘You knew someone that name?'

‘Hmm.' He left a long pause. ‘Uncle.'

‘My middle name is Rupert.'

The old man laughed loudly. ‘Shit,' he said, ‘your parents got a sense of humour.'

Up ahead the road was blanketed by smoke. Jimmy looked out the side window and said, ‘Burn-off. Comin' near the road. Better stop, eh.'

Cunningham pulled over to the side. ‘Who would have lit this? It'll burn for days.'

‘Gotta burn in the dry season.' Jimmy's voice was matter-of-fact. ‘Could drive around it.'

‘How?'

‘Back there.' Jimmy gestured behind them. ‘Couple a mile. A track.'

Cunningham was uncertain but the old man seemed confident. ‘Easy. Bit a bush bashin' we'll be out again.'

‘You know the country out there?'

The old man didn't answer but looked past Cunningham to the scrub off to the west.

‘How far?'

‘Track goes'bout four mile, follow the creek a bit. Come back out near them old cattle yards.'

The smoke was thickening so Cunningham reversed towards clear air before he swung around and headed back the way they had come. After five minutes Jimmy waved him to slow down and they turned into a track that was barely distinguishable from the scrub around it. After fifteen minutes of bush-bashing, Jimmy directed him towards a patch of green where a billabong was still holding water. As they drew closer Jimmy wound down the window and began to call out in language.

‘Who are you calling to, Jimmy?'

‘Ancestors.'

They crossed at a small ford and when they crested the opposite bank, Cunningham realised they had driven into a camp. A fire was burning. An old woman leaned over the coals and the smell of cooking meat hung in the air. Another woman, slightly younger, sat on a mattress plucking the feathers from a duck.

‘You a bit hungry, Rupert?' the old man said. He opened the door and climbed down.

Cunningham didn't know what to think. The scrub fire was well off to the east of them now. The smell of the meat was enticing but they still had hours of driving ahead of them. Jimmy was talking to the women and pointing to the vehicle. Cunningham watched him as he squatted down by the fire and poured tea from a billy into a battered powdered-milk tin. The old man turned and beckoned him over.

Reluctantly he opened the door and walked over to the fire. Jimmy was sitting cross-legged on the ground, the callused soles of his feet facing up. He pulled a knife from his pocket and glanced at Cunningham. ‘You want some of this roo, Rupert?'

‘You had a knife? Didn't Watson search you?'

‘Watson usually too pissed to bother.' Jimmy smiled, and hacked at the charred hindquarter. He cut a piece and offered it to Cunningham.

‘Was this your plan all along, Jimmy?'

‘Dunno what you mean, Rupert. Had to get around that burn-off. An' these two'ere need a lift to that sorry business anyway.' The woman on the mattress spoke to Jimmy in language. Cunningham listened carefully and thought he heard the word ‘taxi' in there. Both women were laughing. The one by the fire motioned for him to sit down.

The roo was tough but delicious. He tore at it with his teeth finding the softer flesh close to the bone. Jimmy pointed his knife at the woman on the mattress. ‘Agnes,' he said, ‘an' this'ere's Daisy.' Daisy looked up at him and spoke to Jimmy in language.

‘She reckons you eat like a blackfella, Rupert.'

After the roo Agnes brought the duck to the fire. She singed the last of its feathers before gutting it and opening it up to place on the coals. Jimmy sat back and looked around, sipping every now and again on his tea. He found another tin for Cunningham and poured him some. It was so sweet he could hardly drink it.

Cunningham's unease began to slip away. His belly was full and the shade was making him drowsy after the long day of driving. He leaned back against a log and shut his eyes. When he woke it was late afternoon. ‘Shit, Jimmy! We'd better get going.'

‘Too late now. Best camp'ere and drive in the mornin', I reckon.'

There was an authority in Jimmy's voice that took the decision away from Cunningham. He had a sense of time being stretched and shaped to fit the old man's world, rendering his own schedule meaningless.

He moved closer to the fire and Jimmy poured him more tea. When he looked at his three companions, he couldn't help but notice how comfortable they were out here. Where they sat on the ground their skin seemed to blend with the dirt. The air was still and the buzzing of the evening insects had begun. Cunningham undid his shoes and eased them off. His feet looked pale and soft against the ground. ‘This your country, Jimmy?' he asked.

The old man didn't answer immediately. He looked past Cunningham to the river. ‘Mmm,' he said eventually, putting his palm flat on the ground. He was quiet then for a long time. In his silence every sound seemed to be accentuated: the crackling of the fire, parrots in the trees by the water, even the breeze rippling across the dry grass.

‘This his country,' Agnes said, without lifting her eyes from the fire.

‘Big mob of country. Long way over that way,' Jimmy said, suddenly animated. He waved his arm to the east. ‘That Sweetheart billabong, them two hills like a camel that way.' He pointed to the south. ‘Big river over there. West.'Long the road to that Look Back place. Sugar bag dreamin' country.'

He paused, lifting his gaze to the treetops. In the distance dingoes began to howl. The old man called out to them, and one by one they fell silent.