Hank’s my dog; I chose him, named him, raised him. Bill’s working fly-in-fly-out when I pack a box of records, then scoop up jeans, a jacket, bathers, goggles, my red dress – the one he loathes – books – mainly poetry – laptop, sewing kit from mum, cigarette lighter, rolling tobacco, and I stuff them in a backpack, spit in his coffee mug – the one with the photo of his three palm trees – then whistle for Hank to jump up into the cab of the Ute.
We park at the lighthouse – my thinking place – watch the rules of summer shift as the storm tracks south shredding the ocean to stiff peaks. I scratch between Hank’s pricked ears, caress his muzzle, his soft cheeks. We watch her bearing down on us, weather-watchers, planners, caught in her whoosh dark roar. Soak it up, Hank boy. Thunder cracks, Hank whimpers. In my dreaming mind, I’m tethered to a spacecraft by lisle thread, floating out in the Andromeda Galaxy, weaving amongst a trillion stars. When my breath slips smooth, I snip the thread with a small pair of gold embroidery scissors that mum tucked in my spacesuit pocket before hugging me.
Hank tugs me back to earth snuffling for treats in my shoulder bag.
The spiral-bound notebook’s in the Ute’s centre console, I scratch a line on a blank page, turn to the back page, stare at the word: WEAK. I wrote WEAK after the night it all turned red, after I spoke to mum on the phone, and she asked me if I needed help. I said, It’s all under control. I wrote WEAK before I told him. Before he snarled, I’ll fucking kill you if you take Hank. Before I visited mum and applied pink and peach and orange colour correctors to cover them and she turned her back to me, wiping a spot on the kitchen bench, over and over, and I tried to soothe her with words like: ‘plan’, ‘next week’, ‘certain’, ‘fresh’.
I put the notebook back, open the Ute door to hurl an apple core, Hank leaps across me into the flailing wind. He’s bounding, tail soaring, I call Haaank but he’s galloping like a wild brumby and the windscreen wipers swoosh and it’s dark as all hell and he’s in the distance bounding and barking, then lightning sheets and there he is all brilliance, looking back, head cocked. I whisper I’m coming Hank, but he takes off, a tail in the distance. I know where he’s going — a dog needs its den in a storm.
I drive back to Bill’s, cut the engine, sit and wait, sky full of throttle. Sitting and waiting in the strobing cab, flick-flicking the lighter until there only sparks. Bill’s palm trees thresh in the gale, extraterrestrial supplicants. The selling point when buying, he’d said, thirty metres tall. Guards he reckoned. I could do with a drink, the habit that tied us. In my head I see him, hear him yelling this and that, boorish, green-eyed, hot-rancid. Too — do as I fuckin’ say. Hands around my —
Think you know it all, don’t ya. Think you’re better than everyone else, now you’re at un-i-ver-si-ty, eyes axing my chest. Refuse to look away. Refuse to wipe the spit from my cheek. All that feminist bullshit.
Then he kicks Hank.
Hank appears in the rear vision mirror, a lolloping wolf under streetlights. Wind and rain staunch the clamour coming from my throat. I’m holding the door open, holding my breath. He leaps onto the seat beside me, licking me and licking me, my wet dog, Hank.
The key in the ignition’s cold. Solid. Steel’s a thousand times stronger than iron. Last look at the house. Last look at Bill’s palm trees, mulched and watered through searing summers, tended to — loved like family. Split-second. Take the notebook from the centre console, rip out the last page. Jerrycan’s in the back, pour a torrent around the bases. A few sparks until they catch, even in a storm.
From the cab of the Ute, we watch the blue-green flames shimmying up the trunks like cartloads of monkeys — billowing crowns crackling, carnivalesque — a blazon of red-orange brilliance exploding the night. We head south through jarrah and banksia woodland the storm behind us, the eyes of rock wallabies and possums glint in the darkness — the V8 engine rumbles and the sky’s awash with a trillion stars.
