Small Mercies Read online

  He could easily recall the wedding and the early years, but so much of the other stuff, the time in between, he needed prompting to bring back. There had been a lot of years and incidents to remember. She never seemed to forget, especially when it involved the children. Every birthday party, school year, sports carnival, and family outing came quickly to mind. What would he do without her? He had imagined it before, thinking he would become one of those boring old blokes who didn’t seem to work and spent too much time at the pub and the bowlo looking for someone to listen to them. But when he imagined her gone now, he thought he would just pine. Maybe curl up and give up.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, tossing the green salad.

  He nodded, and took a swig of his beer.

  ‘You can start the barbie now if you want.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He slid out of the seat and pretended he had just been waiting for her say-so. It was cooler outside on the back verandah, where the barbecue waited. He lit it, and put the hood back down. It wasn’t as clean as it should be, but that was part of the flavour, wasn’t it?

  The sky was clear and bright, and he stood drinking his beer and looking upwards. He had no idea what he was seeing, but he knew it was beautiful. And he hardly ever found the time to look. He took it for granted, which was worrying because that’s where you got regret from. He went back into the kitchen and took the plate of steaks off the sink. ‘I’ll put them on?’

  ‘Yep. Great. Barbie clean?’

  ‘Yep.’ He carried the meat out and put it, sizzling and flaring, onto the grill. It made him think life wasn’t that bad, if you could do this with your partner on a Tuesday. How good.

  They ate with the TV on, listening and not listening, making observations about the shamelessness of politicians, and disagreeing over positions taken.

  ‘J is ringing every day, wanting to know if we are all right. Especially you, for some reason. The publicity about mental health seems to be having its effect.’

  ‘He’s worried I’ll get depression?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s possible. There’s plenty to be depressed about.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ He was going to say there was just as much to be pleased about, but thought it might be insensitive. ‘We can endure. Can’t we?’

  ‘We can. We have before.’

  Was it a moment to be sentimental? To squeeze her hand? If it was, he missed it. And sentimentality wasn’t her thing. Not with him, anyway.

  After dinner, they sat on the couch, and Ruthie took out her book. Dimple flicked through the TV channels and gave up. He perused a social-media site, but it bored him too.

  ‘I’m going to check on 3027.’

  Ruthie nodded without taking her eyes from the words. She could do that: disappear into the pages. Sometimes he was jealous of it, and other times he thought it was a strange way to exist: in the make-believe. When she was annoyed by him, she said he lacked imagination, which was why he didn’t like fiction, but he didn’t think that was true.

  He decided to walk and take a bit more notice of the beauty of the night. The gravel was crunchy under his feet. The moon was slim but bright enough to let him see where he was going. He put his phone and its torch away. There was no sound. The birds were asleep, the insects at rest, waiting for the warm nights to come. Then a cow called out for her calf, a sound that pierced like it might carry for one hundred miles.

  He walked the ‘hospital’ paddock until he saw 3027 at a pile of hay. She was standing, eating, with the calf lying on the ground next to her. He walked in close, and she moved away without looking at him. There was no wobble in her step. He guessed she had not sat back down. She was doing the easy bit. Lifting her body with her back legs, to stand up, would be the real test. At least she was eating. Now she turned her head to him, looked, and turned back. In the moonlight, he saw her indifference, which was a form of trust. He took it as a kind of thank you.

  He circled around her, careful not to unsettle the calf, and walked across the remaining grass towards the house. A light breeze kicked up, and he wondered where he might be in a year. Or ten. What state would the farm be in? Perpetual drought? He looked at the sky again, and reminded himself that this sort of thinking was not helpful. Far better to be amazed by the expanse above him.

  He began to hum a song that came rich with memories but vacant of words. It was from a time before marriage and children and responsibility. When his energy was limitless, and people forgave a young, good-natured man almost anything.

