The Grass Castle (4 page)

She wraps her arms across her chest like protective wings, folding her sadness inside, toughening against him. ‘We can’t stand here watching her. It’s cruel.’

They look down at the kangaroo. Cameron is pulling away. Soon he will climb into his car and drive off, leaving her with the kangaroo and the night.

He glances at her, eyes cold. ‘What will you do?’

She swallows. ‘I’ll use the car. I can’t do it with the axe.’

He turns from her, withdrawing. ‘I don’t think I can watch. Do you mind if I go?’

She watches bleakly as he climbs into his car and rolls down the window. For the first time tonight, she feels lonely. But perhaps it’s better this way; he won’t have to see her crying.

He peers out at her. ‘What if I hit another one?’ he asks.

‘You won’t,’ she says, but he isn’t reassured. ‘Okay then,’ she suggests. ‘Drive a few hundred metres down the road and wait for me.’ Not only does she have to kill the kangaroo, she also has to guide him home. It’s almost more than she can manage.

He starts his car, the engine throbbing throatily, and snaps on the lights. The kangaroo claws at the tarmac, trying to drag itself away.

‘Turn your lights off,’ Abby yells, but he doesn’t hear. He’s backing away, taking care to dodge her work vehicle. She watches him disappear down the road and is relieved he has gone.

Shaking with apprehension, she clambers into the four-wheel drive and lines it up near the kangaroo’s head. Several times she has to pull on the brake and check the positioning with her torch, and by the time she has it right, the kangaroo is blowing bubbles of blood from its nostrils and she is already weeping. Behind the steering wheel, she clenches her teeth and prepares to finish it. The vehicle judders as she revs forward, then she jerks on the brake. Hesitantly she climbs out to look.

The The animal is dead. Its body is twisted, the head mashed, but mercifully the breathing has stopped and all is dreadfully still. Abby is taken by a horrible adrenalin sweat and she thinks she might be sick. Weakly she leans against the car. She can’t give in to it: there is more to be done.

She shifts the vehicle away then approaches the poor dead body to check inside the pouch, slipping her hand inside the warm moist fold of skin. She hadn’t expected to find anything so she’s surprised to discover a small young wriggling there. Her gut clenches as she directs her torch into the pouch—is she going to have to dispatch a joey as well?

Peering into the musky shadows of the pouch, she sees that the joey is covered by a fine layer of grey fur and that it has whiskers and its eyes are open, its mouth firmly wrapped around a long, pink teat. The reality of her next step overwhelms her. She will have to kill it. A quick blow to the head will suffice.

Sobs threaten, but she locks them inside. Grasping the kangaroo by the forelegs she drags it off the road, the crushed head dangling. She can’t bring herself to touch the hind legs, doesn’t want to feel the grinding sensation of bone against bone. The skull bumps against her knee, the warmth of fresh blood. Fighting tears, she pulls the limp heavy body into the bush.

When the kangaroo is concealed behind some shrubs, she lifts the head and gently straightens it. The skull is shattered, an eye protruding. She wishes she hadn’t seen it, thinks she might vomit, bile rising in her throat, an involuntary choking sensation. The eyes are glassy, staring into emptiness. This animal, still warm, was alive only five minutes ago. Now it has departed, its body a shell; such a fine line between life and death. Abby knows about that.

She works to compose herself, listening to her own breathing as it rasps into the night. The kangaroo’s legs remain skewed, and there’s something not dignified or respectful about leaving them that way. Despite her reticence to touch the broken bones, she forces herself to bend and gingerly, tenderly, untwist one leg then the other. Then she squats to stroke the kangaroo’s shoulder before turning away. The stickiness of blood is on her hands, the smell of death in her lungs, the taste of it in her mouth.

At the back of the four-wheel drive she rummages agitatedly for a drink bottle and flushes water over her trembling hands. It seems she will never be clean. Then finally the gush of tears comes and she sobs against the back of the car.

