The Seventh Day by Joy Dettman

thus it is not singing, and will not sing until Lenny has completed his labour. But the sky is white and no breeze stirs; searchers may be about. They like best these days, for they need the sun to warm their wings.
    Too fast Pa has grown old this season. Though he tries he can not help Lenny with the hard labour, nor even much with the cooking, and he uses too much water for his pumpkins and for the new plant he is cultivating. Each day he grows more careless with water – and with me. When Lenny is off to fill his water barrel, I wander at will.
    And I think . . . and I think to . . . to tame the men as I have tamed their dogs.
    I will give them food.
    Granny never cooked for the men, and certainly I have not. It is Lenny who selects the meat from the freezer, and if Pa does not cook it and the carrots and potatoes the grey men bring, then Lenny curses long and cooks the food. He does not do it well, nor care much if it is cooked or not.
    Granny once told me that in the city nothing is as God created it, neither plant nor man. She told me when I was very small that the city tomato was as large as my head. I recall laughing at her, for the plant we had nurtured within the house produced fruit smaller than my ear. Red, they were, and sweet. Granny told me too of corn crops, unlike any she had seen before, and vegetables that were abominations. She said the black carrot had been bred with the spider to have many legs, the grey striped potato bred with the fish. Perhaps she had mocked my innocence. I do not know fish, or even if fish cry, but I have surely seen the twin eyes of the potato weep when Lenny cuts them out with his knife. Do they see the one who cuts them?
    I do not look at their eyes, but close my own and drop the potato whole into a pot of boiling water. This is Pa’s way. ‘Boil them alive. Same with cooking the yabs that used to live in the creek when I was a boy. They squeaked too,’ he said one day when I watched him pop the lid on fast so he might not see them jump and hear the squeaks. I pop the lid on quickly. So be it. Were not the thick lumps of meat I fry in the grey oil spread also from a living thing?
    The kitchen is both dark and hot. I am busy at the plates when Lenny enters. He stands, stares at me, and at the red and white half-dress I wear today with my red overall.
    â€˜Where is she getting those frekin rig-outs?’
    â€˜Dug ’em outta someplace,’ Pa replies.
    â€˜You’re supposed to watch where she goes.’
    â€˜Watches herself, don’t you, girl?’
    â€˜She frekin wanders, Pa, and I seen a searcher out there today.’
    â€˜She sees ’em before they see her. Not as dumb as she looks, are you, girl?’ Pa says. I do not look at him. ‘You reckon they don’t know she’s here, boy? They know. They just keeping an eye on her – and on you, boy.’
    My eyes do not leave my work. It is as if I do not hear him, and because I do not hear him, it is as if I am not here – and one day I will not be here; the grey men wait only until the immunisations are complete. I know this. I have heard this.
    â€˜Did she take her pill?’ Lenny asks.
    â€˜They’re gone,’ Pa says, and he looks at me.
    My eyes low, I move slowly to the stove where I load their bowls with meat and potato. I eat only the cornbread, spread with a little of Pa’s cheese, which is soft when fresh. It settles well in my belly.
    When Granny was alive we sat at the table and did not share it with the men. Now they sit and I do not. Our chairs number two, and they are only half-chairs, repaired often with wire and wood and glue. In these last years I have taken the bowl served to me to the verandah, to Granny’s rocking chair, or to my room. Tonight I remain in the kitchen, standing, watching the men eat.
    Pa’s hair is so grey it is turning to white. Deep erosion of storm and sun have marked him well. Lenny’s hair