Freedom

Debbie, newly separated from her husband, sat on the corner of her old bed in her parents’ house, a cold box filled with the ticking of clocks and the wheezing of an old fridge tied to the wall by the power cord. On the floor, Johnno a black Labrador, overweight and stiff with age, snored on a stained blanket. Debbie reached down and gently stroked Johnno’s flank. When he didn’t wake, her strokes became hard pats. Johnno jumped out of his sleep.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry to wake you. I just wanted to tell you I’m so happy to have you with me again.”

The dog gazed at her with wet eyes. Debbie burst into tears. She whispered to herself, “Get your shit together. None of this is your fault.”

Then she padded down the hall passed the closed door of her parents’ bedroom into the kitchen. Out the kitchen window the night was still and dark and she could hear Johnno’s overgrown nails on the wooden floor as he followed her.  Debbie made a cup of tea, went to the loungeroom and laid on the couch. She wrapped herself in the old blankets there and with Johnno on the floor beside her Debbie decided two days here was long enough.

The next morning after tearful kisses from her mother and resigned hugs from her father she headed back to her half-empty apartment hoping to cover the journey in ten hours. Johnno had the backseat to himself. This time he was coming with her. Debbie reflected, as the freeway took her into the first green fields leaving the suburban sprawl behind, that she had been too hard on herself last night. She had her shit together and it was Lance who did not deserve her.

 “Debbie, I feel restrained, not myself” Lance had said with that confident look on his face, which until then, Debbie had found attractive. “You know, marriage is not what I thought it would be.” So Lance moved out, just like that and Debbie fled home to her parents and her true companion Johnno.

Debbie reached back and tried to scratch Johnno’s ears.

Debbie visualised her thoughts of Lance as emails. She saw them flying into a bin like the one at the bottom of her laptop screen. She pictured her finger hitting a key and emptying the bin, deleting its bulging contents forever. Then she turned the music up and sang along to her Spotify playlist.

                                                #

Johnno started to move restlessly on the back seat and Debbie looked for a roadside rest area. The sun had cleared the horizon’s hills and the air was warming up as the sign popped up — Rest Stop 5 KM Ahead.

“Hang in there, darling. Just 5k and you can wee all you want.”

The plastic sheet crinkled under Johnno’s blanket as he adjusted his position.

Debbie pulled into the rest area. There were a couple of cars and a large, refrigerated truck parked and further on, three 4WDs and their caravans were hunkered down, tended by grey nomads eating bakery sandwiches and drinking tea or coffee from thermoses.

Debbie turned off the engine, grabbed the dog lead from the passenger seat and sat for a few minutes. The cooling engine ticked as a magpie warbled. Debbie burst into tears again.

Over breakfast, her mother had asked, “Darling why don’t you stay longer? Dad and I miss you. You know when you get back, you’ll go to work and Johnno will be home on his own.”

Debbie looked at her father who had his head down, jaws working his way through muesli and fruit. Her mum continued, “You haven’t spent much time with him lately and I don’t think you realise how Johnno has aged. He is getting frail now and we’re home all the time.”

But Debbie couldn’t stay. That was too much embarrassment to face. And she knew Johnno wanted to be with her.

The tears came harder until Johnno whimpered.

Debbie moved quickly, getting out and clipping the lead to Johnno’s collar. His fur felt dusty and looked fake. Johnno gingerly jumped out, his front legs bending but not caving and immediately trotted to the gutter. No longer having the balance to lift a back leg Johnno half- squatted and peed long and hard. But he moved better once his muscles warmed up and he pulled Debbie to a fast-food wrapper beside one of the overflowing bins.

The constant low roar of the passing traffic and the downwind smell from the toilet block was unsettling Debbie. She thought them commentary on her situation. While everyone else moved on with their lives she was going backwards. Suddenly angry Debbie jerked Johnno from the rubbish, filled one of her mother’s mismatched breakfast bowls from her water bottle and held it as he lapped, noisily splashing water and slobber on the bitumen.  She lifted him back into the car and his paws scrambled frantically for purchase as he felt the ground drop away. Debbie drank what was left in the bottle before climbing behind the wheel.

                                                #

Three hours later, it was time to repeat the process. This time she would eat the food her mum had pressed into her hands and have a little break. She glanced into the backseat and saw that Johnno was fast asleep, his head on his paws, his breath deep and raggedy. Debbie drove past the next rest area. She was looking for a quieter spot than a massive service station complex.

Within minutes Debbie pulled into a rest area devoid of trucks and fast-food outlets. She stopped upwind from the toilets this time, turned off the engine and stretched out her spine. She had parked in a bay that did not face the highway and through the windscreen Debbie saw a barbed wire fence and then a paddock sloping down to a gully and then inclining to a low ridge where some cows stood under gum trees.

