Losing Touch

The bedroom, early morning, an unrelenting whiteness. White sheets, white curtains, white walls. Ray is awake, thinking about all this whiteness, feeling himself dissolve into it, while his wife feigns sleep beside him. The clock on her bedside table reads 6.30 a.m. Both the clock and the table are new, and both are white.

He knows she is feigning sleep because he knows the look, he’s seen it before. It is the fierceness in her brow, a fierce determination to pretend to be asleep. Childish in a way.

He reaches over and lightly touches her shoulder. She flinches as if she’s just brushed against an electric fence, and she slides to the far side of the bed, facing away, her body coiling like a snake. Yes, Ray thinks, like a snake. He pretends to yawn, exaggerating a stretch, communicating, he hopes, that touching her shoulder, intimately or otherwise, was an accident. That he had no intention of touching her. Whatsoever. God no. As fucking if.

He gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom to more suffocating whiteness and takes in the grim view of his face in the mirror. He runs his fingers through his hair—hair that was once curly and blonde, but is now just dun-coloured fluff retreating up the lines, the trenches, harrowed deep into his forehead.

He needs coffee. Coffee will turn things around. And the dog. Take the dog to The Reserve, breathe in the air, surround himself with the smell of grass and soil, with birdsong, with colour.

He goes back into the bedroom and gets dressed. Megan is sitting up now, smiling at her phone.

“Morning love,” Ray says.

Megan doesn’t respond. She types a message, her smile broadening, the rapid tapping of her thumbs emitting the pseudo-aquatic beeps that needle their way into Ray’s brain, stoking the coals of indignation, of an intractable malcontent. Ray doesn’t own a phone, doesn’t want a phone, doesn’t need one, wouldn’t use one if someone gave it to him.

“I said, good morning love.”

“Love?” Megan says, not looking up. “What is this, 1950?”

When they first met, Megan was a primary school teacher. But now that she’s become a lawyer, it’s as if some part of her brain has been hijacked. The nice part of her brain has been hijacked and threatened at gunpoint to function in ways unfamiliar to Ray.

Ray leaves the bedroom and walks down the hallway to the kitchen where he is met by a team of white Northern European appliances lined up on the marble benchtop. One of them is a coffee machine, which he refuses to use. He boils water in the jug and searches for his can of International Roast that Megan has stashed high in the pantry so that her new lawyer friends won’t think that anyone in this house actually drinks instant coffee. Megan doesn’t want her reputation tarnished.

What is her reputation? Ray has no idea.

She likes new things. That’s what she said. And since she’s conducted this status review of all pre-existing household items, Ray’s things, the few that remain, are under serious threat: his brown beanbag, his instant coffee, his Jack Kerouac books. He reflects on the things that have gone, banished by Megan after the hijacking of her brain: his Parramatta Eels mug, his Midnight Oil poster, his green corduroy trousers. Even his fingerprints on the handle of the Liebherr-Hausger fridge are erased daily by Megan with a swift vertical wipe of a wet dishcloth. It seems she wants all evidence of his touch eliminated from the house.

Ray will wait out this siege. And when the siege is over and the hijackers have been shot, Megan’s brain will return to normal. This is his hope.

Ray’s own brain seems a little puddled in dream-melt, and so he quickly drinks his instant coffee and goes outside to get the dog.

It is a bright morning, early summer. The sun is already above the tower. They head down the path between the houses and stop at the road, the dog at his side, sniffing the wind, his lithe body quivering to some hidden code carried by the cool morning air.

Megan bought the dog a year ago from a breeder in Queensland, and had it flown to Canberra via stopovers in Brisbane and Sydney, ramping up the cost to six thousand dollars. She called it Spirit, or some bullshit name like that. She was attempting to create an image of herself that would present well in a lifestyle magazine, and buying a full-blood German hunting dog was part of that project. But when the young dog chewed through the leather seat of her new Audi and destroyed the lenses of her Ray-Ban sunglasses, she kicked it with the point of her high-heeled shoe. Ray told her that she shouldn’t do that, ever. Then he said it again, more slowly, more quietly.

Ray took over full-time care of the dog and changed its name to Frank.

Ray clicks his tongue and crosses the road, Frank at heel, striding lightly on his slender legs, nose up to the wind. They take the dirt path leading up to The Reserve.

A big black 4WD is parked at the gate, partially blocking the entrance to The Reserve. The vehicle is a Ford Raptor. The name of the truck, and the size of it, turns something sour in Ray’s stomach. Jesus, who comes up with these names? Raptor, Ranger, Wrangler, Renegade. There are brash decals along the back of the truck’s cabin and along the rear fender: I SHOOT AND I VOTE. LIFE’S A BITCH, DON’T VOTE FOR ONE. Inside a metal cage bolted to the back tray is the gnawed-down leg bone of a grey kangaroo, flies swarming, the sharp stink of meat on the turn.

