The Seventh Day by Joy Dettman Read Free Book Online Page B

the city and . . . and . . . and I think I do not much like that thought of their coming, for they will know that my foetus is not of their Implanting.
    Perhaps I will go to the hills and find a rabbit and follow him into his hole, and it will be as the book of Alice, and its hole shall lead me to Wonderland and Lenny will not find me. Or his dogs. When I have escaped before it is always the dogs who find me.
    Lenny fears those grey men; Pa fears only the male who carries the light gun. Yet, collectively, they are smaller than we three – and our dogs, so why, collectively, do we fear their small collective power?
    Since childhood I have been afraid of many things, of ghosts and Granny and of the men’s great dogs – or their fine tracking sense. Until I discovered the water tank, the dogs always found me. It is a good place to hide, though I can not remain in there long, so it is not such a good place to hide.
    I must run further. And the dogs must not pursue me. I will make a plan, and make the dogs a part of my plan. That is, as Granny might have said, logical. Often, she would scream at me when I could not decipher her riddle. ‘Bring logic to it, girl.’ Perhaps it is not too late to begin.
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    Each day now I steal one item from the house and run with it to the loft where I have hidden the harmless stranger’s trading basket beneath a pile of hides. I place cans of food there, and a blanket. I place Lenny’s sharp knife there, which today he searches for. I hide a bottle of cordial, still wrapped well in newsprint and protected with a strong plasti-wrap.
    The dogs, ever tied on short leads in the doorway, have seen me come and go with my additions. Now they watch for me, they snuffle and whine and thump thin snake-tails in the dust, for each night too I feed them. Half-starved brutes, their bones try to leap from their hides; I think if a sowman should feed them a scrap they would lick its hand.
    â€˜Good dog,’ I say, offering food saved from the table and red meat stolen from Lenny’s large freezer. ‘Good dog,’ I lie to the mastiffs, which stand almost as tall as I at full stretch. How I lie to them, for I do not consider them good at all, but ugly, cruel things. Still, they do not care that I lie; the meat I bring to them speaks the truth. It promises full bellies.
    They stare at me, red eyes squinting, blinking as I hand-feed them; and they eat from my hand, dainty as fine ladies at the old England Queen’s party. They lick the last flavours from my fingers then lay their heavy heads on my lap while I smooth the hard wire of their coats.
    I believe it is near time for the grey men’s return; only one blue pill remains in the container. I pour it into my hand then plant the seed-like thing where the rest have been planted – not in my belly, but in the earth. I have found this pleases Lenny and also prevents his following of me with pill and water. I do not think the blue pills will grow, for though I cover them well, as Pa covers his pumpkin seeds, I do not waste water on them.
    This is the season of too much heat. We perspire and use the chem-tub too much, and we use too much of the powder that cleanses us and our overalls and bedding. When Granny lived we washed, or did not wash, in water. Now we have water, run by plasti-pipe from the tank to the kitchen tap, with a plasti-bucket beneath it to catch the drips, but we do not wash in it. We drink too much of it, and the dogs and the cows and the pigs, and even the hens drink too much, and Lenny curses too much and spends too much time with his barrel, walking up and down the hill to the spring and back.
    It is hard labour, the water-carrying; the hill is steep and each bucket must be dipped from the pool and carried down to where the bullock and barrel wait. Three times Lenny walks to the hill today. The third time I think to follow him, for the spring cave is well beyond the singing fence,