Michelle Kretser - The Lost Dog

Tom said, ‘I’m going to go see Jack. I haven’t thanked him for everything he’s done.’

‘Cool. I’ll come with you.’ Then, in response to his silence, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What about Denise?’

‘What about her?’

As they walked down the track, Nelly was talking about the terrain around her house being unsuited to mechanised farming. ‘Cows do fine. Machines tip over. That’s what fi nished off the McDermots. Like imagine trying to get a baler around those paddocks.’

The Feeneys, farming at the bottom of the hill, had fared better. ‘Also Jack got himself a licence to dig tree ferns from the bush and sell them to nurseries. He did pretty well out of that.’

Tom asked, ‘Do you think Denise married Mick just so there’d be someone to help Jack with the farm?’

‘Sounds complicated.’ Nelly said, ‘He’s sort of sexy, Mick.’

At the sight of Tom’s face she burst out laughing.

The scrape of the gate sent invisible dogs crazy. Nelly raised her voice: ‘No hatchback, see? Tuesday evenings she’s got clinic.’

‘We’ve had no funny buggers with sheep.’ Mick Corrigan said, ‘If your dog was alive, he’d be after a feed for sure, eh? Nah, tell you what: he copped it from that wallaby.’

‘He’s a city dog. He wouldn’t make the connection between a sheep and food.’

‘Dog’s a dog, mate.’

The scent of sausages hung in the room. Nelly and Jack were by the window, which left Tom with sexy Mick. There was soundless boxing on TV; Mick’s gaze never left the screen. Now and then he tensed as if anticipating a blow.

Tom caught snatches of farm talk from Jack: ‘… fatten them up in about four months’; ‘… picking out the dry ewes.’

Mick sat with his arms crossed over his chest. ‘Best just get a new one, eh?’

But Tom had seen this: as Jack passed his son-in-law’s chair on his way across the room, he had picked up the remote and pressed the Mute button. He addressed no word to Mick, who made no protest. It was a thirty-second silent fi lm summarising what Mick Corrigan was up against.

On the porch, Jack said, ‘The bush was an open place when I was a lad. We’d go running through the trees on the way to school.’ He turned to Tom. ‘There were four farms along this road before the war. I’m the only one left now.’

The old man spoke with a survivor’s pride. But what he was remembering was the sensation of flight. He had emerged from the bush and gone racing down a hillside, unable to stop. He remembered the wind in his face, prickly grass underfoot. He shouted at cows and shocked trees. At the hurtling future.

It was always the worst hour, night coming on, and the dog missing from the circle of firelight. Nothing was said between them, but Nelly lit the lamp and placed candles about the kitchen while a lurid sunset was still smearing itself across the horizon.

With her hand on the blind, she paused.‘Cows. I always want to go over and talk to them. It’s something about their faces.’

‘You could tell them how terrific they’ll look on a plate.’

He had not yet quite forgiven Nelly her assessment of Mick Corrigan.

When they were eating, she said, ‘It used to be solid dairy country round here. Then one day Jack sold off his herd and got sheep in. He’ll tell you that all of a sudden he couldn’t bear to watch cows he’d known all their lives go off to the yards.’

She said, ‘He didn’t sell them all either. One of them, Belle, was still around when I got to know the Feeneys. She ended up with the rest under Jack’s old potato paddock.’

‘So what’s that mob doing out there?’

‘They’re Mick’s. He got them in when wool prices were down. Jack doesn’t really want anything to do with cattle, which is why they’re up here.’

‘Because sending sheep to the abattoir is a different thing altogether.’

‘Yeah, I know it doesn’t add up. And everyone pointed that out, Jack’s wife, the neighbours, everyone. He was a joke throughout the shire. Like it still comes up when people talk about him.’ Nelly said, ‘I’m sure he hated being called sentimental. And irrational. But in the end he wasn’t ashamed to be those things.’

In bed Tom lay thinking about the power of shame.

On learning that he intended to keep searching for the dog, Audrey had said, ‘There’s a limit to how much you can do.’ She was attuned to limits, especially other people’s. Patting the back of her hair, she added, ‘It’s not like losing a kiddy, is it? Count your blessings he’s only a dog.’

Love without limits was reserved for his own species. To display great affection for an animal invariably provoked censure. Tom felt ashamed to admit to it. It was judged excessive: overflowing a limit that was couched as a philosophical distinction, as the line that divided the rational, human creature from all others. Animals, deemed incapable of reason, did not deserve the same degree of love.

Now Tom wondered if the function of the scorn such love attracted was to preserve a vital source of food: because to love even one animal boundlessly might make it unthinkable to eat any. Bodies craving protein justified their desire as a matter of reason. But perhaps the limit at risk was in fact the material distinction between what was and was not considered fi t for consumption.

It was a topic that aroused unease. When eating out with friends, Tom had noticed a fashion for naming the animal that had supplied a dish. I’ll have the cow. Have you tried the minced pig? An ironic flaunting was at work: I know very well that this food on my plate was once a sentient creature, and that doesn’t bother me. Euphemisms are symptomatic of shame; to avoid them was to deny shame, deflecting it with cool.

Another familiar urban scenario: on seeing a beggar, Tom’s first impulse was to reach for money. Then he would imagine being observed in the act of placing a coin in a hand; a sentimental act, an act of feeling. The shame this occasioned was so strong that it triumphed over charity. He would walk on, ignoring the beggar.

Now he realised that what he risked in showing empathy was to appear unironic. Irony was the trope of mastery: of seeing through, of knowing better. And it was a refl ex with Tom. He had invented himself through the study of modern literature, and it had provided him with a mode; the twentieth-century mode. To be modern was to be ironic. Among the things he was ashamed of was seeming out of date.

He came awake all at once, and knew he was alone.

In the kitchen, the fi re was out. He went into the passage, where his torch showed the yard door ajar.

It was not as cold as the previous night; still, Tom was glad of his jacket. He stood by the water tank, and eventually urinated. Then he walked up the drive.

There was a sound; he realised it had been going on for a while, growing fainter all the time, the motorbike heading down into the valley. The stars glittered, fixed as a malediction. After standing at the gate for some minutes, he went back into the house.

In the kitchen, he stumbled over something propped against a chair. Nelly’s bag appeared in the wavering circle of his torch; and peering from it like temptation, one corner of a small cardboard folder.

Afterwards, Tom made himself look at the photographs again, shining his torch on each in turn. There were thirteen of them. They lay on the table like an evil tarot. Nelly’s Nasties: they were before him at last. Most of all he was aware of wanting to protect his gaze with his hand; to filter the force of what he was seeing through his fi ngers.

He resisted the instinct. But it trailed an ancient horror.

On a long-ago morning, Tom had caught sight of a paperback beside his father’s chair as he crossed the verandah on his way to school. So his first view of the book’s cover was glancing; and then, when he looked again, at once he looked away.