Ray is thinking about the owner of the Raptor, formulating an image in his mind: a fat man with cheap wrap-around sunglasses and a goatee beard. What else? A smashed nose, a short temper, a curled lip from years of torment. Bullied at school. What else? A hater, a racist, dumb, violent, dangerous.

Ray catches himself in the trance, and makes a mental note to add it to the list, the list which he began a year ago, of all the things that annoyed him. The list was a way of trying to empty his head of so many thoughts that seemed to be poisoning his brain. The list grew into a notebook, which he called “The Journal of Stuff That Shits Me Off”. He’d write entries late at night when Megan had gone to bed, and then, as demand grew, he carried the notebook and pencil with him everywhere. When the 90-page Spirex was full, he transferred the entries into a 300-page Moleskine and bought a fountain pen. Megan questioned the purchase. They were standing in the kitchen.

“If you didn’t renovate this kitchen,” Ray said, “we’d have our mortgage paid off by now. This pen is a piss in the ocean compared to the debt you put us in.”

“Mediocrity,” Megan said. “It just drips off you, doesn’t it. You wallow in a puddle of your own mediocrity.”

That conversation was transcribed into the Moleskine notebook with Ray’s new Monteverde fountain pen.

But it was the conversation that followed that Ray had kept in his mind, a conversation that didn’t belong in the journal: Megan had apologised. She rested her hand gently on his arm, actually touched his arm, touched his shoulder, and told him that she was out of line, that she hadn’t forgotten what he’d done for her in those years of uncertainty, struggling to finish her law degree.

And that was the last time she’d touched him.

Hijackers? There are no hijackers. It is a war of attrition. She is trying to force him out, to erase him. Well then, Ray will stand his ground. Trenchant. Resolute.

He unhooks the leash and lets Frank sniff along the side of the Raptor, lets him cock his leg on the Raptor’s tyre, and then they both slide through the narrow gap between the front fender and the gatepost and go into The Reserve, jogging now, Frank like an arrow beside him, their footfall quick and rhythmic on the gravel track.

A pair of rosellas burst from the wild oats flanking the track and ride the air ahead of them, lifting and dipping, playful in a way, and then float upward with a current, arching towards the big dead box gum where they swiftly settle wing-to-wing on a branch and trill some love song. There are a million bugs drifting in the light rays of the summer sun, and the air is laced fresh with overnight rain. Ray, sensing all this, recognising it, thinking this is it, this is something I have. He looks down at Frank trotting beside him, moving with purpose. The dog looks back at him, yellow eyes full of delight.

Ray then catches a glimpse, down below on Springvale Drive, of the strangest thing. There is a man alone riding a tandem bike. He is labouring up the slope, head down, the bike swaying side-to-side in the cycle lane. Ray stops and watches him slowly pass by. The empty rear seat, the pedals turning stupidly below it. And he feels some kind of sting, like a needle going in, and he knows where his mind will take him if he lets it, which is to feel the man’s loneliness, his grief, his loss, or maybe his wife just didn’t want to come on an early morning ride, but why ride alone on a bike made for two, isn’t that just a bit ridiculous? And he knows he has to look away, as in right now.

He is trying to shut down the lingering image of the lone rider when he sees that Frank has stopped up ahead on the gravel track. His front paw is raised and bent, his tail stiff. There is a ridgeline of raised fur along his spine. Tension ripples through his body. The road drops away, disappearing to the right. Wild oats and rapeseed along the swale drain. Ray scans the grassland and the wooded slope for something that might have caught the dog’s attention. A kangaroo? A rabbit? Nothing. An odd silence. No wind. Ray walks towards his dog, uncoiling the leash, getting it ready, his thumb on the clip, because Frank is really shaking now and he is making this odd sound, not a growl and not a whine, but a low murmur, and Ray feels uneasy about this sound, this odd low sound from way back in his throat, and he feels uneasy about the shaking and the ridge of raised fur along the dog’s spine.

And then they come around the bend, fifty yards ahead, two dogs moving fast. Brindle-coloured. Stocky. Muscle in the chest. Muscle pulsing in the shoulder. An urgency, a savagery, in their stride. They are American pit bulls, Ray knows it. He’s seen this kind before, out west, years ago. He’s seen the power and the carnage. They are dogs bred to bring down a wild pig. And now he can see their savage black eyes. Eyes spread wide in the skull. Docked ears. Nuggety and ugly. It all happens fast. The road is quiet and empty, and then from nothing these dogs are coming at them, running hard from around the bend. And now Frank is on the dirt and one of the pit bulls has him by the throat and the other by the hind leg and the sound of it is awful.

