Old Saltie Read online

  Suddenly I know what I want. I leave my family’s bundles on the ground; straighten my aching body and turn, smiling, to greet the light with an upraised arm, and go to join my laughing friends.

  The Call of the Wild

  I look around the room, crammed to overflowing with our laughing, drinking, and merrily eating friends and family. It is comfortably warm from the central heating, so the blazing log fire is superfluous except as a crowd pleaser, as ubiquitously pleasing as the Strauss waltz currently providing a background to the happy chatter.

  My husband looks out the wall of glass possessively, as though he is knows intimately every pebble forming each mountain in the range and every leaf on every tree in the forest, as he answers a cousin’s query “Yes, we always try to come here at least every couple of months, to enjoy the country life.”

  “Eat your heart out, Jack London,” I think, as I replenish glasses with champagne.

  Hindsight is always 20/20

  We were running very, very late, that awful day. Both of us had been held up at work, we made a quick stop at the supermarket to pick up last-minute drinks and nibbles, with my husband running to the bottle shop as I raided the supermarket. He was faster than me, arriving was back at the car first, to see the keys to his brand new, super deluxe monster, still dangling in the ignition.

  When I arrive back I find my good-looking husband surrounded by helpful fellow-shoppers; one telling a long story about how exactly the same thing had happened to him only worse, another offering a mobile phone to call the RACQ, a third armed with a coat hanger and a grim determination to release the driver’s door lock, no matter how much damage it causes.

  I notice that the passenger door button is up, meaning that I have left the door to my husband’s prized new toy open to every passing car thief in a busy supermarket car park, but I remain silent as the real-life street theatre unfolding on front of me is just too good to miss.

  As my husband wrestles the coat hanger away from his equally-determined self-appointed saviour, I meld to become one with the crowd enjoying the show. This is much more fun than rushing to attend another work party.

  Bella

  Our beautiful bright eyed girl is dead.

  We bought her from a Townsville breeder in 1996, for Roy’s birthday. Roy was so excited and took ages to choose Bella from the litter, but he kept going back to the bright eyed girl with the black face and the tan dot on her forehead right where Gaia would have left her fingerprint to bless her. She was so tiny I could hold her in one hand. She overlapped a bit, but only a bit.

  Bella was to be an outside dog right from the beginning. We agreed that dogs are better living outside and not in the house. That lasted two days. But she wasn’t to sleep in the bedroom. That lasted two hours. And she wasn’t to be hand fed treats whenever she asked. That lasted two minutes. Bella showed us how to love her, because she loved us so much. We were her humans. Even at the end, at her sickest and tiredest, she would pull herself up to follow us from room to room, so she could watch over us.

  I miss you Bella. Beautiful girl. Beautiful dog. I hope you are in summercountry, young again, running free and jumping high again, finding new friends.

  I hope summercountry has oceans for you to poop in because right from when you were a puppy enjoying the beach for the first time, the ocean to you was just one huge flush toilet for you to back into, relieve yourself, and run back out before the next wave. We could never convince you differently, no matter how much we tried. But you loved the beach. As well as beaches, I hope there are snuggly crocheted rugs, and brightly coloured squeaky toys in summercountry. We buried you wrapped in one of my crocheted rugs because you always snuggled into them whenever you could, with your favourite squeaky toy.

  But most of all I hope there are hands to pat you, to reassure you, to feed you treats, to love you, to welcome you home.

  RIP Bella