—
Outside, in the long dry yard, I walked left, toward the clothesline, and a weathered, dying banksia. I looked back for a moment behind me: the small house, the tin roof. The sun was still all over it, but reclining, leaning west. I dug with shovel and hands, and there it was.
“Goddamn!”
The dog.
Again.
“Goddamn!”
The snake.
Both of them nothing but bones.
We combed them close and careful.
We placed them on the lawn.
“Well, I’ll be!”
The man said it three times, but loudest of all when at last I’d found the old Remington, bullet-grey. A weapon in the ground, it was wrapped in three rounds of tough plastic, so clear I could see the keys: first the Q and the W, then the midsection of F and G, H and J.
For a while I looked at it; I just looked:
Those black keys, like monsters’ teeth, but friendly.
Finally, I reached in and hauled it out, with careful, dirty hands; I filled in all three holes. We took it out of the packaging, and watched and crouched, to examine it.
“A hell of a thing,” said Mr. Merchison. The
fur coat cleavers were twitching.
“It is,” I agreed, it was glorious.
“I didn’t think this was going to happen when I woke up this morning.” He picked it up, and handed it across.
“You want to stay for dinner, Matthew?”
That was the old lady, still half astonished. Astonishment didn’t trump dinner.
I looked up from my crouching stance. “Thanks, Mrs. Merchison, but I’m hurting from all those biscuits.” Again, I eyed the house. It was parceled up now, in shade. “I should actually get going.” I shook the hand of each of them. “I can’t thank you enough.” I began to walk on, the typewriter safe in my arms.
Mr. Merchison was having none of it.
He called out a forthright “Oi!”
And what else could I do?
There must have been good reason for unearthing the two animals, and I turned from under the clothesline—the tired old Hills Hoist, just like ours—and waited for what he would say; and he said it.
“Aren’t you forgetting something there, mate?”
He nodded to the dog bones and the snake.
* * *
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