Empty
Copyright 2016 Nicola Bradbury
For Glenn
Who fills me up
The heat was relentless. The ground appeared to bow under the weight of it. Gail raised her arm to shade her eyes and the flies immediately took advantage of the new place to shelter. She tried to blow one off her lip but instead sucked it inward and her dry throat reacted so violently she nearly lost her breakfast. Bark lifted his head to see if he was going to get brunch.
Gail tucked her shiny, black hair behind her ear. She might not be able to do anything about the sun’s etchings on her skin but she wasn’t prepared to give up on herself entirely and so she tended her hair as carefully as she would her seedlings; if she had had any. Gail stared at the brown fields. In her mind’s eye she saw tall, green wheat, bending under the gentle push of a morning breeze. The mirage vanished and the desolate reality returned. Five winters had passed with barely enough rain to sustain what was left of Gail’s life. The dams were empty, the tanks were nearly empty and this was another summer that she would have to get her water carted in; but the purse too was empty.
Gail bent down and put her hand on Bark. He lifted his head, acknowledging her presence like you might acknowledge a stranger. He yawned loudly and went back to dozing.
“Man’s best friend huh?” said Gail. “Still, I’m not a man am I?”
Bark had been a squatter on her porch for two years but he had never shown her the affection he had lavished upon the old man. Gail smiled, all the years they had been friends and she still thought of him as the old man. So Gail had given up hoping that Bark would become her dog and begrudgingly accepted she would always be just the proprietor of the boarding house where he lodged; not that he ever came inside. She looked down at his speckled fur and her throat tightened. She still had flashbacks of the day he showed up on her porch twenty seven kilometres from home and splattered in the old man’s blood.
Who knows how long it would have taken to find him if the dog hadn’t come for me, she thought. Gail shuddered, remembering, but more than just remembering, feeling the relief anew that the police had got to his house before she did, so she never had to see the body. But it had taken hours to get the blood out of the dog’s fur.The headline in the local paper had notified its readership of ‘Another Drought Death on the Darling Downs.’ ‘Another’, just another. How many did there have to be before something changed, before somebody did something?
Gail got up and walked down the dust blown hill to the river.
“Is it still a river when there’s no water in it?” she asked the magpie sitting on top of the faded, white, water marker. Lady magpie warbled an answer and flew up to the top of a huge gum tree. Bark trudged up and stood looking at the place where he ought to be able to satiate his tthirst.
“What do you think Bark?” she asked him. “If it never has water in it again is it still a river?”
He flicked his ear as a motoring blowfly attempted to land on it.
“I mean years ago, like serious years ago, Africa was lush and green and then it became a desert,” she looked at the fly as it landed on her arm. “If climate change changes it back again will we still call it a desert? I don’t think so, and, if a mountain was say, hit by a comet and became a crater we wouldn’t still call it a mountain.” Gail stared at the fly, wondering if they ever died of thirst or starvation. Its incessant buzzing trapped her for a moment in dreamawake land and her balance drifted away. Bark snapped at the fly, and Gail snapped out of her reverie just in time to squat down before she fell down.
“Bugger me, I should have brought some water out Bark.”
The dog slapped his tongue around his dry mouth.
“You look like you could do with some too,” she stroked his soft head. “Don’t worry we won’t be out long.” She stood up and resumed her walk along the edge of the dead river and, her conversation with herself. “But we do always call a volcano a volcano even when it’s dormant so maybe a river will always be a river while it has the potential to carry water somewhere.” She turned to Bark and said, “Any thoughts?”
Bark stared at the river bed.
“Yep, thought you’d agree.” Gail was always pleased to come to some kind of resolution on the small issues because she knew there was bugger all she could do about the big ones.
Gail looked up at the redundant sky. “Not a cloud in the sky,” she sang.“Got the sun in my eyes.” She stood and ambled along the edge of the crumbling river bank, the place where reeds should be sheltering growing duck families and tadpoles should be growing legs and propelling themselves through murky puddles. Bark watched her, something about her voice suggested she still had hope. She strolled onward, she never shuffled or trudged the way the old man had but…
“Been ten years now mate and I’ve seen a lot die out here.” She turned to see him busying himself in a dirt bath with lizard carcass for soap. “Terrific! I’ll have to wash you now, you know what we need for that right?” She walked on. “Two loving dogs, a mother ravaged with cancer— do dogs know when someone’s dying, like, do you say goodbye to them somehow too?” she asked. Then to no-one in particular, “walking away when you know you’ll never see them again, and you’re not just losing them but a part of you goes with them.” Gail stopped and took three deep breaths.
“And then Dad.” She swiped the tears from her eyes, kicked at the ground with the tip of her boot and walked quickly on. Lady magpie swooped down, barely missing the top of Gail’s head and screeched as if to say “Right here, right now lady, that’s all that matters to me.” She snatched a skinny mouse up from a clump of decaying weeds and swooped back up to her branch to enjoy the rare catch.
“One person’s misery is another person’s meal hey?” Gail said. “Let’s face it, I would have lost the farm years ago if it hadn’t been for the inheritance.” Gail threw some stones at the river.
“You know what I miss the most?” she said. The barren silence responded with complete indifference. “The smell.”
Bark trotted closer, enough to feel he was with her but not enough for her to know that that was what he wanted. She looked over at him and pinched her nose.
“Not that smell you disgusting dog!” She picked up a stick and flicked lizard guts off his ear. “I mean the smell of rain, the smell after the rain, of the earth expanding and preparing for life, and the knowing that just days later where there was nothing but hot, hard earth, there would be tiny, green shoots.”
Gail let out a melancholy sigh and started back up the hill to her drought worn cottage.
“Goodness little house you look so unloved with your cracking steps and your peeling paint, never mind, your face has character, like mine.” She grabbed a bucket off the porch and waited while the trickle of water half-filled it from the tank. She set the bucket down and rapped her knuckles against the metal.
“Less than I thought.” She lifted the bucket and started toward Bark who ran up the steps to escape his dousing. As her boot came down on the ageing stair it cracked apart like an eggshell on the side of a frying pan. Gail couldn’t stop the scream escaping her as her skin was torn free by the splintered wood. She landed badly, looking like a surrealist painting, twisted and confused. Bark ran to her and licked the water from her face. His eyes pinged back and forth and Gail knew he was in distress; the people in his life kept getting hurt. She spoke to him like she would have done a small child.
“It’s okay boy, I’ll be alright.” She pulled herself up, looked at her leg then pushed her finger around the bleeding wound. “See, it’s nothing, I’m just a bleeder.” She hobbled to the door and Bark pressed his body hard against her. “I’ve got to
go and clean up mate, you’ll be alright.” Gail opened the door and Bark rushed in. “Well if I had known all I had to do was fall through a step to make friends I would have done it years ago!”
Gail cleaned and dressed her wound and Bark became her shadow, licking her hand any chance he got. She went back to the kitchen to make some coffee and Bark chose for himself the rug in front of the kitchen sink. She leaned over him to fill the kettle.
“Location, location, location hey mate?” Gail bent down and rubbed his ear. “Eww, you never did get your bath you stinky dog.”
Bark yawned and rolled over, he liked the smell of dead lizard.
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Nicola Bradbury is currently (and slowly) completing a Bachelor of Arts at WAs Edith Cowan University. Since 2008 Nicola has won and placed in several international writing competitions for short stories and one-act plays. Social justice is a recurring theme in Nicola’s writing with a focus on breaking down stereotypes. Nicola has recently moved to the WA Wheatbelt and was inspired to write this story for the people she now lives amongst.