There is a rush in Ray’s head, a cold expulsion of everything that isn’t required to save his dog. No forethought, no reasoning, no hesitation. A reptilian brain, flooding now with nothing but intent. He launches into the violent scrum. Punching. Screaming.

He doesn’t know how long the attack lasts. Time has drained away. He is aware only of the animal power of the attack dogs. The tremendous force of the jaws. The heat and froth and blood-stained teeth. The ugly gums. His knuckles jarring on the hard muscle. And the eyes. The god-awful eyes on these dogs. Just sinister black pits tunnelling down to a merciless brain.

Somewhere among all this he sees a man on the road, black jeans, black beard, thirty yards away standing at the bend, the fingers of one hand up in his mouth, whistling. Shouting and whistling. A thick link-chain dangling from the other hand.

The man has called off the attack and the pit bulls trot back towards him, tongues out, panting, and the man turns quickly and disappears around the bend, the chain dragging on the ground, the dogs following.

Frank is on the dirt. He is alive, but the pit bulls have torn him up. He is bleeding from the neck and the mouth, and a darker blood drains out of the puncture marks below his ribs. A flap of torn hide hangs from his hind leg and Ray can see muscle and tendon there. Exposed bone. Frank wants to attend to that wound and he lifts and twists his head towards it, but he gives up and lays his head back down on the road.

Ray is standing above his wounded dog. He feels weak, confused. There is a high-pitched sound pulsing in his ears. Frank’s eyes roll up towards him. Ray kneels down and takes him up in his arms and sets off back along the road at a dead run.

The Raptor is still parked at the gate. Ray goes through the narrow gap and heads down the slope towards Springvale Drive. His arms and legs are aching under Frank’s weight. He stops at the edge of the road and goes down on his knees, his arms still wrapped tightly around Frank. A ute drives by with a tradesman in high-viz at the wheel, his eyes downcast to the small glow of a mobile phone. Another car passes and momentarily slows, a young woman in dark glasses hanging a look, before speeding off towards the city. And then the road is quiet.

Ray hears a voice. Gruff. Some blunt command. He turns around and looks back up the slope. The man in black jeans is at the gate with the two pit bulls. He is shouting at the dogs to get up into the cage. The dogs jump up and the man slams the cage door and bolts it and then walks quickly, urgently, around to the Raptor’s driver-side door and gets in and starts the engine. There is grinding racket from the gearbox and the big tyres spin backwards, spraying dust and stones, and the black truck comes barrelling down the slope, over the embankment and heavily onto the bitumen, just metres from Frank and Ray, and turns sharply towards the city with the back-end chassis shifting sideways and thick black smoke pumping from the exhaust pipe. And Ray is screaming. He is screaming at the man. But his voice is lost in the Raptor’s growling engine and the American pit bulls barking madly in the back.

Ray crosses the road. Again, he has to kneel on the path. He feels very weak. He is still holding Frank. Frank’s breathing is rapid now, irregular, and he is bleeding onto the concrete path. The path between the backs of the houses is empty. The sky is blue and the air is cool and everything is quiet, an odd quietness, as if the black Raptor and the barking dogs have pulled all the sound away. There is nobody around. There is nobody to tell him what to do.

Get Frank home, he thinks to himself. Do that now. Get on your feet now and get him home.

When he gets home he discovers the car is gone and the house is locked. Ray has no key, didn’t bring one. Megan has engaged the burglar alarm, and of course she confiscated—yes, confiscated—the key that Ray once hid above the door. He runs his hand along the door frame anyway to see if it’s there and of course it isn’t. He looks at the metal bars on the street-side windows, the double-glazed glass you couldn’t crack with a brick. This fucking fortress. Why? What is so valuable? There is nothing in the house that is valuable. Nothing.

Frank. Frank is the only thing that is valuable.

There is a blue plastic tub full of shoes on the front deck and Ray kicks it over and empties it out and puts Frank in the tub. The dog looks up at him through glassy eyes. He has stopped panting now, and lays his head heavily on the rim of the tub, a soft brown ear flopping over the edge. Ray is thinking. It’s a three-kilometre walk to the vet surgery on the corner of Belconnen Way. He grabs the handles of the tub and carries Frank back up the driveway and onto the footpath.