When the first wave of reaction passes, she digs around in her backpack and pulls out an old grey windcheater, ties off the arms. Then she goes back to the kangaroo. Reaching inside the damp cavity, she scoops the young out while it struggles and hisses and barks, jabbing with all the pointy angles of its gangly joints. She tugs the determined little mouth free of the teat and folds the joey into the windcheater. Then she walks to the car.

Within the jumper, the little body squirms wildly—Abby can feel the desperate thrust of limbs. She stills the joey’s panic with the crook of her arm, hugging it close. She can’t kill it, even though she knows she should. Instead she tucks the pouch under her clothing against the warmth of her belly and the joey seems to quieten. She will keep it safe for tonight. Tomorrow she will hand it on to a wildlife carer. That’s the best she can do.

3

Abby lives in a small bungalow in the inner north of Canberra. The rent is cheap, she doesn’t have to share with anyone, and this suits her perfectly. Her bungalow is at the back of a large old renovated house in a quiet wide street lined by oak trees. She likes the trees—especially in autumn when the brown leaves refuse to be shed and they rattle in the wind like castanets.

Five minutes away there is a scrubby hill where she often goes walking. The locals call it a mountain, but what would they know? Her home in Mansfield is overlooked by
real
mountains. The mountains here don’t even qualify as foothills . . . but perhaps imagination thrives when you don’t have anything to compare with.

The large old Canberra house and Abby’s rooms are embedded in a rambling garden which, in spring, sports a profusion of flowers in all the primary and secondary colours. When the owners are absent, it is Abby’s job to splash some water around when it is needed. The rest of the maintenance is left to the gardener who comes once a fortnight.

The owners leave Abby alone, which is exactly what she wants. They are married but childless. Their dog is their child—a pampered, well-groomed, over-washed golden retriever called Maxine that bounds joyfully through the garden beds crushing plants and flowers, heedless of their discouraging cries. Abby tries not to smile when she sees the damage Maxine inflicts. She likes the dog’s happy attitude—a canine could easily become suppressed and neurotic beneath the anxious eye of the wife, but fortunately Maxine is immune. When the owners are away, which is often, they take her to the home of a sympathetic relative. Abby suspects those visits are good for the dog. She is happier when she comes home because she has been treated like a dog.

Sometimes Abby takes Maxine walking, and Maxine smiles all the way, eternally delighted at escaping the yard and the house. Abby has discovered that a dog is a ticket to conversation. People remark on Maxine’s beautiful floaty combed coat and her soft brown eyes that speak of love and pleasure and hope that a human hand might reach to touch her silky head. She is easy company, and the interactions her presence initiates are suitably brief and superficial—no time for people to ask questions, which is good because Abby likes to keep to herself. It’s harder at university where, if you make friends, you are expected to confide all the details of your life—which is not something Abby does with anyone.

Her bungalow is small and untidy. The largest room is the combined kitchen–living area which has floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the garden. Even this room is small, but it is adequate for one. There is also a bedroom, a bathroom and a tiny laundry. In the living room, piles of books and newspapers have taken possession of the coffee table. Unwashed dishes live on the kitchen sink. Dirty washing is flung in the corner of the bedroom, and her mess of shoes is a mound by the door. This is how she lives.

Disorder is normal for Abby. She grew up that way and it feels comfortable, no energy wasted on obsessive tidiness. That’s how it was with her mother, who was focused on more ethereal things or, at other times, on nothing at all. She was either loving or absent, thrilling or withdrawn, rarely anywhere in between. Abby learned to capitalise on the good times, to absorb affection when it was given, and not to take it personally when the tap was turned off.