  An idea knocked: why not make the trip last for two nights? They could certainly do with it. He would ring his neighbour Barney and ask him to feed the cows, the dogs, and the chooks for one day. The offer would be reciprocal. He was sure Barney wouldn’t mind, and it would give him a chance to get away himself. Barney was a great mountain of a man who worked himself ragged. He would do anything for anyone who asked. Dimple had to be certain that 3027 was okay and that there were no more cows likely to die. Barney would know what to do. He would ring him in the morning. That way, they could have two nights on the road and maybe a few drinks and meals somewhere.

  Ruthie was asleep with her head back, the book on her chest, when he made his way into the room. She sat up abruptly. ‘That took a long time. Is she okay?’

  ‘Looks fine. Beautiful night. I was just enjoying it.’

  ‘No end of beautiful nights.’ She smiled in a kind way, to remove the edge of desperation, and got up clasping the book. ‘I think I’ll go to bed. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘You don’t want a cup of tea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ He let her go, and slumped into the couch. He listened to her getting ready for bed, and flipped through his phone until he found the song he’d been trying to sing. He played it with the volume down low. And then again. And was asleep before the song finished.

  At first light, 3027 was sitting down in the far end of the paddock. But her head was up, her ears were out, and she appeared to be chewing her cud. Good signs, he thought. He drove over to her, and when he got close she rolled herself forward and began the mighty process of hefting her hindquarters into the air. Her back legs concertinaed beneath her and stalled. She dropped heavily to the ground. Then she tried again, and her legs found traction and strength and straightened, allowing the front legs to be involved, and together they lifted her body to a standing position. He felt a flutter of joy. ‘Good girl,’ he said, the stupidity of the comment part of the fun. He went to rub her tail, but she moved away, no longer in need of him. You had to be happy with that.

  Ruthie was suddenly, somehow, behind him and alongside him saying, ‘Oh. Relief.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to go to Willi now.’

  ‘Yes, we will.’

  He had thought she might have changed her mind overnight, expecting some of the heat had gone out of it. But obviously not.

  ‘Let’s see how she fares the rest of the day, eh? Then, if she’s right, we can leave tomorrow.’

  She nodded. Her skin was glowing this morning, her face too young for her.

  ‘Hey, beautiful,’ he said to her.

  She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. ‘Hey, yourself. Do you want a hand to feed?’

  ‘No. I’ll be okay.’

  ‘Good, because I want to rake out the chookyard and put new straw in their boxes.’

  ‘Just the straw off the ground. They don’t get fresh stuff.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ She meant neither of the words. ‘Can you make sure there aren’t any other cows down that you haven’t seen? None that are looking sick?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ He probably meant both of them.

  ‘I don’t want to be going away if something is on the verge of dying. I don’t want to see Wally Oliver that much.’

  ‘No.’ Neither did he.

  He got back into the ute, and she walked to t
he house, her stride purposeful. His son Finnie walked like that. Even as a teenager. As if he were leading an army unit. J never walked in a straight line. He was always detouring to smell the flowers or take an interest in something he’d noticed for the first time. It was ridiculous to miss two adults so much. He and Ruthie had done their best to push their children out into the world, and now they wanted them back. He wished they’d both work the farm with him. Bring their partners home. Have grandchildren. Be members of the community. Stupid stuff. They had much more to do than fulfil their old man’s small-time fantasies. You could dream, though.

  He drove via the dogs, let them off and the chooks out, then went to the little tractor. He started it up and manoeuvred it to the lorry with hay on it. He began picking up bales with the front forks and putting them out in the paddock. The cows sauntered over to the bales, knowing it was their right to be waited on. He parked the tractor, and while the cows ate he cleaned out two water troughs because of a childhood-instilled insistence of his father’s that cattle had to have the cleanest possible water at all times. Then he set to fixing the wires in the fences that had been broken by cows pushing each other or getting caught trying to get to a clump of grass just out of reach.

