Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

I woke curled around the stool, with a headache. Dog was in the bed, under the covers.

The shed was empty. The blanket was folded neatly and hung from the teeth of the rake. Up on the paddock crows dive-bombed something, seagulls formed lazy circles above them. There was spit in the air, but dark brown clouds hanging low promised something more impressive was on its way. Here and there on the slope of the field were old tree trunks whose roots had been too deep to pull out when the land was cleared, long, long ago. Some were split and hollowed out, eaten by wasps, and grew a fungi that Don called Jew’s ears. Those trunks sitting there, with the wars starting and finishing around them, horses being overtaken by tractors, the birth of Don, probably the birth of his father, certainly his father’s death. It made me feel lonely to think about it, that old English history in the dark and the wet, the short days with no electricity. It made me want to go and sit in the truck, rev the throttle, just to remind myself of my century, just to feel the modern dry heat of the engine. My feet squeaked inside my boots, wet already. I lit a cigarette to dry the air around me. Sheep followed behind, with lazy questions about feeding time. At the top of the hill, I watched a merlin sweep the edge of the woods, like she couldn’t find a way in, like no tree was quite the right tree to settle on. She let out a screech and was suddenly gone. A burst of small birds jumped out of the treetops and then sank back in. The trees appeared to swell and shrink with the rhythm of breath.

Over the other side of the hill, I found a pregnant ewe stuck in the drainage. Her muzzle was black with mud, like she’d been trying to lift herself free with her face. I lowered myself down to her, trying not to make sudden movements, but she thrashed about anyway honking like a goose.

‘Calm now,’ I said, ‘come on.’ But she took no notice and things weren’t helped by Dog, who raced up and down the edges of the drain barking shrilly.

She was in up to her armpits, and while I wrapped myself around her middle and pulled hard, she shifted only the smallest amount and when I let go the mud sucked her deeper. Her feet had already made holes for themselves and she farted back into them. I caught my breath and looked up at Dog who was still barking.

‘Will you shut the fuck up, you arsehole?’ I shouted, and he lay down and whined. I moved around the sheep and tried pulling one leg out at a time, but the rest of her sunk deeper in. I could feel the panic in her, and that I was hurting her. After fifteen minutes I was sweating and worried that if I left to get help, whatever that might be, she’d drown.

‘Hi there.’ A shadow fell over me; it was him. I strengthened my grip on the sheep like I could use her to swing at him. Dog stood up and wagged his tail and for a moment I was speechless. The man looked at me down in the ditch. ‘I wondered if you could help me out.’ Sober, he had the voice of a news reader. He took a mobile phone out of his pocket. ‘There’s no signal here — I was using the map but it’s gone.’ He held the phone up and squinted like he was reading something from it. ‘I’m a bit stuck.’ He had dark rings around his eyes. He squinted at me. ‘It was you last night in the shed, wasn’t it?’ The ewe let out a wail. ‘I recognise your… hair.’ He cleared his throat. The blood in my calves was cut off by the weight of the sheep, but I could feel the pulse in my legs fast and heavy.

I swallowed. ‘I could really do with your help.’

He suddenly looked like he might just run away. ‘With the sheep?’

‘That’s about what I was hoping.’ I tried to keep my voice steady but didn’t manage it.

His arms hung at his sides. He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘Won’t it work its way free on its own?’

I felt the rattle of the sheep’s heartbeat and she shifted her weight further down into the mud. I tried not to shout or swear.

‘I need to get this sheep out,’ I said in a clear and careful way.

‘You’ll need to get that sheep out,’ Don called. I turned and saw him leaning against the fence at the top of the hill with a perfect view. He jabbed a finger towards the sheep. I gave Don the thumbs-up for a moment too long, and he gave me a double thumbs-up back, smiling broadly.

‘Couldn’t you ask that guy? It’s just I don’t know all that much about sheep. He looks like he would know an awful lot more.’

‘Please,’ I said. Teeth. ‘If you don’t help me my sheep will drown in the mud.’

A look of helplessness passed over his face, but he took his jacket off and laid it on the ground. He lowered himself down the bank. Dog got up and put his mudded undercarriage onto the jacket.

