Free New Australian Stories 2 by Aviva Tuffield

she had been the herald seemed now to lead to this new immensity, her own: Mr Ronald, dead in a car. But they didn’t know Mr Ronald. David had never even spoken to him. They had been married that midday, with no rain. There were no witnesses.
    â€˜He’s dead,’ said Sarah. She stood and shut the door behind her.
    David fought the desire to lower his head and look through the window. It seemed necessary to make sure, but more necessary to trust Sarah. He held his hands out to her and she took them.
    â€˜My god,’ he said. She shook her head. He knew that when she shook her head in this way, it meant: I’m not angry with you, but I won’t talk.
    â€˜What now?’ he asked. ‘Should we take him somewhere?’
    It seemed to David that Sarah owned the wreck, owned the tree and piece of road on which Mr Ronald had died, and that he need only wait for her instructions, having failed to find help. He thought of her sitting alone with the unconscious body of an old man, and he thought of the moment at which she must have realised that he was no longer unconscious: that he was dead. David saw with certainty that Sarah was another person, completely separate from him, although he had married her today. His wife.
    â€˜We’ll try the car again,’ said Sarah. ‘We just have to get to the surgery.’
    â€˜And use the phone there,’ said David.
    Sarah crossed the road, and he followed her. She didn’t look back at the wreck. Waiting on its grassy rise slightly above the road, their car had a look of faithful service, of eagerness to assist. It started on the third try with a compliant hum. Sarah had always been better at coaxing it; even before trying the ignition she’d been sure it would work. She was uncertain if this resurrection was good or bad luck or if, beyond luck now, it was simply inevitable. Now that she could see the rain in the headlights, she realised how soft it was, how English. She missed home, suddenly: the hard, bright days and the storms at the end of them, with rain that filled your shoes.
    It grew dark in Mr Ronald’s car as Sarah’s headlights passed over and then left him, and it remained dark as she left that piece of road and that tree. David watched Sarah drive. They didn’t speak. As the distance between their car and Mr Ronald’s grew it seemed that the roads were all empty — that all of England was empty. It lay in its empty fields while the mice moved and the airplanes flew overhead to other places, nearby and faraway.
    They reached lit buildings and then the surgery so quickly it seemed impossible to David that he couldn’t have found help within minutes. Sarah walked calmly into the building, and she spoke calmly with the nurse. She didn’t look at the telephone. There was no blood on her clothes. David watched his wife as she made her way towards the Queen of Sheba, who rubbed his head against the bars of his cage. He was waiting for the pain to stop. And then he would be let out, healed, to hunt mice in the wet grass.

Reward Offered
    JON BAUER
    The old man smiles. This is his favourite bit.
    He opens their garden gate, brings the dog in, turns and closes the gate, a curtain twitching inside the house. The old man’s stomach a helium balloon in the sky.
    The sudden squealing of children, the kelpie straining on the string now, not wanting to sniff anything.
    The front door flings open and a woman beams, faces appear round her legs, little hands gripping on and lifting her dress inadvertently higher, the dog lurching forward, its tail batting the old man’s legs.
    He extends the lost-dog sign in his hand, corrects himself and lets go the string, the family falling on the animal then squinting up at the man as if at the sun.
    â€˜Thank you so much. Where did you find her!’
    Back outside the house now, biscuit crumbs on his clothes, his hair sticking up from rough and tumbling with children. He