Small Mercies Read online

  He stopped close and got out. There was no reaction from the cow. She was on her side, her eye already bloody and pecked by crows, her stomach not yet distended. If she was dead, it hadn’t been for long. For one moment his chest lifted, and a sob shook it. He pushed it back down. Was the sob for her or himself? Neither was a good response. How had he missed seeing her? He scanned this country every day. There was no long grass to hide her — nothing to conceal her in fact, except a few rocks. Against reason, he knelt to put his hands under her head and push his knee behind her neck, so the cow could push against him and right herself. But there was no point. She was not breathing, not seeing, and it was stupid to keep pretending that she was. He stood back and brushed down his hands. There was little sign of struggle. Perhaps she’d had some sort of heart failure, and simply lain down and died. The words in his head made it sound like some sort of gift.

  It was spring, so only a few flies had gathered, with their faultless timing. He took a moment to stand and take in the awfulness of death: the brutal, fleshy fact of it. He had not looked into his father’s coffin, because he knew what there was to see.

  It was only when he reached into the cab to retrieve a rope to tow the carcass away that he thought of the money her loss represented: over $2,000 at the top of the market; $1,000 now if she had been in reasonable nick, less if she hadn’t; unsaleable if she had been too skinny. But the money was abstract, as it always was. It only meant something when you turned it into something else. There was nothing abstract about the animal on its side in front of him starting to leak pink, mucousy fluids.

  And, of course, he knew her. There were too few cows left for him not to know her: an Angus cross with a fine coat and a neat udder, who always produced one of the better calves. She was a good servant: never the rogue; never the fence jumper; never one to kick you or rush you in the yards.

  He understood as he attached the rope to her leg that only part of his grief was for himself; the rest of it was for his sense of her years of service and the fact that he had not been able to treat her better, not seen her when she first went down; not noticed that she might have been susceptible to whatever it was that killed her. He dragged the body behind the ute to the gully and the small pile of other bodies — sheep he’d killed for meat and a fox that prowled the chookyard — ashamed of the indignity he was imposing on his cow. He could not help but remember photos and movies of Belsen and Auschwitz when he pulled her onto the pile. But he knew from experience that it was important to shake off morose thoughts, because they could take you like addiction did. It was just a cow; this was a drought; it happened. Enough.

  He drove back to the house thinking of the jobs he should have been doing, but refusing to do them. Ruthie would be distressed by the loss of a cow, and critical of him for not having found her earlier.

  Two

  She opened the letter that wasn’t a bill. She knew what it was. Beneath the letterhead, the result of the biopsy told the story: it was banal and terrifying, a cancerous lump under her left breast. People, friends, got cancer every day, and survived it all the time. The doctors had caught it early, so her chances were good. The doctor had recommended an operation and follow-up radiation. The surgery had been unable to contact her. Everyday stuff. It still terrified her.

  At the window, a mudlark cheep-screeched and probably pooped on the outdoor chairs. The house was cool. It was too early in spring for it to have heated up. Even in summer, the green of the garden stopped most of the reflected heat from the hard, bright paddocks entering the house. She had become a person who appreciated small luxuries. Before she married Dimple, a lifetime ago, she had been carefree with money, had spent it easily because she couldn’t see what the fuss was about and who would bother taking it so seriously. She didn’t even know she was spoilt. But now, even though she complained about never having enough money, she hated to waste it. Even when Dimple encouraged her to buy nice clothes or things for the house, she baulked. She always found a discount or something that could ‘get her through’. A voice that had grown like a schoolmarm inside her told her that spare money should go to the boys, that they needed a hand to get ahead. This wasn’t true, though. Her children lived better lives than she did: had travelled much more; went out more; experienced much more. But still, she would probably heed the voice.

  And they did not need to know about this cancer. For the moment, no one needed to know. At least it made life seem precious. She hadn’t felt that in a while. In the last few years, her life had felt more like a sentence to be served. Her life was a drudgery with few highlights: the boys, always, but she didn’t see them much because they were no longer kids; Dimple, sometimes, because he was at least a good soul; the animals and the plants she’d saved in the garden. Her friends.

  If she thought about them now, as she stood in the kitchen reading the piece of mail, she saw that all of them deserved better from her. She had turned down invitations lately: outings to coffee and shops and shopping; requests to come for a wine at six — just the girls. Everything cost money, even drinks at a friend’s place, because you had to take something, a dish or a bottle of wine you wouldn’t have had at home. But money wasn’t much help when you were dead. She would survive the cancer, and she would stop saying no to things. She would tell Dimple she loved him, and maybe even show it. No — he could work that out for himself. She would visit Finnie and J more, whether they wanted her to or not.

  She placed the letter in a folder in the office, a place Dimple would never look. She needed time to process what she’d just learned. He knew she’d had the biopsy taken and was awaiting the results. But she would tell him when she was ready. Or not. Perhaps she would ignore the whole thing. Call the doctors’ bluff. They weren’t always right. She checked the defrosted steak in the fridge they would have for dinner. A salad to go with it. Potatoes. That would be enough.

