Coming Rain (21 page)

The young red dog crawled forward, touched her nose, licked as if to bring her to
her senses, to run away from this madness. Her hackles rose, a low growl from her
throat.

They waited until nightfall. Lights came from the windows of the house and then they
heard a great crash and silence. After a while, the old man began shouting and there
was solitary laughter. Singing.

She walked backwards, turned and trotted north into the old town cemetery until she
found an urn filled with stormwater from the rains. Drank. The night was closing
on them and she waited until she heard the sound of sweet frogs alongside a brush-filled
line of abandoned and sunken gravesites. The rain had brought them. They sang in
their pleasure, like morning sun on a cold body.

The young red dog was a few paces back, lying on the day warmth of a stone and cement
slab. He watched as she pounced and took a frog. Lifted it slightly, threw it up
and swallowed it whole. Gulped, paused, looked at him to say this is how it is done,
now you eat. Hunt, you young fool. He walked over the
brush hollow which had become
silent and waited, shooting glances at her as she returned to the funeral urn and
again began to drink, lapping the water.

He made several unsuccessful leaps into the croaking frog hollow. Stood, staring
at her with a crinkly mouth. She turned and trotted away from him into the old processing
area of rusting iron tanks and bricks and broken buildings.

CHAPTER 53

He looked at the Daybreak Springs, Thompson's Find signpost again, opened the door
of the Land Rover, stepped out and closed the door.

The silence of the land seemed to make the noise of the closing door longer. He stretched
his hands above his head. His ribs hurt. Bent to touch his feet to ease his back
muscles. Only made it to his knees.

His eyes were still yellow-bruised, his mouth scabbed from where Painter had beaten
him, but his face and head had stopped aching. He touched his cheekbone with his
fingers and felt his broken lips. Cleared his throat. He did not believe Painter
would have done that to him until he did. He walked around to the passenger's side
and urinated into a ditch. Spat also. The blood had gone from his water.

He got back into the Land Rover, started the engine and drove towards Thompson's
Find. The track was potholed and corrugated. Thought about the day Painter left.

*

The morning had been hot. The sun overhead in the blue sky. Painter packed his swag,
checked the oil and water in the truck. Filled up the tank from the forty-four-gallon
drum of petrol on the back tray. Wearing his old brown moleskin pants and shearers
vest, the Traveller hat pushed back on his head and still those don't touch me arms.
Hands like broken feet, he would say.

He came to where Lew was standing. The air was still, a sudden screech of galahs
and far away the bleating of sheep. Crows protesting. Painter nodded.

‘The boss is fucked. Jimmy got him flush on the uncle with that stick. Twice. Didn't
think the cunt had it in him.'

‘And Clara?'

‘At least the old bastard didn't shoot her. She'll be right.'

Painter was holding out his hand. Lew couldn't see his face properly; it swam before
his eyes. Rain on the windscreen. He took the old man's hand and shook it.

They stood there for a minute.

‘Yep.' Painter said and got in behind the wheel.

‘You know how to drive?' Lew asked.

‘I know how to drive. Hard part is convincing the wallopers I didn't bloody steal
it.' Big smile. No teeth.

Lew stepped away from the truck and watched as Painter drove down the red gravel
track towards the Great Eastern Highway. The truck got smaller and smaller. Brackets
of red dust coming together and turning into spirals above the cab in the heat, the
engine whine climbing. Change bloody gears, Painter. Go on now.

Painter changed up and Lew watched until the truck disappeared. He would never have
said sorry.

*

When Lew reached the outskirts of Thompson's Find, he passed the cemetery. Ornate
railings surrounded the white marble headstones. Black writing. A mournful white
angel with a raised index finger. Rows of metal and marble crosses, headstones, beds
of white quartz. Walkways between graves wide enough for four men to carry coffins.
A myrtle bush thriving against a monument of red bricks. Grey, termite-ravaged fence
posts leaned north-south; red wires sagged, holding them in place. A painted wrought-iron
gate had been left open and was off its top hinge. He changed gears and slowed the
Land Rover further. Leaned the underside of his forearms and wrists on the steering
wheel and studied the ruins of the town as he drove into it.

