Catherine Jinks TheRoad Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘A dyin breed,’ she would say.
    He was a lovely man, really, and Grace loved him. He had come to her aid like a knight in shining armour.
    ‘I’m finished, Mum,’ said Nathan.
    ‘All right.’
    Nathan’s chair scraped against the linoleum. He headed for the back door.
    ‘Where dja think you’re goin?’ Grace demanded.
    ‘Outside.’
    ‘Nathan, let poor Cyrene smoke his ciggie in peace.’
    ‘But I wanna see Harry.’
    ‘Oh, don’t do that.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘He’s dead, Nathan, there’s nothin ta see . . .’
    But the screen door had already slammed. Grace sighed. She didn’t have the energy to go after him. Standing beside the sizzling frying pan, a spatula dangling from her fingers, she gazed out the fly-specked window at Cyrene’s ute (which was caked with red dust), the peppercorn tree, the remains of an old bedstead, the haphazard piles of twisted iron and flattened tin and Colourbond offcuts. Beyond these lay outcrops of unidentifiable machine parts, and beyond them lay the fence, the gate, the winding dirt road, the endless monotony of the saltbush downs, relieved here and there by a cluster of short, sun-whipped trees.
    Suddenly Cyrene crossed her line of vision. He went to his ute and dragged a shovel off the back of it. Then Nathan began to shriek, his voice high and excited.
    ‘ Mum! Mum! ’ he cried. ‘ Come and look, quick! Quick, Mum! ’
    Bloody hell, thought Grace. What is it this time? Maggots, probably.
    ‘Mum, look!’
    ‘Don’t touch that, Nathan.’ Cyrene didn’t yell, but there was an urgency in his tone that made Grace lean forward to peer at him. Carrying the heavy shovel with two hands, he was moving away from the window. Grace craned her neck to watch him until he was out of sight. She couldn’t see his face, because his hat was pulled down low, but she thought that his pace was a little brisker than usual.
    So she wiped her hands on a dirty old tea-towel and went to see what was going on.
    Once outside, she smelled it immediately – a faint whiff of corruption. Dead dog, perhaps? The night hadn’t been particularly warm, but a lot could happen to a carcass in eight hours. Grace followed the sound of Nathan’s breathless squeaking, past the caravan, towards the garage. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of dead animal grew stronger. There was no wind. The air was heating up.
    She could hear flies buzzing in unison, and saw why when she rounded a corner of the garage. Lying near the dog’s shed, under a humming cloud of insects, was Bit’s bloody corpse. Its head and belly were coated with a mass of ants and gleaming flies. Its legs were splayed stiffly, dry and brittle like sticks. Its grey-blue coat was dusty and matted.
    The smell of it was like a punch.
    ‘Oh!’ said Grace, turning away instinctively. ‘Oh my God.’
    ‘It’s Bit, Mum!’
    ‘Go inside, Nathan.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Go inside! N ow! ’
    ‘Do as your mother says,’ Cyrene barked, and Nathan’s face fell. He began to back away slowly, scuffing up dust with his shoes. At the garage he hesitated.
    ‘Gorn,’ Cyrene rumbled. Whereupon Nathan turned and vanished.
    Grace put a hand over her nose, and tried to breathe through her mouth. She saw Cyrene approach the carcass. She saw him squat down beside it. She said, ‘What happened? Did he crawl back here ta die?’
    Cyrene shook his head. ‘Dun look like it.’
    ‘Why not?’
    Cyrene rose, using the upright shovel in his hand for leverage. He prodded the corpse with the shovel, dislodging a swarm of flies. ‘This one didn’t get here under ’is own steam,’ he said. ‘Not with ’is guts hangin out.’
    All at once Grace realised what she was looking at: blackened organs coated with dark blood and red dirt. The blood wasn’t fresh; it looked sticky. Tacky. Very little of it had soaked into the earth beneath the corpse. And the head ...something had happened to the head as well. There was more dark blood, as thick as tar.
    ‘What –