  The day began to warm up, and the first glow of heat reminded him of what summer could be like. It wouldn’t be good. The amount of rain they needed to turn the season around was more than their average expectancy. And if it arrived in small falls every day, or whopping falls just once or twice, the figures would be better than the results. But places got lucky. People did get lucky. They might get a good soft fall and then another one and another one while others watched on, parched, saying how pleased they were for them. Perhaps he needed to get off the farm more than he realised. He had to take up the sportsman’s mantra: not worrying about things you couldn’t control. He could not control the weather. He should control his thoughts. He should talk to his wife about whether the medical results had arrived or not. It was always Ruthie who opened the mail, so he never knew what he was missing. She might have known for days.

  Three

  Ruthie scratched at the chook pen floor with a rake, dragging back the globs of white and grey manure and the dried-out remains of scraps the chooks had rejected. To not think, for two days, was her plan. Then she would deal with whatever had to be dealt with. Cleaning, organising, tidying up were her mindfulness strategies. And she liked chooks. She knew she was being childish. J would be very annoyed at her if he knew. But somehow the thought of two days without the burden of the future, whatever it held, gave her a feeling of bliss. Like a magic endless holiday. Except it wasn’t endless.

  She shovelled the pile of manure and scraps out the gateway into another little mountain. When she was done, she added the old straw from the nests. She replaced it with fresh hay and then washed out their water bowl. The ten chooks were out, roaming the paddocks, pleasing themselves until sundown, when they would return to their enclosure and its perches, soft hay, and security. Ruthie walked the perimeter of the chookyard looking for places where the netting might have been pulled up or dug out. The foxes would love to take a chook or several, and there was always a goanna and a crow on the watch, hoping for a chance at the eggs. None of it seemed to perturb the little red hens. Their life was a sublime run without bad news. If a fox got in, there would be a few moments of fear and squawking, and their story would be over. Until then, they hadn’t a worry in the world, popping out an egg every 29 hours.

  She had taken the old ute to get the new hay, and now she shovelled the chook manure into the back of it. It would go well in the compost heap and under the citrus trees. In the distance, past the yards and the sheds, she could see Dimple putting along in his side-by-side. She felt bad not telling him, but he would understand. He was good at not taking things to heart. He was a sunny individual, unaware of insults and disapproval. But he could be dark, too. She knew he had not expected drought to be so much of his life. Naturally, he had expected most seasons would be good, most springs soft and full of hope. It hadn’t been the case.

  Droughts were a challenge. That was the way you were supposed to think about them. A challenge to be triumphed over with judicious planning and data-based decision-making. After a while, the fun went out of that. Even for Dimple. And a dead cow was enough to dispirit anyone. At least 3027 looked in reasonable shape. It was always surprising how some cows persisted and others fell. And now that her thoughts had got away from her, she hopped into the old ute and fired it up. The seat was soft and the steering wheel peeling, but it did what was asked of it. She drove round the back of the garden, parked, and then shovelled the material onto a pile of cattle manure and filled a wheelbarrow for the citrus trees as well. The roses were shiny green and in full bud. On their own, they were enough to keep her going. The geraniums were in frail pink flower. Their delicate prettiness was like a private joke, because she knew they were as tough as any plant in the garden — one of the few that would survive if she had to give up the relentless watering.

  She made the decision to check the internet one more time for information about breast cancer. Just once, and then she would stop thinking about it. She tapped on her phone, and an entry came up: If treatment does not occur, breast cancer will usually spread to other areas of the body. Very often, the first area that a cancer spreads to is the lymph nodes in the underarm area. Once the cancer enters the lymphatic system, it can and usually does spread to other areas of the body. It made her feel sick. She shut the phone quickly. Without thinking, she put her hand up under her breast where the lump was supposed to be.

  The friar birds were gossiping above her in the trees. You would never think anyone could have that much to say.

  She would ring the doctor. Go straight to town if need be. No. A decision had been made. Forty-eight hours. She would stick by that.