She reached for the Tupperware on the seat and realised it was the same container that held her high school lunches a decade earlier. Inside was a ham and salad sandwich made with white bread and four chocolate chip cookies nestled beside a mandarin. Debbie sighed and put the plastic container back on the seat. She would walk Johnno first. He was awake now but still lying down.

When she opened the back door, attached his lead and got him moving Debbie saw a large, wet patch on the rug under where his stomach had been. She petted Johnno and scratched under his ears.

 “Did we wait too long? Mummy is a bit distracted today but you need to try harder not to make a mess.” Debbie tugged one of Johnno’s ears.

Johnno, wanting to investigate the wonderful smells and whatever else the rest area offered, ignored her and pulled on the lead.

 Debbie walked Johnno for five minutes, stopping three times as he dribbled urine on fence posts. She also had to pick up two monstrous turds. Whatever else, Johnno’s appetite and digestive system were fine.

She dumped the plastic bags into the garbage bin, tied Johnno to a post, quickly went to the just bearable toilets and returned to the car. Debbie tied Johnno’s lead to the door handle then sanitised her hands from an old pump action bottle she found in the glovebox.

 The sandwich tasted just like they did a decade ago. Debbie watched Johnno and ate, washing the school memories down with a soft drink that would have been forbidden back then.

Johnno wandered, pulling on the open door till the leash was taut first one way and then the other. Somehow, he got the lead wrapped around the aluminium tube of a signpost beside the car and then circled compulsively around the pole three or four times until he could only stand beside the post panting, with not enough lead to even lie down. Not that Johnno looked like he wanted to lie down. The confinement made him more agitated and with what strength his rickety legs could produce he kept backing and forwarding on the shortened lead, going nowhere, panting and becoming increasingly distressed. His eyes bulged like a goldfish. Debbie sighed and put down her cookie when Johnno whimpered either in pain or frustration.

“Oh Johnno, what are you doing buddy? Mummy is trying to eat her lunch.”

She tried walking Johnno back around but his solid frame was too heavy to pull and Johnno was resisting.

Debbie took hold of his collar with one hand and unclipped the lead with the other. She went to unravel the lead from around the pole figuring that in those few seconds a loyal dog, that had nowhere to go and was beside his beloved owner would be quite happy to stay.

But Johnno was not. The second Debbie let go of his collar Johnno took off. He ran to the fence and spotting or maybe locating a previously located dip where he could easily duck under the barbed wire, half-crawled, half-ran through, and was suddenly, horrifyingly, on the other side running across the paddock. He did not look back.

Debbie yelled his name into the westering sun. Johnno kept running down the gentle grassy slope to a slight gully and then laboured up the other side, lumbering through the stomach length grass like a buffalo.

Debbie burst into tears and sobbed, “Johnno! Johnno!”

She looked around but the rest area was almost empty. There were two cars thirty metres further on, but their noses pointed towards the freeway and even if anyone cared, they would not have heard Debbie’s cries.

Debbie ran towards the fence and tried to pull two strands of the barbed wire at stomach height apart so she could slip through, but they were strung too tight. She dropped to her hands and knees and then her stomach. Feet first, she attempted to slide under the bottom strand at the same place Johnno had slid under.

Frantic now, she ignored the gravel scratching her palms. Her runners slid under then her jean clad calves and thighs. Her butt slipped under too and Debbie thought, she would fit but she forgot the puffer vest zipped to her chin. The barbed wire snagged and Debbie was caught before she felt the resistance.

She pushed harder and screamed in frustration as her struggles achieved nothing.

Johnno barked in the distance and if she had been able to turn her head, Debbie would have seen Johnno reach the top of the ridge and attempt to frighten the four or five cows watching the events.

Debbie could slide no further under the fence and instead reached out with her grazed palms towards two tufts of grass and attempted to drag herself back into the rest area.

The puffer jacket tore with spitting sound and Debbie crawled back the way she came, dusty and tear streaked with her jeans dirty and her palms bleeding. She stood and turned in time to see Johnno chase the cows off the ridge top. Under his attack, they begrudgingly trotted out of view leaving a panting Johnno silhouetted against the westering sun, stomach deep in waving grass, tongue out and tail erect. He lifted his leg and pissed on a half dry cow pat. He tilted his head, sniffed the breeze and disappeared over the ridge, a distant volley of barks the only other sign of his passing.

Debbie sat and sobbed in the dirt as she waited for Johnno to return. Then she levered herself up and cried herself to sleep in her car in the late afternoon warmth.

 It was cold and dark when she woke with a start. Johnno had realised his stupidity. He’d come back and was scratching at the car door. Debbie jumped out and looked around and under the car but there was nothing there. The rest area was empty.

She turned on the car’s headlights and they shone out on a narrow slice of the empty paddock before the illumination petered out. In the silence of the car’s cabin Debbie acknowledged to herself that Johnno was not coming back, and she had to decide whether to turn back or to continue her drive. In the end Debbie decided to continue. She did not try to find an exit that might hook up with a road that could lead to the other side of the paddock.

Photo by Ethan Olarte