Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,51
him when he opened the door. In truth they both stood for several seconds adjusting to the dim light inside the shed. They saw the sheep lying on its side in the straw, its legs hobbled with a pair of reins and Mues behind it on his knees with his overalls down, the shoulder straps splayed out behind him like his own set of ties he had broken free of. They both saw the blue nightie lying in the straw next to the sheep. The sheep lifted its head slightly in the direction of the sound they had made with the door. Mues didn’t stop, he didn’t look up. He said, ‘Shut the door.’ And they did.
Mervyn walked Leslie back to the truck in front of him with a handful of his shirt collar gripped in his fist so Leslie thought he was in trouble and in some way responsible for what he had seen. His father told him to stay put in the cab of the truck. Leslie was too frightened to ask where he was going, or even turn around, but he watched his father in the rear-vision mirror as he ran back down the road and turned into the driveway of the dairy farm they had just collected from. Some time later he heard a motorcycle and saw his father riding behind the farmer who was also balancing a bucket on the handlebars. Rain was falling heavily now, but the two men stood behind the truck talking and made no attempt to stop themselves getting wet. A police car arrived. The policeman got out and talked to Leslie’s father and the farmer then he put his hat on and walked towards the house. The farmer filled up the radiator of the truck from the bucket, got back on his motorcycle and rode away. Then his father climbed into the cab and started the ignition. Leslie didn’t look at his father as they sat listening for the motor to catch; they both looked at the rain on the window in front of them. Then they drove away.
By the time the constable arrived at the house Mues had washed and dressed and was sitting at his kitchen table with a bottle of beer. The constable searched the outhouses and found an elderly sheep in the hayshed. A blue ladies’ nightie was hanging from a nail on the shed wall. A drenching tube and a half empty bottle of Chinese brandy were found nearby.
Mues was charged with administering a stupefying drug with attempt to ravish, and committing an unnatural offence. The first charge was dropped before the hearing on the basis it was unlikely to succeed. It was considered unlikely a sheep could be further stupefied from its natural state, and the bottle of Chinese brandy was unavailable for chemical testing as it had disappeared from the police evidence cupboard. It was noted in court that Mues had kept the sheep for over ten years and it had been a full six-toother before relations commenced. Mues claimed he had not engaged in the act with any other of his sheep and he had no history of acting suspiciously with other animals in the vicinity. It was noted that he had never married or established a proper relationship with a woman and it was considered unlikely that any local woman would have him. In his defence Mues said, ‘It was a ewe. It’s not as if I’m a fucking homo.’ He was ordered to pay twelve pounds into the court poor box. A destruction order was raised for the sheep.
Sunday evening. It’s cold. Betty picks her way down the path to the outhouse. She can smell Louie’s urine on the base of the lemon tree – ammonia and citrus. A few steps’ detour to the chopping block and balanced there she can see across the paddocks to the outline of Harry’s house. His curtains are open. The front window is a white rectangle – an ice cube of light. He’s reading, probably, or writing, or listening to the wireless. There’s nothing much to see. She gets down and continues up the path to the outhouse, leaving the door open to the darkness as she pisses. Her legs are bare under the hitched-up skirt and she looks down at her thighs, appraising them; considering their effect on another. An envelope wedged between the weatherboards catches her eye. She tilts it from side to side to read the front. It’s addressed to Michael.