A blanket of silence comes over the waiting room when Ray carries Frank through the sliding glass doors and walks up to the reception desk. There is a mirror on the wall behind the counter and Ray realises that it’s not his wounded dog that has silenced the room. Ray’s shirt is torn and covered with dust and blood, and there is a long gash down his cheek and another on his neck made by a pit bull’s claw. And when he puts the blue tub on the floor he notices that he is missing a shoe.

He can barely speak above a whisper. The receptionist is a young woman wearing a pale blue nurse’s tunic, and as Ray gives her the details of his situation, he sees the colour draining from her face. She gets up and goes through one of the consulting room doors. When she comes back she says that the vet will see him soon. Ray asks if he can use the phone. She nods and quickly gives him the handpiece. He dials Megan’s mobile phone number, but the call goes to her voice message. He hangs up and tries again. Again, the same recorded voice. The arrogant statement of who she is and who she works for. Strangely, Ray thinks about the joke: How do you know if someone is a lawyer? Give them five seconds and they’ll tell you. He shakes his head, as if to shake the joke away. Jesus Christ, it’s not the time for jokes. He dials again. She is busy, her voice says. She will endeavour—endeavour?—to return the call. Who the fuck uses the word endeavour in a voice message?

The vet ushers him in. Ray has met him before, but the vet gives no indication of this. He is a man in his forties, lean and serious, with black hair and black-rimmed glasses. There is a pen-torch in the pocket of his white tunic and a stethoscope slung around his neck. He lifts Frank from the tub and lays him on a stainless-steel bench in the centre of the room. Frank doesn’t resist, doesn’t struggle. He rolls his eyes towards Ray, who is standing on the other side of the bench, and Ray puts his hand on the dog’s head and tells him that it is okay.

The vet examines the neck wound and the puncture holes below the ribcage. He moves along the bench and looks carefully at the damage done to the hind leg.

“Pit bull?” the vet says.

“Two of them,” Ray says.

The vet nods and says nothing more about it. He places the end of the stethoscope on an area of untorn skin just below Frank’s foreleg and listens carefully; his eyes are closed. He listens for a long time. It is so quiet in the room. He removes the stethoscope and then shines the pen-torch in Frank’s eyes, one then the other, and the dog raises his head for a brief moment and then lays it back down on the steel benchtop.

The vet goes to the sink in the corner of the clinic and washes his hands thoroughly and dries them with paper towel, and when he is finished he comes back and stands in front of Ray and looks at him directly.

Ray knows what the vet is about to tell him. He trusts the vet. And he trusts that he won’t use some kind of euphemism; and the vet does not. The vet speaks in blunt medical terms about blood loss, organ damage and shock. They both stand there. Frank is on the table, not moving. There is blood on the steel bench, blood in the plastic tub.

“With your consent,” the vet says, “I will euthanise your dog with an injection of pentobarbital sodium.”

Ray nods. He gives the vet his consent.

He watches the vet prepare the injection, watches him draw fluid from a glass vial into a long syringe, watches him hold it up to the light coming in from the small high window on the far wall. Ray’s senses come alive to everything. Suddenly, he can hear traffic on the road and a dog barking in the waiting area and the phone ringing at the reception desk, and he can smell the antiseptic in the room. He runs his hands over Frank’s ears and feels the soft loose skin at the back of his neck. He bends forward and gently presses his cheek to Frank’s head. He can feel Frank’s eyes twitch and he can hear his unsteady breath. He takes in the familiar and beautiful smell of Frank’s fur.

The vet is standing next to him now, the loaded syringe in his hand. Ray straightens.

“Can I give him the injection?” Ray says.

The vet looks at him. “No, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

They both stand there. Their shoulders are touching. The vet seems to be thinking. He runs his fingers along a vein in Frank’s leg. He is ready to insert the needle, but then he stops.

“If you would like, you can put your hands on mine,” the vet says.

Ray doesn’t hesitate; he puts his hands on the vet’s hands. The vet’s hands are soft and warm. They are delicate hands. Small. Ray is able to wrap his hands over them. The needle goes gently into the vein. Ray puts his thumb on the vet’s thumb and together they push the plunger through the barrel of the syringe and watch the clear liquid disappear into Frank’s body. Ray looks at Frank’s eyes.

The vet removes the needle and places it on the bench next to Frank’s body. Ray, his eyes on Frank, still holds the vet’s other hand. The vet doesn’t take this hand away; he lets Ray hold it. Ray looks at the vet and pulls him gently into his arms.

Wayne Strudwick has won the Voiceless Writing Prize and the Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Fiction. His novella The Dark Days of Matty Lang is published by Finlay Lloyd.