The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

Author:Charlotte Wood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2015-09-15T14:00:00+00:00

LIKE FISH scales, like platypus hair, Yolanda thought, except it wasn’t river water or rain but the dew that shaped the wet fur into elegant points down the rabbit’s long back. Its legs huddled up together for comfort, coiled once the trap had snapped shut and crushed its head. Its long silky feet perfectly aligned, side by side.

Something ancient throbbed in Yolanda. She had trapped an animal, and now she would skin it, and eat it. Somehow.

The air was soft with the peepings and chimes and high whirrings of small birds, insects. Flies. She had searched and searched through the wet grass, trying to find the marker where she had left the trap. Her boots and bare legs, and the stiff bell of her tunic, were wet with the dew. The grass at her thighs rustled like trailing taffeta. A vague dread had risen in her, the cast of a grey cloud moving over her. She trod carefully: what if she couldn’t find it, or, worse, set it off herself?

Then suddenly it was there at her feet. She almost stepped on the rabbit’s small head with her crusted boot.

‘It’s all right,’ she said in fright, gruffly, aloud to no-one. But it frightened her. The rabbit looked so dead, squashed there. It was she who had killed it.

Yolanda squatted there in the grass beside the trap, watching the rabbit. It must be dead, for there was no possibility of life with the teeth of the trap clamped across its neck, so clearly broken. But she did not wish to touch it, not yet. She watched it for any movement, for its nerves to twitch. Wondering how to get it out.

She examined herself for signs of remorse: she found only some smouldering, some ember.

She put out her fingers to touch its belly. The fur was wet, the body firm; it yielded but did not spring back at her touch. She was relieved no warmth or life met her fingers. She got to work, using her fingertips and a short stubby knife she had talked Teddy into giving her to tweezer the head out from between the trap’s jaws.

They had watched her from the veranda setting off: Boncer, Teddy, Nancy. All three were afraid of her now, and hungry with it, watching her out of their hollowed eyes. Boncer kept his distance, but when he was with Teddy he would still yell out at her, call her names. She smiled and knew he was afraid when he grabbed at his thrusting crotch, yelled out needs this lot in her mouth, permanently, and stitched up as she passed him below the veranda, her leash-belt hung with traps, clanking and swinging. Swaying already with her armour, smelling of hair and blood.

Boncer whispered things into Teddy’s ear that even Teddy turned from in disgust, shaking his head while Boncer hooted. Nancy stood by cackling too loudly, hands in her pockets, all the time waiting for Boncer to glance her way. He didn’t. Nancy had taken to twirling up her manky hair in a ratty turban, copying Teddy.

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