Surrender (16 page)

There was nothing to argue: Father was a man who kept his word. I crossed the lawn and found one end of the dog chain in the grass. The links were warm from the morning sun, and speckled my palm with rust. Surrender had not moved, and did not move when I clipped the chain to his collar. My father’s eyes followed me as I searched for the far end of the chain. When I found it, I dragged it to the clothesline, clipping it around the pole. I moved without blinking or thinking. My mind coasted above the trees. I tugged the chain, made sure it was secure. Surrender’s head hung low; he panted. I had already decided what to do.

“You had no choice,” says Finnigan.

I nod, agreeing. “I’ve never been lucky that way.”

I trailed my father into the house and walked past him to my room. I shut the door and sat on the bed and noticed my hands were shaking. I clenched them together, crushing my fingers. There was weight on my chest, each breath a strain. I could hear the sound of china and water as my father prepared himself tea.

Unfolding my hands I saw that goat blood, or dog blood, made a pink seam in my palm.

As the kettle rattled toward boiling, I slipped from my nightclothes into shirt and trousers, and laced my boots on my feet.

Father brewed the tea, then poured it, then carried the cup to his room. I waited long minutes, my ear pressed to the door. My hearing was keen as a bat’s. I heard him turning the pages of yesterday’s paper. I heard him swallow the tea.

I left the room and stepped into the hall. I trod through the house in silence. In the garden I paused to unclip the chain, a hand around the dog’s muzzle. He followed me at a fast-stepping lurch; together we vanished down the lane.

It was hardly dawn: Mulyan was a graveyard. The people who were awake were hunkered over stoves eating toast heaped with jam, and they gave no thought to a boy hurrying through the pink streets, a long-legged hound at his heels.

I knew where I was going. That was the extent of my plan.

We went up into the forest, Surrender and I, following first the arched backbone of Copperkettle Road, which flung like a boomerang away from town. I strode along the road that was only shallow tire-troughs, putting distance behind us as quickly as I could; Surrender trotted beside me, the bullet not slowing him down. Over our left shoulder, the town grew smaller and smaller. The scrappy bushland that lined the road soon thickened into forest, where crowded eucalypts reared creaking toward the sky. Their feet were overgrown with brittle underbrush; their shaggy reaching branches spilled bark and browning leaves. When we stepped into this forest, birds chimed in alarm. We stumbled over stone outcrops and banks of rotting logs, Surrender leaping and wriggling, my arms scratched by the unobliging scrub. We pressed through trees and hillocks of brush until I knew we were hidden from the road, that anyone walking along it wouldn’t know we were near. Then I scouted for a suitable place to lie low and found a lyrebird’s mound, the earth stamped and fastidiously cleared. I slumped, exhausted, gripping my ankles. I guessed that half an hour had passed since Surrender and I had left home. My skin was already tight with heat, my head beginning to thump. I wanted water, and remembered there was none.

But the trees gave us shade for the moment; for now, we were safe.

I called Surrender and we both lay down, curled on the chest of the mound. My blood moved quick through my veins. I saw Father and the empty yard, the dog chain hanging lank in his hand, my mutiny flying like a flag. I imagined how he would seethe. I put my face in Surrender’s coat and closed my all-seeing eyes. In the dark I saw watercolor shades of pink, yellow, and blue. Birds had settled in the branches and their feathers snapped the air. A breeze scudded through the underbrush, scented with sap and earth. Close, I heard the dog’s heartbeat, and smelled the blood in his fur. I folded my fingers around his paw and felt the warmth of his wild life.
Did you kill the kids, Surrender, as Dockie May says you did?

Yes, and I’d do it again
.

The dog fell asleep, as dogs will. I dozed, my arms a pillow. I woke up weary, and saw the canopy sway like a snake pit above me. As long as the birds continued to call, there was safety here. Ants crawled across me, and flies.

