The Dig (8 page)

When the others had gone, he pushed the sack to the back of the van and carried over some straw bales that he put in the back hiding the badger. He thought of leaving the tools and coming separately back for them but then thought, Ag. If they look in the van they'll find it anyway. Just the badger was enough to send him down.

He drove home without incident though and got the dogs from the van and unloaded the bales and took the badger and dumped it in the sack in the coal bunker. Then he went in and called the men. They said they'd be ready for it that night and they gave him a time and directions. It was about three in the afternoon. Ag, he thought. He figured on getting some rest.

PART THREE

The Cloth

chapter one

T
HE BLACK LAMB
looked tired and beaten under the lamp.

It had not put on weight and he could make out the fingers of its ribs with the bloated milk-full stomach behind them. It was folded in the bottom of the box, but not with the folded comfortable way of a sleeping cat, more with the weak compliance of something sick beyond will.

Daniel picked up the small black lamb. His father would have simply dashed its head on the barn floor. He was not a hard man, but a pragmatist; but that kind of will wasn't in Daniel. Despite the lamp the lamb felt cold, as if it could generate no heat of its own, and it was too light for itself and hung limply. It was as if he'd picked a jumper from the floor. It had a completely will-less passivity.

I don't expect this of you, he said. I just want you to understand it. Sometimes you have to choose between a quick misery or a slow misery. He heard his father talking, saw him take the useless lamb from the box. You have to understand it as an option. There was a movement and
the lamb hung dead from his father's hand, a thin spittle of blood reaming from its mouth.

He heard the voice again. Heard his father, that there were the two miseries, and somewhere in him a vicious voice told him that his wife had no fear now of the worse, drawn-out misery that might have come. Hers had been the quick misery, the head dashed against the barn floor. He thought of his father stricken, becalmed by the stroke. He ignored the vicious little voice, as if it was something overheard he had no wish to know.

He rubbed the lamb, trying to bring some warmth into its muscles, the wrinkles of the loose skin riding under his hand like rolls of sock. There was the superstition that every flock should have a black lamb to sacrifice should the Devil come and it was to Daniel like the lamb was a victim of this.

He felt the lamb's heartbeat under his hands. It was faint. A bare registry.

You need to live, he thought.

He picked up the lamb and carried it into the house.

He put it down in the porch and took off his boots and then went in and found a box and came back for the lamb.

He opened the door of the Aga and took out the racks. He hadn't cooked in it since she had died. There was just the residual automatic heat of it running and he took out the racks with unprotected hands and felt inside the oven space. Then he put the lamb in the box in the Aga, leaving the door open, and went back outside.

 

The policeman opened the door, looked at the deep mud of the yard, and got deliberately out.

Set back from the window, the man watched him through the gap in the curtains. He watched him scan the place. The policeman was young and he was not a policeman the big man had seen before.

The policeman bent through the car door and pushed the horn twice.

What do I do here? thought the man. He wished he'd left one of the big dogs off but knew even through the coal it would scent the badger and bother it. If I stay in the house, he'll start looking round, thought the man. Ag.

The policeman had started to walk toward the house from the car and the big man came out.

Afternoon, sir. It's clearing up, the policeman said. The policeman looked at the man and looked out as if at the weather over the valley.

The big man just nodded.

Few questions, really, sir. The policeman was light and inoffensive the way they are and the man moved to bring him away from the house.

Can you tell me what you were doing last night, or early this morning?

The big man didn't reply.

The policeman looked around at the yard and privately noticed the two sets of tire tracks that were cut into the mud and that were not filled with overnight rain. He saw the old red van and guessed one set belonged to that. The policeman took in the many dumped engines and tires and the wastage of vehicles and machines about.

We've had a report of fly-tipping. He waited. I just wanted to ask whether you would know anything about that.

What did they tip? asked the man.

The policeman didn't respond. He was looking at the junk and the big man saw and said, Does it look like I throw things away?

Just wondered if you could help, sir, said the policeman.

Somebody pointed at me, said the man. The two men stood in the yard.

The policeman could sense the man was guilty of something but knew he had not been tipping. He was suddenly aware of his singleness at the place. He knew the man
had past firearms offenses and way back some assault. He didn't respond to the man, using the silence instead.

I was here last night. Asleep.

The policeman smiled. We had quite some rain, didn't we. Kept the kids awake, he said. He felt this horrific electricity coming off the man. The policeman was smiling but he thought briefly and preciously of his kids.

I don't know, I was asleep, said the man.

Did you go out this morning?

I just fed the dogs. That's all.

The policeman looked over to the dog run with distaste.

What sort of dogs do you have? he asked, as if he had an interest in them.

Some big ones and some little ones, the man said. This couldn't be it, he was thinking. They were like this when they raided the house. They had these stupid questions, then the rest of them all came out from nowhere.

You haven't been out this morning? asked the policeman.
No, said the man. Somewhere in the near distance a chainsaw started up and some of the terriers yapped, knowing the sound from going ratting.

The policeman looked round at the yapping of the dogs. Anyone been here? he asked.

No, said the man.

The policeman thought of the tire tracks without the rain in them.

Mind if I take a look in the van? he asked.

The big man's heart quickened as his brain worked through his routine, as he went over each step. Yes. He'd followed his routine. He nodded at the van and the policeman went over and opened the back and looked in. There were just some palettes and bales in there. The policeman felt this horrible inside apprehension as he turned his back on the man. He had an extreme dislike of him.

Distantly, the chainsaw was biting and idling. It stank of dogs in the van.

The policeman stepped back and smiled at the man and made a kind of “everything's fine” gesture.

Well, he said. Thanks for your cooperation.
Something is wrong here
, he knew. He thought again of the rain keeping his children awake and thought how easily someone like this could turn, and thought again of the firearms charges and how there should have been backup, and he knew there was something wrong with the man.

He looked out over the valley and then at the dog run and then he drove off.

When the policeman had gone, the man went to the coal bunker and lifted out the badger. From inside the sack, the badger had dug into the pile of coal and the sack was torn and blackened with filth.

The big man knelt by the bath panel and pushed it and the plastic wraithed against the bath as it flexed and he took hold of the sharp top of the panel and bent it over and lifted it off. Knelt down like that in the big coat, the bulk and actions of the man looked bearlike.

He stood the panel out of the way against a wall and with his face down smelled the dry piss and the uncleanliness around the toilet and the copperiness of the old
pipes. He had the kind of extra-awareness of when you see a commonplace thing from a different perspective and noticed the way the copper pipes had the strange eucalypt green on them that looked somehow stony.

Just inside the space under the bath was a row of various pots and dishes filled with sharp-smelling raw detergent that he had put there to curtain any scent the police dogs might find and he moved them to one side. There was something almost comic in the way the big man had to be careful and delicate to do this, to not spill them.

Then he lay on his shoulder in the aspect of some big mechanic and reached under the bathtub and brought out the sack from where it was tucked up the other side.

He unwrapped the gun and looked at it and then he wrapped up the gun again. He put the sack down in the bath and with the awareness saw the dog hairs in the bath and the strange brown stain under the taps from the long time it had not been used.

He put the bath panel back on and took the gun outside and went down to the boundary fence where the machinery was crashed and growing in amongst the trees and then he wrapped the gun in a second plastic sack and put it in amongst the machines as if it was just debris. Somewhere far off he could hear a woodpecker trat on a tree.

Let them come now, he thought to himself. They can search the house.