An ugly pair of stunted, hopelessly foreign-looking oak trees partly obscured the
outline of a crumbling stone church. A granite cross made from local stone remained
on the apex. Beneath the cross, an empty window space in a perfect circle, the stained
glass of the rose long gone. Collapsed and scorched roof timbers, two beams like
fingers pointing in a defiant gesture towards the sky. The English trees should have
died a long time ago. Perhaps they had. One was orange. The other a sickly grey.

CHAPTER 54

The feral cat was ginger striped and had beautiful yellow eyes. In its mouth the
throat of a honeyeater it had taken. The broken wings askew.

The young dingo saw her first and raced into the granite heather to attack.

The cat transformed, suddenly becoming a crazed explosion of fur and claws. Seemingly
larger now, backing off yet hissing and spitting at the dog in open-mouthed fury,
left and right paws slashing.

The boy dingo stood his ground at first, growling and showing his teeth. Lowering
his head to snarl and watch. The cat yowled, hissed again and launched into a counterattack,
running straight at him as if sensing his inexperience. He retreated, yelping, running
away and looking back into the scrub with horror. Claw marks down his forehead and
across his snout; spots of blood. His tail pressed once again between his legs.

The bitch glanced at him and immediately leapt into the bushes. The orange demon
flew to attack her but she simply
snarled and lunged into the savagery; took the
cat by the head and snapped it like a snake, smashing its body back and forth onto
the ground.

She let the body drop from her mouth and placed a paw on its neck. Using her front
teeth, she opened the cat's belly and exposed the bodies of five or so fledglings,
baby zebra finches. She ate the half-digested birds and ripped the cat apart further
to get to the liver and heart. Ate them also and turned back to the sulking youngster.
Stared at him for a while and moved away from the cat's body.

The young dog edged forward. He had seen how she took the cat. He nosed at the bloody
carcass and after a few more tentative sniffs and licks he too began to feed.

CHAPTER 55

On the eastern edge of Thompson's Find there was a long copse of blackened mooja
and gimlet trees. Behind them, a metal tower with portholes cut at regular lengths.
Three wooden poles with wire strung between them. A large rusting cyanide tank with
lines of rivets around its girth and up one side. The flotation plant alongside the
tank. It was shaped like an enormous funnel and held in place with bolted angle-iron
supports.

A corrugated-iron roof had collapsed onto the ground and fallen to one side. Two
large rusting wheels with metal poles through their axles. More sheets of corrugated
iron at awkward angles in the ruin. The site was covered in the rubble of bricks
and masonry. A dead thorn tree wrapped with galvanised metal piping.

Lew continued into the main street of the town. He passed a set of stockyards and
what was left of a Bickford aerated bottling plant. A twenty-head stamper and steam
boiler lay rusting and abandoned beside the road. It still bore the metal imprint
Ferguson and Sons Engineering Ltd Glasgow above the coal door. A burnt-out blacksmiths
and livery stable. The wroughtiron sign still on the gates above the entrance: McGillivray's
Blacksmith's and Iron Works.

The first large building he came to was a newspaper office. Thompson's Find
Enquirer
1900 painted on the façade. Yellow and black paint peeling and the stonework was
showing through. An ancient press, left at the front of the building. Its brown rust
embossed David Payne and Co. Ltd on one brace; above that: Makers Ottley. Wharfedale.
Frozen wheels, rusted fast, rollers and a large flywheel with ratchet teeth. A wooden
support frame and wire basket.

Directly opposite, another crumbling Edwardian facade. Collapsed verandas and tall
windows. The Good Intent Hotel. The sign had slipped ninety degrees so that it had
to be read on the vertical. The L of hotel was at the top and the G of good was at
the bottom. He turned his head as he read and passed on.

He rounded a corner slowly, and standing in the middle of the street was an old man.
He had a large white beard and was wearing stained canvas trousers, an old fashioned
collarless shirt buttoned to his throat, no tie and a sleeveless vest. A large belled-out
hat with a snakeskin band.

Behind him, four black and tan horned goats in harness. The cart, resembling a cut-down
trap, was piled high with sandalwood branches. This precious load was secured with
ropes tied off with sheepshank knots, pegs of wood through the loops.