When I woke again the air was hot, and swilling like a spirit. It swelled against the forest, flexing its strength on the eucalypt trunks. My lips were dry and cracking, my teeth gritty with dust. Surrender had shifted away from me, and the lyrebird mound separated us now. He turned to watch as I sat up. The muffled colors of the forest — ocher, sienna, charcoal, khaki — made me wonder if I’d lost, in my sleep, all sharpness to my sight. I looked into the canopy and glimpsed through it a hard southern blueness of sky. The morning heat bulged and swore, trapped in the confines of the forest, a bully pinned furious to the ground.

I wiped my eyes, touched my pounding head. My arms and shoulders ached. My shirt was tacking to the flesh of my back.

Flies were blowing around Surrender’s wound. He snapped at them every few moments, his teeth crashing violently. The birds had stopped calling, watching us. The breeze had ceased to weave through the canopy, and the leaves hung very still. The bush has a sound that is its own — a low, vibrant, insect buzz. It is not a welcoming, animal sound. It is the sound of indifference.

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and from the back of my knees. For a while I watched the forest. I knew we could not stay here, that thirst would catch up with us long before hunger did. I brought my knees up, hooked my arms around them. I lowered my head so I was a closed box. I hummed to myself, felt the tickling of ants.

My thoughts drifted to Evangeline.

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind’s history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.

I ran my fingers across the earth. The ground, I saw, was like granite. You could not dig such sunbaked soil, not with a shovel anyway. You’d need a pick, to break its will.

I twitched; I felt I was being watched. I tried to remember when I hadn’t felt that way.

I couldn’t know how much time had passed since we had left home. Hours, I thought, but not many. I pictured my mother and father, their zealous, increasing outrage. I saw it first like a hurricane in the house, then realized this was wrong. There was no need for hurricanes. They’d know I must return eventually — they’d conserve their energy, and wait. I guessed that the house, like this place in the forest where Surrender and I huddled, would be quieter than it had ever been. In this silence, the grandfather clock’s ticking would echo in the rooms and hall. The ticking would count off the moments until I was forced to return.

Surrender’s jaws slammed shut on the flies. His tongue, between slammings, hung out. We both wanted water.

My mind went blank, like the desert. I supposed I should fight such vacancy — it seemed wrong to think of nothing. The situation, after all, was dire. It needed cunning, or distress. Nonetheless I continued to sag, boneless as a dropped puppet. The blankness was seductive, calming, handsome. It was restful as a snowfield or the rolling sea.

Great spans of time must have passed while sweat tracked pathways down my face and I made an occasional massive effort to wave away the flies.

A wattlebird flew through the forest shrieking, and roused me. I smelled the woodiness of the sun-struck trees, felt the itch of mosquito bites. I looked at Surrender, whose head was on his paws. He closed his eyes and opened them again.

If I took him home, he would die. I could not leave him here; he’d follow. If I drove him off, he’d soon come home. We would open the door and there he’d be, asleep in the shade of the veranda. He wouldn’t understand that he had no home. And even if somehow I could make him understand, he would have nothing but a stray’s desperate life, and soon die anyway. A farmer would shoot him, maybe catching him first in a trap. Surrender would sever his leg to escape the trap, and the farmer would follow the blood in the grass.

There was no choice to make — yet I languished, undecided.

Time crawled past on leaden hands and knees. I felt dry as if someone had skinned me. I was not the bones and meat, but the cast-aside skin. The heat had hollowed me. Sometimes I thought I was floating a whisker or two above the ground.

“Surrender,” I murmured. I craned my head. It was slow and painful to turn.

His eyelids twitched, but did not open.

I peeled away spines of hair that had stuck to my throat. I crimped my toes inside my boots, felt them slip slickly against one another. Finally, I moved. I crawled, like time, on my hands and knees. The stones and twigs that littered the earth pressed into my palms. The blood stung as it was pushed through my veins.