Her father hadn’t the headspace to clean things up. He was frenetically busy with work, the vegie garden, the horses, the chook pen, kids’ homework, the cooking, his wife’s wanderings. Consequently, Abby has learned to be self-sufficient. She’s a lone wolf, doesn’t rely on anyone to hold her together like other girls do. She has friends at university, and she’s slept with a few boys over the years, but she hasn’t let herself get emotionally entangled. Anyway, her fieldwork isn’t conducive to boyfriends and in-your-pocket friendships, and night work is a real killer for partying.

She has the potential to become a social isolate, she sometimes thinks, a real hermit, except the university has thrust her into a large open-plan office along with all the other PhD students, so it’s impossible to hide. Luckily she managed to score a desk tucked away in the corner where she can hunker down and keep herself small, work on invisibility and getting things done. She has her career to think about; she’s more than two years into her studies and time is closing in. She has to set herself up for her next job by writing some good scientific papers, otherwise the path is difficult. It’s a tough gig being a female scientist, but it’s what she’s always wanted to do. She can’t think of a better way to make her mark, to
do
something rather than
be
someone—she’s not interested in fame.

It’s hard to be a reliable friend with all this on her plate, and mostly she’s out in the field alone anyway, which is what she prefers. Nobody wants to come to the valley with her—or they think they do, and then one visit is enough. They get bored hanging around while she does her work: counting kangaroos, measuring pasture and radio-tracking. It amazes her they can’t find anything to do. There are walking tracks and the historical hut and trails for mountain biking, but all her friends can do is gripe that there is no mobile phone coverage and mope as if their arms have been cut off. No phone, no life—Abby is glad she’s not as dependent on constant electronic connection as the rest of them.

It’s the day after the interview with Cameron, and Abby is sitting on the doorstep of her bungalow playing guitar. She’s had a torrid twenty-four hours, and she’s feeling traumatised, tired, disappointed and sad. No wonder, after all she’s had to deal with: the accident, killing the injured kangaroo, confronting her emotions, and then caring for the orphaned joey. Last night after she’d finished with the kangaroo, Cameron followed her from the national park to the edge of town then he’d taken off, accelerating past her in his WRX and disappearing down the road. It would have been nice if he’d called to see how she was faring. But she hasn’t heard from him, and a heavy feeling congeals in her belly every time she thinks of him.

It had been close to ten o’clock when she arrived home; too late to call for assistance with the joey, so she’d fed the little creature some warm sugary water using an old syringe she keeps in her cutlery drawer. It wasn’t an easy task with such a wriggly head and tiny mouth, but she’d managed to get a bit of liquid in, hopefully without drowning the joey’s lungs. Then she’d filled her hot water bottle and set it in a box alongside the joey tucked up in her jumper.

She’d spent a restless night, worrying whether the joey was warm enough. Several times she’d clambered from bed to check and refill the water bottle. This morning, she’d found a wildlife group on the internet, and she’d called the number then delivered the joey to a farm near Queanbeyan. The lady seemed pleased to take the joey. The way she handled it with gentle expert hands was reassuring, and Abby was happy that at least one thing had turned out well.

Cameron is another issue. She can’t muster the courage to phone him. And isn’t it his responsibility to call her after all she did for him last night?

She bends over her guitar and immerses herself in the music.

The weather is cool but clear, not a cloud, the light intense, the sky blue. Early autumn is often like this in Canberra. The temperature doesn’t look promising on the news report, but the weather is crystalline. Soon the cold starts will come, followed by still, translucent days. The garden is finishing its late flowering and the frosts will short-circuit the blooms. In the back corner, the vegie garden is starting to go to seed.

Abby strums the guitar and hums to herself; it’s like meditation, the peace it brings to her. She likes the feel of the instrument in her hands: the hard lines of the strings beneath her fingers, the vibration of the body against her chest. When she plays, it seems the music moves right through her, connecting her to larger things. Her mother Grace used to play the guitar. She had a beautiful voice which floated like a kestrel on the wind. It was her gift, and when she sang the house filled with glorious sound. Like angels, Abby used to think, when she was young enough to believe in such things.