ABR/Reader’s Feast Short Story Winner

I fear for Fred’s life. It has been three days since the bite and still he has not moved. I am saving the crusts from the huge pasties Dr. Darnell’s housekeeper brings me each day, but he just lies – eyes unseeing. He has not eaten or drunk. Dr Darnell’s hospital is at the rear of his house. In Queensland we call it a sleepout. Fred is the only patient. It’s clean – I’ll grant you, the floors are chalky from kalsomine and the back wall of louvred glass sparkles. There are no curtains across the louvres and in the middle of the day sharp knives of sunlight advance across the room and carve Fred’s body into neat slices. Whenever I change position; to stand or kneel, or to lean on the bed a cloud of tiny particles swarm in the sunlight. I am reminded of Fred and me unfurling the canvas banners. We roll them out like bedsheets: The Great Pumba – King of Snaix; The Pit of Death; Adders Serpents and Taipans Fully Demonstrated. The banners are faded – Fred bought them from an old showman at La Perousse, but their dusty pictures and fancy curlicues never fail to make me smile. Each time we unroll them they release a little puff of air from somewhere else. I can hear the Doctor going about his business in the house. He is coming to see us less often and I am not sure whether this is a good or a bad sign. He doesn’t use the connecting door between the house and the hospital but is drawn down the garden path by a white pony in a tiny cart. I hear him coming as the cart scrapes against the rose bushes. The housekeeper, with a knitted red cross pinned to the front of her apron, opens the hospital door for him. ‘What do we have here then Sister?’ he asks rubbing his hands together. ‘Just the snake poisoning Doctor,’ she says dryly. Dr Darnell’s examinations often require my assistance. He will have me hold Fred’s leg high and then drop it on command as he looks on. There is pummelling. I must bang my fists in a circle around Fred’s heart. Sometimes the Doctor helps – standing behind me and holding my wrists. He uses a great deal of force and I think that, between us, several of Fred’s ribs may be broken. When we first arrived, just three days ago, there was a flurry of medical activity: tightening and loosening ligatures; scarifying the wound site; removing jellied blood; and many injections. After several hours of treatment Dr Darnell tore a yellowing page from a ledger on his desk and wrote this note – it is pinned above Fred’s bed: 1 June 1906: Man poisoned by snake or adder – reptile not provided. Removed crude ligature. Injection of several hypodermic syringes into the man at once with great benefit. Patient then suffered all of the deadliest symptoms of poisoning viz; spitting and vomiting of blood, double vision, dilated pupils, threatened lockjaw, and the loss of power of muscles. Whilst these symptoms were showing themselves I injected him forty two times with varying doses of strychnine – no pain attended or followed the injections. It is not the first time that Fred has been bitten, and it is not as if he is unaware of the risks. His tropical snakes are sluggish and easily handled in the cold eastern states but River Murray tigers are different. They have a mean, low-gliding strike, without any need to recoil. On the day that he was bitten Fred had collected thirty tiger snakes. He was full of plans for skinning and juicing. Tucked in the pages of my bible is the address of a sanatorium in Melbourne seeking snake juice as a cure against insanity. Fred said they paid well for it. My bible is thick with notes – records of our takings; tips from other showmen of good places to pitch a camp, and letters from our mother. I wish I had the letters with me now. On that first evening Dr Darnell invited me to take dinner with him in the parlour. He has many photographs on his mantelpiece of stout men and women with similarly broad faces and heavily lidded eyes. Dr Darnell’s whiskers hang down from cheek to chest but leave the promontory of his chin bare and smooth. He tucks them into a napkin but they still protrude – stretching across the table like a tangle of nettles. I found the pastie difficult to swallow. ‘Miss Fox, Miss Fox.’ He reached for my shoulder as I coughed up several small greasy lumps. ‘Miss Fox it is a delight to have you here with me – a young woman from the exciting world of showbusiness is not something often found in Cohuna. Tell me about Ma and Pa Miss Fox – are they nearby? Are they likely to be upon us soon affecting a recovery?’ Dr Darnell seems quite pleased that our family farm is in far outback Queensland. I told the Doctor all about our Fred – how he is not like the other snakemen. Fred’s fascination with serpents started as young boy and is born out of curiosity not trickery. Some of the city men milk their snakes, or de-fang them, or paint a harmless python to make it into a taipan. Before Fred had his own show – when he was ’prenticed to Mr Entincknap, he saw a man re-sew a severed head onto a king brown so it could be plucked from a bag and bitten off in front of the crowd. Other men removed the legs from blue-tongue lizards and pretended they were vicious adders. Mr Entincknap told Fred that when the paying public sees a snake their minds revert to a primordial primitivism and they rarely look too close. But Fred is no con man. Fred offers his snake removal services free – although many times a grateful housewife or shopkeeper will offer him a meal. Talking about Fred like this makes me sad. My eyes brim. Dr Darnell squeezes my hand. ‘We’ll have to make him better Miss Fox. Just for you eh. It’ll be hard work but we’ll have to make this brother of yours better.’ Dr Darnell removes his napkin and pats his lap. I look around for dog, a cat even, but there is only me. I had expected, after last night, that Dr Darnell would be at the hospital first thing this morning with some new drug or treatment for Fred. I can hear the housekeeper kneading dough in the kitchen but the rest of the house is quiet. When he does arrive, just after lunchtime (I have not touched today’s pastie at all) his examination is cursory. He takes Fred’s temperature, runs a thumbtack over his fingernails and toenails and roughly lifts his eyelids to reveal the pinks and whites. He stands for a while, rubs his chin and tells me to remove Fred’s snakeskin waistcoat. He smoothes it over his belly and holds it open in front of me. ‘Now, what would it look like on the lady Cleopatra? How about it Miss Fox?’ He slips the waistcoat over my shoulders and runs his hands over the patterned skin to the place Grandma Frieda calls the ‘under collar’. I count the louvred windows. There are twelve in each row. ‘Beautiful skin, Miss Fox.’ ‘Carpet python,’ I whisper, and move to the other side of Fred’s bed. I was awoken from sleep this afternoon by a commotion at the front of the house. A young irrigator has caught his hand in a waterwheel. His mother held the wound together with a cloth so covered in blood it looked like a shawl of flesh. The sharp wheel had cleft his hand; divided his fingers into two flapping sets and chewed on up to his wrist. He was little more than a boy and cried bitterly into his mother – great strings of spittle hung from his mouth and attached themselves to her bodice. The housekeeper ushered them around to the hospital where they sat on the step for fear of bleeding on the floor. I prayed for Dr Darnell to come soon but I could hear the sound of water pouring and scooping in the bathroom and it was gone half an hour before he emerged. The consultation was conducted outside. The housekeeper brought sheeting and a stoppered bottle full of clear liquid. Dr Darnell flicked the greasy substance at the boy’s hand like he was christening a baby. A sheet bandage was applied and they left, the boy barely able to stand, still supported by his mother. This morning Fred seemed better. He stirred and clutched my arm. A fat bubble grew on his lips and I could see his throat sucking in and out as if he wanted to speak. When I reported this to the Doctor he hurriedly collected his injecting kit. The strychnine is white, like chalk. The Doctor tips it into a brandy balloon, adds water and mixes it up with a knife. He gave Fred another nineteen injections. There is no skin left on his arms that does not bear the mark of the needle. Fred had a very bad night. His limbs twitched and trembled as if a hundred monkeys were pinching him. I held him tight. I sang to him and smoothed his hair, but he never woke. I am prepared to assist Fred in any way to bring about a cure. When the Doctor suggested I lie upon Fred’s body so that his sick heart could hear the strong beat of my own I did not hesitate. The Doctor looked on from behind his desk and issued various directions. He had me kneel above Fred — my skirts hanging over his head and my face near his crotch — to align the altered poles of his body. This treatment lasted nearly an hour and cost the Doctor a great deal of concentration. It only stopped when the housekeeper came in abruptly and insisted on polishing the Doctor’s desk. I am exhausted from sitting in this chair. The nights pass so slowly. I try not to sleep but each morning I am awakened by the sun streaming through the louvred glass. Last night I dreamt that I was in Mother’s big bed. It was a beautiful dream, the fire crackled in the grate and I could smell the morning bread baking. Fred’s body was hot and smooth with muscle beside me. I pulled back the covers to find his face and gagged with horror – Fred’s face was black. A huge black serpent face with a jutting wide, almost-smiling, jaw. He looked straight at me for a second and then slid off the bed – not falling but sliding out beneath himself to feel the way – all the while his head held high and proud. He headed unhurriedly for the door. The Serpent-Fred was so huge, yet so silent, that nobody moved or noticed – it skirted my father’s boot as he sat with a mug of tea and his agricultural journal, the hem of my mother’s skirt brushed over it as she padded from grate to table and back. It went out the back door into the strong white light of dawn. As it slid further and further away I felt desperately sad. When I wake Fred’s skin is cold. His mouth hangs slack and he has released his bowels in the night – the air is heavy with stinking gas. I run to the front of the house and ring the bell. I ring again and again and peep through the front window for some sign of the Doctor. Eventually the door opens a tiny crack and a straggle of whiskers poke through. ‘Yes, Yes, what is it?’ ‘It’s Fred. I think he is dead.’ The door slams shut. I run back to the hospital and wait on the step. It is stained a deep brown and there is a strong smell of iron. The Doctor arrives with a small chipped mirror which he holds above Fred’s mouth. Then he angles it towards my skirts and rubs at it with his finger. ‘Dead? M’dear he is not dead. He is merely sleeping. It is quite common in these cases. In fact I would expect him to sleep like this for quite some time.’ The Doctor leaves but says he will be back – he is concerned about my nerves and has promised me an examination. I place my head on Fred’s chest. I think I hear a whisper, but it is only the wind in the rose bushes. Or maybe it is my own breath. I take the cart and the pony although I doubt she’ll get me far. The roads to Queensland are rougher and more treacherous than the Doctor’s garden path. I have Fred’s fang tooth necklace around my waist. I wear it as protection against snakes. ‘Dr Darnell’s Cure’ won first prize in the inaugural ABR/Reader’s Feast National Short Story Competition.

Carrie Tiffany

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