He lifted his head as I settled beside him. There was dirt on his coat and I brushed it off. The flies circled warily, biding their time. I ran my hands over him, smoothing his ears. He felt very warm to the touch. His panting tongue was dry and pale. I lifted his lips and saw that his gums were dull pink. I leaned close to look at the wound, from which brown splashes of blood radiated. The bullet hole itself was black, crusted, dark-blue. Leaning closer still, I saw the blackness was not blood, but a blowfly. It crouched inside the warm wound hole as happily as a king. Unflustered by my waving hand, it continued to build a nursery for its creeping pallid young.

I reeled backward onto my feet, my body arched like a bow. Surrender watched me stumble on the lyre mound, strike my shoulder on a tree. I dug my fingers into the bark, a hand clamped hard to my mouth. Water came to my eyes; my empty stomach clenched and roiled. The dog watched me through pitiful eyes and I was suddenly furious that it had come to this — that he and I were alone here, abandoned to suffer. I dropped the hand and shouted. “Finnigan! Finnigan!
Finnigan!
”

I roared the word, finally, at the top of my voice. The birds scattered, the insects went mute, the wind in the trees sounded louder. I knew he was near, killing time; I knew that some dark nook concealed him and his serrated satisfaction. “Finnigan!” I screamed, and scanned feverishly around, circling and circling the tree. The sun was at noon above the forest, the shadows as small as could be; the branches and undergrowth seemed a painted landscape, blanched and without depth. I shambled to a halt, dizzy. “This isn’t a game!” I cried.

A gray bird — an apostle-bird — skipped from one branch to another, and spun to gaze back at me. I looked everywhere, and listened. Nothing. One by one, the force of flies returned.

“He’ll die! They’ll shoot him! Stop sulking, Finnigan! It’s not a game!”

A scorched wind blew past me, tangling my hair. I scraped the strands from my eyes. “Finnigan?”

The word floated on the dense air, then coasted to the ground. Birds called, and shifted nervously. I stood, exhausted, dry as coal. My head ached blindingly. My arms were raw with windburn; where sweat had traveled down my cheeks the flesh felt arid as chalk. I tried to think, and my thoughts were like rabbits, paltry and flighty. I held a trembling hand to my face. I was more defeated than I had ever been. “That’s your choice, then,” I said to the trees. “You’re the one letting him die.”

I turned on my heels, clicked for Surrender. He struggled obediently to his feet, for the last time, for me.

I say, “I don’t have to come when you call.”

His gaze travels along the wall and stops like an ice pick on me. I hear the rattle and hitch of his breath. “Once, you said you would.”

“Things had changed.”

“Not that much. This wasn’t a game.”

“Life isn’t, Gabriel.”

He stares at me with his knife-blade eyes, his breath rasping and wheezing. He’s realizing I’ll have no mercy, that I’m here in deadly earnest — it’s dawning on him that I won’t back down or away. I want what I want: he has to agree. If I don’t get it, I’ll be angry. He sees this, and I see his jaw tighten, digging his stubbornness in. Though neither of us speaks or does anything, our hackles are up and we’re snarling like two dogs ready to fight. “Don’t try to be philosophical, Finnigan,” he says. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Oh, he’s feisty. I smile sweetly at him.

I don’t trust him with the truth. This is what happened:

They took a few steps into the bracken and walked straight into me. I wasn’t hiding. Gabriel halted, and gazed at me. His face was dark with dirt. His skin, usually white, was stained a kelpie-brown. He smiled sullenly, his mouth a fishhook: “Were you waiting for the magic word?”

Maybe I smiled too, then, soft as a tiger’s paw. “Look at you,” I said. “Reduced to this. Hiding in the forest. Begging for me in tears. You’ve messed things up, haven’t you?”

“This is
your
fault,” the angel answered. “You taught him to run wild.”

I pushed past him and crouched beside Surrender, my Achilles’ heel. I whispered and he lay down, sighing as his chest touched the earth. I ran my fingers over the wound, pressing to locate the bullet. I found it easily, a stone or nugget, lodged in muscle near the skin. Surrender moaned and struggled a little. Gabriel stood above us in rancorous silence, his hands hanging open at his sides. He was swaying, a lanky tree. “This is your fault,” he said again.