  But she was not that person. The statistics on surviving breast cancer were undeniable. If she did nothing, she would die. If she acted, she would most probably live, maybe even for a long time. So she would tell Dimple, and get herself organised to go into town for the operation and then the treatment. But she would give it a day or two. Two days wouldn’t matter. What if they opened her up and it was much worse than they thought? Metastasised — was that the word? And what if they told her she only had months to live? ‘Let’s have two days,’ she said out loud but not loud, the kettle and the sink and the white cupboards and the pale-blue jug and the porcelain salt-and-pepper shakers and the timber stools paying her no mind.

  She must have spent a lot of time standing, daydreaming, in the kitchen — maybe two hours, if that was possible — because now she could hear Dimple arriving, getting out of the ute, saying something to the dogs and finding his way to the back door.

  ‘Hi.’ He pushed through the door.

  There was hay on his shoulders, and she was going to order him straight back outside, but instead said, ‘Hi.’ She walked over to him, held his thick shoulder, and guided him back through the screen door, where she began to dust him off. There were strands of straw in his hair, too — thick, curly hair only tentatively giving in to grey. She wanted to stroke it, but did not. It would have been a very strange thing to do. He grinned. ‘Caught me out. I was having a roll in the hay. Woo-hoo.’

  She didn’t respond and knew he didn’t expect her to. When they were inside, he told her about the dead cow.

  ‘How can she have just died like that? Without you seeing her? Is there some other sort of disease in the remaining cows? Like a botulism or something?’

  He wanted to tell her that she had to accept the death, but he also knew she was right to ask the question.

  ‘I don’t think so. One cow is only one cow.’

  She stood at the oven, breathing heavily through her nose, tapping a spatula on the cooktop.

  She turned to him. ‘Should we sell the rest of them as soon as possib
le?’ There was panic there, and he knew why. What if their remaining cows died? The loss; the money; the pain; the shame. You couldn’t stop yourself asking the worst: What if the drought is only beginning? What if it never rains, properly, again? What if our animals all die? And so on.

  ‘It’s just one cow at the moment. We lose animals even in a good year. And in a bad year like this, they eat stuff they normally wouldn’t. Their immunity gets down …’

  ‘I know. But if it happens again …’

  ‘Do you want me to arrange a truck? The cows can all be gone by next week. The prices aren’t that bad. They’ll only get worse if we don’t get a break.’

  ‘Don’t tell me things I know. And, no, I don’t want to sell the rest of the cows. But I need you to be on top of it.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Then, as if it were the logical follow-on, she said, ‘I’d like to go and see him.’

  ‘Who?’ He was distracted. There was no one he wanted to go and see.

  ‘Wally Oliver. The dick. On the radio.’

  He looked at her face, and squeezed his eyebrows together. ‘Why?’

  ‘To let him know that he’s playing with people’s lives.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘We could phone him.’

  ‘No. I mean it. Face to face.’

  ‘But like you said: why would he listen to people like us anyway?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll feel better.’

  Dimple was quiet. This was not the sort of thing Ruthie normally did. But what Ruthie did wasn’t always normal, and when she set her mind to something, it was a big ship to turn around.

  ‘How do we find the time?’

  ‘We go for one night. Visit him in the afternoon. Stay in a motel somewhere, then come home. Feed up before we leave, and after when we return.’ She had not thought this out. The plan formed with the delivery of each word.

  He leant back against the kitchen bench and chewed at his cheek. ‘So when are we doing this?’

  ‘As soon as 3027 is strong enough for us to leave her.’

  ‘Right.’ He folded his arms. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea. He’ll probably tell us to piss off. We’ll drive for hours just to be told off.’

  ‘Well, then, consider it a night away. A break for our mental health.’

  She watched him breathe deeply. He had already conceded, but wasn’t ready to admit it.

  ‘He lives near Willi. I don’t think there’s even a Chinese restaurant in Willi.’

  ‘I’ll pack you an overnight bag. If we leave at eight, we should get to his place around midday and we might catch him at lunch.’

  ‘He might not even be around. The whole trip will be a waste of time.’

  ‘Do it for me. I could do with a drive.’

  He’d put up enough of a fight. He slapped his hands on his thighs. ‘All right. If he punches me, I’m blaming you.’

  She put a hand back on his shoulder: ‘Thanks.’

  He disappeared to shower and change. She had expected him to link her desire for the trip to something that was making her feel bad, and to guess that her results had arrived. It was a relief to remember he was only intermittently capable of that level of sensitivity.