The old man waited as Lew stopped the vehicle, got out, closed the door and walked
to him.

‘Gidday mate.'

‘Smith,' the old man said. ‘Abraham Smith.' He offered his hand.

Lew nodded to the old man and shook his hand. ‘My name is Lewis McCleod, Mr Smith.
How are you?'

‘I am well. Yourself?'

‘You the dingo shooter been down Drysdale Downs and Yate Valley Station? John Drysdale
mentioned us to you I believe.'

‘I was.'

‘I got some bad news about Mr Drysdale,' Lew said, ‘he's had a stroke. Being cared
for by Jimmy Wong, the cook.'

The old man stared at him. ‘Sorry to hear that,' he said. ‘Been bad luck around that
place, Drysdale Downs. Lost Mrs Drysdale last year I think.'

‘That's right.'

Other buildings, the Miners Institute and Post and Telegraph Office. Alongside that
a Share Trading and Loans office and further down again, a smaller building. Berwick
Moreing Mine Management and Engineering.

‘I knew John's father, William Drysdale. Knew him as Bill,' Abraham said. ‘Helped
him clean up the show around Winjilla just after the war, y'know.'

‘I heard that.'

‘Killed on the station…when? Some years now. Looking for gold, the old fool.'

‘I have heard that.'

‘There is a daughter?'

‘Yes.' Lew looked away.

Off to one side on some flat ground running out towards the mines, the football oval.
One set of goalposts remained and
some spectator seating ran around the oval. Cement
posts with wooden planks. A small covered stand with central stairs and filigree
balustrades. A scoreboard: Visitors 1 6 12 and below that Thompson's Tigers 16 18
114.

‘Never leaves you, that foolishness,' Abraham said.

‘Did you get that dingo bitch?' Lew asked. ‘The one that came back to the Downs woolshed
and took a hogget?'

‘She runnin' with a young red male? Come up out of the Yate Valley? I tracked her
for Drysdale. Told him the story.'

‘He said.'

‘Well.' Abraham waited a moment and looked back at his goats. ‘If it's the one I
saw, she is smart as any lubra. Never seen the like come to think of it. Wrecked
my old Vauxhall chasin' them I did. She in pup and must be getting ready soon.'

‘Could you tell me where she's most likely to be? I want to get some of those dingo
pups. Raise them up.'

‘That right?'

‘Yep.'

‘Well you will wish you didn't once you do. Dingos, you see what they do to a birthing
ewe? The lambs?'

‘No,' Lew shook his head.

The old man blinked and put his chin up. ‘No good. Eat a lamb right out of the mother
as it's being born. I come,' he clicked his front teeth together and hissed. ‘They
gone. Best just clean 'em up.'

‘Can you raise them to change, Mr Smith?'

‘No young fella that's their nature. Best to destroy them.'

The street ran to a long view of rising ground and hillocks where the mines were
located. Derelict poppet heads, small
volcano shapes of grey tailings and yellow
waste rock. Broken and sagging sets of rail lines running to the top of the slag
heaps. Rusting orange storage tanks and a single tall red brick smoke stack. Engine
houses around the head frames. Ruined workers cottages in rows leading up to the
mine gates. A narrow road curving between the cottages.

‘Why'd you stop with that bitch? She get away?'

The old man raised a hand and rubbed it across his eyes and face. ‘She took that
young red with her from Yate Valley Station and got away all right. I went out with
those army boys on contract to cull the emus…Got the horrors, come back,' he said.
‘Time before that I tore the guts out of my car. Did I tell you?'

One of the goats bleated and Abraham turned to it and raised a stick. Hushed it.

Lew nodded. ‘Got the what came back?' he asked.

‘Bad dreams. The horrors, from the war. The first one. Like a black stone in my guts
and in behind my eyes a giant snake squeezing inside my head. Can't sleep. Can't
hunt. What the hell you want dingo pups for?'

Lew shook his head. ‘I just do.'

‘Well, I don't know if I'll shoot another. She and the young red been here all right.
But they doubled back by the look of the tracks. Can you believe it?'