Black Juice (20 page)
The shed smells of dog-pee and wood-damp. It’s dark, and I find Cuff’s box by following her scratching and whining, the brush of her nose on the splintery wood.
‘Cuff, Cuff, my girl!’ I whisper.
She throws herself against my side of the box and barks twice.
‘Shall we go up to Highfields, shall we?’ I murmur, feeling
along the bench for the jemmy I left there. ‘Shall we get ourselves a snow-hare, you and me, and put it in the pot for the invalids? I think we shall, girl. I think we shall.’
And murmuring so, I ease up the box lid. Before the last nail’s free, Cuff pours out the opening into my arms, all tongue and toenails. Then she’s in the shed doorway, looking back, her raised paw saying,
When you’re quite ready…
And beyond her is all the dampness and the dazzle of the first day of spring.
The author acknowledges the following sources of ideas, images and references for these stories:
* Jack Dunbar for the title
black juice
* Adrian Denyer for the cat bringing home a different creature every night (‘Perpetual Light’)
* Louis Creagh for hugging the elephant’s leg (‘Sweet Pippit’)
* Janice Dancey for the phrase ‘hairy story’ (‘Wooden Bride’)
* the Linstead family of Perth for the word ‘bonty’ (‘Singing My Sister Down’)
*
National Geographic
for the picture of a woman skinning monkeys (‘Yowlinin’)
* the SBS program ‘Global Village’ for tar-pits (‘Singing My Sister Down’) and for children making mud-jeeps (‘House of the Many’)
* Paddy Doran, Mike Waterson and The House Band for the song ‘Seven Yellow Gypsies’ from their album
October Song
©1998 Green Linnet Records Inc. (‘My Lord’s Man’)
* Years 5 and 6 of 1999, Geelong Grammar School, at workshops with whom ‘Yowlinin’ and ‘Rite of Spring’ were begun
* the magazine
Modern Bride
, the misreading of whose title gave rise to ‘Wooden Bride’
Thanks to Eva Mills, Jodie Webster and Rosalind Price for editorial help with this collection, and to Rowena Lindquist, Marianne de Pierres, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Maxine McArthur for their valuable input at the inaugural wRiters On the Road (ROR) workshop at Montville, Queensland, in October 2001.