  She turned the TV on, but didn’t listen to its stories. The hum of words and flash of colour were enough. Her mother had died of a stroke — multiple strokes — about the time she was due to be admitted for care. Lucky her. Her mother would have been very unhappy in a residential facility, because she had decided she hated them. Her mother’s decisions were not negotiable. Dimple said the same of hers. She smiled at the thought. There was nobody in the world like her mother: pigheaded and kind-hearted; outspoken but self-aware; pushy and demanding, as well as caring. It was impossible to stop missing her. Her death had made Ruthie’s father seem like a washed-out version of something he might have been. The energy and commitment needed to battle with his wife, day in and day out, had already failed him by the time Ruthie was a teenager. He withdrew into his work and then his shed, his share portfolio, and his golf. As a young woman, she had thought of him as cowardly. He never challenged her mother — she got her way in everything, no matter how ridiculous. Later, Ruthie realised that withdrawing was her father’s only option if he wanted to stay married. Her mother was incapable of ever backing down or seeing any reason to do so, and was prepared to die on every hill, every day, and in between remind everyone of the injustices she’d suffered. These days, he probably would have left her when the children were grown, and gone off to find someone young and pretty, and eventually just as obstinate as Ruthie’s mother.

  She searched for restaurants in Willi. There was one, a Chinese — The Golden Empress. Every country town had one. Always had. How extraordinary were those early Chinese pioneers? Didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the culture, and were as far from home as the moon is now. Mr Oliver would probably have considered them too labour-intensive, un-Australian, too small-scale, and not profitable enough. But they endured. The Golden Empress advertised being open all day, every day.

  In the shower, Dimple soaped the smell of death off his hands, and then rubbed at the grease on his arms with his thick fingers. Had Ruthie received the results from the doctor? It seemed likely. The sudden need to visit Wally Oliver suggested it was so. The fact that she hadn’t told him was surprising, but he knew she would have her reasons and would tell him in her own good time. He got out and towelled down. In the mirror, his chest was white, and his neck and arms red-brown. But he wasn’t looking. Mirrors held little interest for him. He was confident his wife would tell him anything he needed to know about his appearance. He thought about what he might say to Wally Oliver. Ask him if he knew what he was saying. Did he think it was fair to wipe people off the map with a few smart-arse observations? Should he punch him in the nose and be done with it? Ruthie would hate that.

  He put his clothes on — shirt and shorts — and considered what a poor prognosis might mean. They were pretty good with breast cancer these days. It might need an operation perhaps. Treatment. But not life-threatening, surely. He wasn’t going to google it again. Ruthie would know everything that needed to be known. He didn’t want them mucking around with her breasts, but on the scale of things he didn’t want, it was pretty low. He didn’t want her to be sick or die. He didn’t want her to have discomfort, even if she was as tough as anyone he knew with that sort of thing. Why hadn’t she told him? He hung the towel up, straightened it, and then did his best to make the rest of the bathroom look presentable. For her. And perhaps for him, because he didn’t want to get in trouble from her.

  If she didn’t tell him, he would ask. Probably on their way back from the trip. If he could last that long. He didn’t like half-heartedness over this sort of thing, and neither did Ruthie. So maybe she hadn’t received the results, and simply needed to do something off farm — time away, like the radio suggested. If so, it surprised him that she wanted him to come along.

  In the kitchen there was a beer out for him, and a glass, which he wouldn’t normally use.

  He rubbed his hands together. ‘Excellent. Thank you.’ He poured the beer into the glass, and, realising he was a little too pleased with himself, asked, ‘Are you having one?’

  ‘Yes. I think I will.’ She took a wine glass down from the cupboard, retrieved the white-wine bottle from the fridge, and filled the large glass two-thirds full. He noticed, nodded at it: ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Just feel like it tonight. I’m not sure why. Probably put me straight to sleep.’

  She will have her reasons, he told himself, certain this was true. ‘Chin-chin,’ he said, lifting his glass.

  She tilted hers towards his and replied, ‘Salud.’

  After a deep draught, he put the glass down and smacked his lips. ‘That is good! Should I fire up the barbie?
’

  ‘Give me a minute. Those steaks won’t take long, and I’ve potatoes to cook.’

  ‘No worries.’

  She turned to the stove and switched the gas on under the saucepan.

  He took a seat at the bench and said, ‘I think 3027 will be fine tomorrow, which means we can go the day after, Thursday. How’s that sound?’

  ‘I’ll book a motel.’

  ‘You make it sound so glamorous, like there is more than one to choose from.’ He watched her moving around the kitchen. She was short, slim, and harder-bodied than you might expect. Perpetual motion would do that, he guessed. He’d never been able to shake the bit of extra weight that he carried, not that he’d tried terribly hard.

  ‘You never know,’ she said, taking salad things from the fridge and putting them on the bench. ‘There might have been a new one built since we were last up that way.’

  ‘I doubt it. I’d be surprised if a new anything had been built up that way in the past few years.’ She didn’t look like someone who had received bad news. She looked as she always did: in control and calmish. He remembered when he first met her at a party at Ricky’s place. She was short and dark, and her eyes were intense. It made him notice her, but he hadn’t been sure if he wanted to know that person. But she turned out to be fun, easy to be around, and she liked him. After that, he could not forget her. He found ways to go to the places she was going: picnic races, balls, beaches. Of course, Ruthie had made her decision about him long before they got together. Later, she told him that she had expected him to show how keen he was. He remembered the word ‘keen’, a word from that time, and how it felt to put his arms around her.