‘Right,’ he said, and fell to his knees, landing with a smack in the mud. The sheep let out a horrified mew and wobbled about, straining to get away from him. He stood up, squelching.

‘Right,’ he said again and tried to offer a hand to shake over the sheep. I looked at the hand; it was a large man’s hand with puncture wounds on it from Dog. I was glad my arms were underneath the sheep. He retracted the hand. ‘Name’s Lloyd.’

‘Jake.’ I nodded at him and he clapped his hands loudly, making the sheep lurch forward, then rubbed them together.

‘Where do you want me?’

The sheep foamed at the mouth.

‘You’re scaring the sheep.’

‘Right,’ he whispered.

‘If you grab her around the back end, I’ll get the front end.’

‘The back end,’ he repeated to himself. ‘Good.’

I gripped her under the armpits and felt the give while I waited for him to prepare himself at the other end. It involved a lot of stretching and huffing. He kept looking like he was going to put his arms around her and then leaning away at the last minute into a shoulder stretch. Finally, and with his head straining away from the sheep, he got hold of her.

‘You’re doing well,’ Don crowed from up the hill.

‘Right,’ Lloyd said. ‘Right.’

‘On the count of three, pull upwards, and keep hold of her.’

‘Right.’

‘One, two, three,’ and we both pulled and the ewe’s legs sucked in the mud, and she popped out like a cork. She started to kick and tried to scramble, and before I could tell him to keep hold he let out a yell and fell backwards. The ewe kicked and kicked, horrified by the noise. She bored past my grip and I fell face first into the mud. Dog ran up and down the bank barking and rearing about. The ewe took about three leaps before getting stuck again. I dragged myself up and went over to where the man sat in the mud holding his chest, white and staring.

‘What happened? Are you all right?’ I said. He looked up at me with disbelief, and I thought, Jesus, is he having a heart attack? He puffed out, long and slow, and then started to cough again.

‘I just didn’t expect it to move that much.’ His eyes were watering. ‘They’re so much bigger close up.’

Up on the hill, I could hear Don laughing. ‘You’ll need to give that another go!’ he managed to croak out.

The man looked at me from his seat in the mud. ‘I think I might be afraid of sheep,’ he said.

Otto is watching his soaps with his sun-browned and knotted hands resting snugly on top of his groin. He’s told me before that the heat those parts make is good for his arthritis. In the time I’ve been here, he’s grown so used to me that on hot days like this he doesn’t bother to put his shorts on.

I pretend to go out to the dunny, but instead, once I’ve made sure Kelly is not watching from her bed on the veranda, I nip into the tractor shed and peer into the open bonnet of Otto’s spare truck, the truck that was supposed to be mine, which I know works, because I’ve heard the engine. It’s greased all over and I have to be careful not to get any of it on me. I use a creosote-stained rag and I reach in and yank at the wires towards the back of the engine. I don’t know what I am doing, and those could just be the wires that make the windscreen wipers go, and so I also take the monkey wrench that’s resting on the edge of the bonnet and I take out three important-looking washers, cringing at every squeak they make. But I can hear the television spewing out of the house, and so really it’s just Kelly I have to worry about. I think about taking the keys out of the ignition too, but I imagine Otto passing by and seeing them gone. At least with the engine, he might not see it straight away. There is nothing I can find that is sharp enough to pierce the tyres, so I have to leave it at that. When I come out of the shed, I turn away from the house and throw the washers one by one as far as I can into the tall dry grasses of the paddock where they can sink into the rest of the rusted scythes, the broken cages and the bicycle tyres. I can smell the carcasses of the sheep we killed last week, and I keep my gaze above the line of the grass, because yesterday, I caught sight of the ewe with the black-spotted nose while Kelly was moving her body around the place, deeper and deeper into the paddock. I rub my hands in the dirt to get rid of any trace of oil and then I count my steps back to the house, and it’s my countdown, there’s nothing to be done now, my hands have made the decision for me. I’ll need to be gone by the next time Otto starts work on his truck. Please god not today.