  She went inside, found the overnight bag, and took it to the bedroom. She was a day early, but she felt like getting set up. She took out clean, suitable clothes for Dimple — the choices were limited — and thought about what would be suitable for her. What did you wear to a confrontation? A dress, she thought, taking the geranium’s advice. Always a dress. Let them think you were soft, sweet, and feminine, and not capable of putting up a fight. Let them think. She had worn a dress to the family meeting with Dimple’s father all those years ago. She had liked that dress — a long, summery, floral print — but she had still given him both barrels. He had been using his son for too long. Dimple was not slave labour. Either they received written confirmation of what they could expect in terms of wages and capital, or they were out of there. He could do the work on his own, or hire someone. (He was far too mean to hire someone.) She had won the day. Within the year, Dimple’s father, Eric, had handed over the reins and the chequebook. After that, it was a slide into retirement. Ruthie guessed, with the benefit of hindsight, that he must have known, when they confronted him, that he was unwell. Otherwise he might have fought more, blustered more, driven a harder bargain. It wouldn’t have made any difference. She had had their bags packed sitting on the front lawn of the small cottage with the tiny bathroom they were forced to live in with two small children while Dimple’s parents rattled around in the big house.

  Dimple had been doing the work and the decision-making for some years. His father had taken a liking to a four o’clock scotch on the verandah with the form guide. Dimple would appear after dark, dragging his feet, saying he still had paperwork to do and phone calls to make. For a while, he had resisted her putting their case to his father. He spoke about the generosity of his father giving them a job and a house and good prospects. But she knew farmers, especially older farmers, and she knew they did not respond to ‘nice’. The arrangement suited him, so he would hang on to it as long as he could. The farm would eventually be Dimple’s, so why the fuss? It was obvious that Dimple’s mother agreed. They deserved their time, she’d said at dinner once, sweetly. Ruthie had agre
ed, genuinely. But that time didn’t extend endlessly.

  Within two years, Dimple’s father was having problems with his heart that left him dizzy and confused. Within three years, he was dead. It was a large funeral, and Ruthie remembered thinking it was ‘undeservedly large’. Dimple’s father had spent a lifetime looking after his own needs. At the wake, Dimple’s mother had the look of someone who was having trouble suppressing her joy. Dimple did not seem to have inherited the characteristics of his father — or his mother, for that matter. Sometimes you had to be thankful for good fortune.

  The spark of a silly idea took her to the kitchen, where she found a recipe for Anzac biscuits in her recipe book made of faded typed-up pages, magazine cut-outs, and internet printouts. She scanned the ingredients — rolled oats, flour, brown sugar, desiccated coconut, golden syrup — and then the method, reminding herself that she didn’t need reminding. She got out a bowl and allowed herself to disappear into a process she knew well.

  While the biscuits were baking, she sat at the kitchen bench and took out a pen and a piece of blank paper. She wrote, mouthing words and stopping occasionally to look up at the ceiling and tap the pen against her bottom lip. When she was done, she folded the paper and put it in her handbag with the biro.

  She had been very angry when she heard this Wally person on the radio. Angry enough to want to get straight into the car and drive all that way to tell him to his face what she thought of him. But anybody could see this was a foolish idea. Her better judgement, her knowledge that anger didn’t help any situation, made her control herself. Yet, somehow, the reminder of her mortality made her really want to go and see the self-serving prick. Was it not enough for people to suffer drought without being told they should suffer? That their suffering was just part of an economic equation? Suddenly, she could not wait. But now, as she sorted through the clothes, and thought about the drive with Dimple, free of the cows and the water and the fences and the hay and her news, she realised she was looking forward to going away, and the desire to give Wally what-for was slowly turning into an excuse for indulging in average Chinese food and expensive cheap white wine in Willi, and a motel with one of those bedspreads, an awful print on the wall, and terrible instant coffee. Despite the food and the motel décor being ubiquitous, it seemed almost exotic. If you stayed on one farm, in one house, for long enough, any place could be counted as foreign and unusual.