Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

He laughs and his stomach shakes. I smile at him, hoping it’s a joke, and slide under the sheets, which are crinkly and new. Otto stalls in his chat and looks at me. He sighs and wipes his large old hand over my cheek. ‘Jeeze,’ he says, ‘I always wanted a daughter.’ He smiles and his eyes are filling, and he raises a finger to his eyelashes before pulling himself together. ‘Wait there a second,’ he says, and disappears out of the room. When he comes back he is carrying a plush brown bear holding a velvet heart, and a disposable camera. ‘For you,’ he says, with that same soppy look about him. I take the bear and I smile.

‘Thanks, he’s really nice.’ I say and sit the bear on my lap. Otto walks back a few feet and aims the camera at me. I smile, hug the bear. He uses up all the film in his camera just on me and that bear.

‘Sweet dreams then, pet,’ he says and I get a kiss on the forehead. I smile back at him and he sighs again from the doorway, looking back at me with those wet eyes before he turns out the light and closes the door. The window throws a chequered light on the Winnie the Pooh poster.

In the morning, because the land is so flat, I can see that the sheep, far off in the distance, are penned.

‘You can have the use of the push-bike till you learn to drive — there’s a spare truck in the shed I’ve been fixing up and that’ll be yours once you know how.’ Otto pinches my arm like he’s a fun uncle. I smile at the idea of it — owning a truck. I could pick Karen up and bring her for a visit, once the waterhole fills again.

We drive off to meet the sheep. As we get closer I can see how ill they look — patches of wool missing, ribs poking out. There’s a smell of shit and you can see the maggots eating their hindquarters. Man up, I tell myself, he’s an old bloke, he’s doing the best he can.

The flies are fierce, they try and get at the wet in our eyes, and I breathe through my teeth in case I suck one in.

Otto shows me out in the pen how to catch one and keep her down, and I can see he’s pleased when I manage to grab hold of one and flip her onto her back without too much of a problem. I can feel her heartbeat through me, and she smells bad. Otto stands with his hands on his hips.

‘Knew I’d chosen a goodun, by the size of you,’ he says and slaps me on the thigh.

Otto keeps the sheep penned next to the woolshed which, he shows me, is also at times a slaughterhouse. ‘Can’t let them just roam off when it’s me on my own out here,’ he says. ‘Don’t like to get strangers in here to shear — that’s when things started to go bad with Carole.’ There’s an uncomfortable pause, and I look at the old blood that has turned dry and black on the floor under the meat hook. The place smells of stale vomit and bleach. ‘An’ this way they don’t know if they’re getting a hair cut or if they’re getting their throats cut, so really it’s calming?’ I try to look like I agree with him.

In the kitchen I make a pretty terrible mess, the air thick with smoke from the fat off the chops. Once it’s done, Otto shovels in what I’ve made him, says he loves it, even though I could only work out how to scramble the eggs, and they are crumbly and the pot I cook them in needs to soak for three days before the burn comes off it. The sausages are pink in the middle, and the chops are fatty, surprising when you look at the type of sheep they came from. I pick at my food but Otto eats all of his.

That night, he comes for me while I’m in the shower, and I panic. I always managed to keep on my T-shirt before. He gets in with me, his hairless belly grazing me and his cock hangs in that in-between state like the end of it is attached to a thread. I try and keep him occupied with my boobs; I wiggle them about, but he’s less interested than I’d have hoped — I have never been the kind of girl who is about the boobs. He wants to scrub my back, and do all the kind of things I suppose you’d want to do in the event of caring about someone. I think I would rather a sharp jab in the back of the throat, because as he puts his arms around me and slides his hands over my ribs and along my spine, his breath catches and his fingers stop on the ridges on my back. He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t stop him as he turns me around to look. He traces the scars with his fingertips, and he says, ‘My god, my god,’ as he does it. ‘Why didn’t I know about this?’ And I wonder if he’ll dump me back in Port Hedland and find another less ruined girl to cook his chops and share his showers.

‘Was it a customer?’ he asks and I nod, letting the lie set immediately. I make it the man with the bleach-blond hair and shaved balls who wanted to put his dirty socks in my mouth. He came in my face and on his socks. Then he took the socks out of my mouth and he put them on his feet and put his feet in his sandals and trotted off home. I made it him, but instead of socks he’d undone his buckled belt — in reality he was the sort that didn’t wear a belt and preferred everyone to be able to see the top bristles of his shaved bits. I tell this story to Otto as he sits on the toilet seat with a yellow towel wrapped around him and I lean against the sink, feeling how loose it is from the wall.

Otto wipes tears from his eyes. ‘You girls,’ he says, ‘what a time of it you have.’ And he gestures that I should come and lay my head in his lap, kneel on the toilet mat, and he sobs over me as I race through the details of my lie in my head, file it away in my memory and close the door on it. Slowly Otto moves aside his yellow towel and that’s how I end up giving him head while he’s sat on the toilet.

Around the house is a paddock of tall strange grasses. They are strange because of the things hidden in them that poke out into the air — push-bikes without wheels, farm tools that are the colour of earth from rust. Every now and then if you pass the paddock on your way to the dunny, you spy a sheep’s skull among the tin cans and broken chainsaws. Sometimes it’s like there’s a tiger out there, like it can see me but I can’t see it. If I stand looking for too long, Kelly is liable to stand up and ask, What are you loitering for, and don’t test me to see if I’ll bark .

Kelly doesn’t like me. She’s not like a dog really; she’s more disapproving than a dog. She sees things differently to the way most dogs do — she’s not into pats on the head, she won’t take food from my hand. I offer her the meat from my sandwich one time and she stands, looking through me until I feel embarrassed and put it back in the bread. Another time I absent-mindedly bend down to scratch behind her ear while Otto is telling me how he likes his home kept, and she snaps at my hand, breaks the skin on my little finger. Otto frowns. ‘She doesn’t like that,’ he says. She watches me in a way I recognise, but not from a dog.

I have not seen a phone in the house, and I ask Otto about it.

‘Phone?’ he says. ‘Who would we call? The Ghostbusters?’ He laughs. This is a thing I’m learning about him — he likes to laugh at his jokes.

Somewhere into the fifth week, Otto has only called for sex a dozen or so times. He’s just a kind, lonely old man. He only ever wants it in a normal way. He drives us into town to get supplies, to the store which has everything — food and hardware and furniture and animal feed and rat poison and grog. My palms sweat. Otto has given me $100 for groceries, which is more than I know what to do with. I pick up a can of cream, the same kind that Mum used to squirt onto her daiquiris. She called it a grog float. I put the can down carefully and turn away from it. I remember what Otto said about Carole’s cooking, and I find eggs and bread, some cheese. Otto does not have a deep-fat fryer, so I do not put the great sacks of frozen chips or, though I eye them, the ready-dipped calamari rings in the trolley. As a gift, he buys me a pink shampoo with a picture of a horse on it. At the checkout, I go to give him a peck on the cheek, and he stiffens. ‘You’re my niece,’ he says, ‘remember that.’ And I glance over at the checkout lady who looks quickly down at her till.