Minds Went Walking by Jock Serong

Author:Jock Serong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

GATHERING STORM

SOFT BITE

ALICE BISHOP

SOFT BITE

Just take care of it, okay? Minna says, the day’s eyeshadow worn off but still gathered, thick and shimmering, in the creases of her lids. The house feels smaller than usual, its mudbrick walls dusty and caramel. A yellow sponge, still soaked, sits darkened and heavy by the kitchen sink.

How? Dean asks, wide hands hanging.

For once, just work it out, Minna continues. I can’t do everything, she pauses, almost pleading, everything and also this.

Dinner would normally be on, maybe a supermarket chook with coleslaw or pasta with lemon cream. Something simple, anyway, served with two tins of beer. Yana – her nappy printed with cartoon ponies, pale hair wild – would be watching for wallabies through the back window, dusk dropping lilac across the ridge. The patient dog would normally be waiting under the kitchen table for dropped scraps.

Good boy, Dean might’ve said, slipping the heeler – his fur dappled and mangy – an edge of buttered bread.

Yana baby, Minna would usually say. Come back and eat a little bit more please.

Not now, Yana would answer, her new favourite words. A softened, recently learned, two-year-old version of no.

Yana, Minna would then say firmly. Yes, honey. Yes, a little bit.

It’s different tonight. An iceberg lettuce sweats into a bag on the bench. Yana is already somewhere between sleep and awake. Her small, medicated body slack in Minna’s arms, who’s wrapped her in the woollen blanket usually spread across the bed. The pale blue of her closed eyelids shows through. The dog, usually close, isn’t around.

Dean, Minna says, catching her husband staring at their daughter’s fresh stitches, poking up like synthetic insect legs from her cheek. He thinks of jumping jacks, ants, that rust-black rush out of freshly dug ground. The sting. Dean, Minna repeats, looking at him blankly standing there. Dean, Minna announces, louder this time.

Minna, what? Dean says, distracted and not meaning for it to come across as short as it does.

She has everything ahead of her, Minna says. And now, this …

Now what, says Dean, sounding more defensive than he intended. He catches himself then pivots – as valley men often do – quickly into defence. G’on, Minna, go ahead, make a shit situation worse.

Minna steps towards her husband, something she used to do, years ago, an instinct before after-school fights on dusty suburban ovals – Bacardi blooming through. She pulls her shoulders back to make her small body broader, Yana still drowsy in her arms. She’ll always have a reminder of our shitty parenting now … A fucking scar, Dean, across her face.

Dirt roads darken along the ridge. Currawongs settle. Minna and Dean stand apart in the crackling lounge room, thinking things they’ll never say. The last of the unculled foxes start to leave their dens for a night of searching – for forgotten chooks, sugar glider kits, shaky from first flights, and roadside rabbits, recently hit. Lonely barks, then eerie territorial screams, will later echo along the ridge.

Well, fuck, Dean says, looking down

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