Things That Fall From the Sky by Meg Sattler

In the backyard, my legs were outstretched between the Dolly Parton gnome and the old ammo box. The gnome belonged to my father, the box to my mother and my feet, well, they belonged to both of them.

‘They’re here!’ called Mum.

That’s what we do in Red Cloud, we sit around waiting. For something to arrive or to happen, it doesn’t much matter. Sure, we go to The Goose sometimes for a Sunday leg of lamb, or to the field to see who’s training (it’s normally just the Wombats but the Bulldogs showed up once for an away-day). We don’t fuss, though. Don’t shake anything up. A quiet town’s a happy one.

Mum was already at the window, face pressed to the glass. The stuffed birds on the sideboard had to be moved aside so she could lean on the shelf to get a proper look. The ducks were now all huddled together on their fake mahogany stands. They looked like the penguins in one of those David Attenborough shows, if all the penguins were wearing bad makeup. I crept up behind my mother. She smelled like Revlon Charlie.

‘I heard they came from Austria,’ she said, squinting.

‘They eat lot of salt in Austria,’ Dad called from the sofa.

‘How do you know that?’

‘George at the Co-op told me.’

The new neighbours hadn’t come with a moving truck. Just a small van, Man with a van stenciled onto the side, the three of them crammed across the front seat. The back wasn’t full. A few suitcases. A box or two. ‘It’s like they fell from the sky,’ Mum said.

I couldn’t see much as they moved their stuff out of the sliding door, what with Mum in the way. She wasn’t a small lady anymore. Dad liked to mention that more often than was necessary, in more conversations than was appropriate, with more people than wanted to hear about it.

‘Dad, get the binoculars.’ 

‘Get ‘em yourself. You’re fifteen. Didn’t raise you to behave like the fucken’ Queen of England.’

The hunting drawer was the neatest part of the house. Guns, knives, sacks, camera, all in their right places. Everything sat on its own little piece of old teatowel. I pulled out the binoculars, scratched and worn. Mum must have had them since she was my age. ‘They just don’t make anything properly anymore,’ she always said, ‘factories in God knows where, those poor women all sittin’ in lines.’ That’s the other thing about Red Cloud. We hang on. To buildings, to the goldfields, to the famous writer who lived here once. We don’t mess with good things by replacing them with new ones.

Dad was standing behind Mum now, wrinkled hand on her shoulder. It was black from doing something with the fire. ‘They don’t look Austrian,’ he said. When he didn’t wear glasses his eyes looked too small and his cheeks too big.

‘I don’t think everyone in Austria is white,’ I said. ‘Not like here,’ I added, more quietly.

‘I heard that,’ said Mum. ‘And not everyone here is white. What about the Aborigines?’

‘You don’t call them that, and they are not here because we took their land.’ I’d started following Pay the rent on Instagram.

‘Yes they are here. There’s a tour you can do, where they take you into the national park and explain what the plants are used for.’

‘Have you met them?’

‘Well no.’

‘Have you done the tour?’

‘Come on Marley.’

I lifted the binoculars. The tape holding them together scratched my eyebrow. The girl grew sharper through the glass as she leaned against the van. She was probably in my year. Tall, hair pulled back with a scrunchie. She spun her head towards us.

‘Shit!’ said Mum, flinging herself back into Dad, who slammed into the sideboard. The ducks crashed to the floor. Mum hurried to pick them up, sweeping dust from their lacquered green feathers.

‘Serves you right for being fucken’ nosey, that does,’ said Dad.

‘A fine thing for you to be saying,’ said Mum, scurrying into the kitchen.

The bell rang and I counted to five before opening it. ‘Nice binoculars,’ said the girl. ‘Vintage.’ She was wearing a big Leonard Cohen T-shirt.

‘Thanks. Nice van.’

I felt my hands getting a bit hot. I clasped them behind my bum. I’d never had a neighbour my own age before.

‘I’m Anna.’ She pronounced it kind of like Uh-na.

‘Marley.’

‘Like that dog? The one in the movie.’

‘Yep. That’s the one.’

‘It’s a cute dog, I have to say.’

She stepped over the threshold into the house, uninvited. She bent down and started unlacing her Chuck Taylors, looking around at the boots and the umbrellas in the entryway. ‘Oh, you don’t have to take your shoes off here,’ I said. She looked up at me. Tied them again. They were the new leather ones, the limited editions that you could only get in the city.

‘What magnificent mallards!’ Anna gasped as we entered the sitting room. ‘Do you shoot?’   

‘Did you just say magnificent?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘How old are you?’

Anna, Uh-na, looked amused by me.

‘Old enough.’ Whenever she stopped moving she put her hands in her pockets.

‘I don’t shoot so much anymore,’ I said. ‘My Mum does.’ The truth was, I loved to shoot. It was the thing I was best at in the world. But it wasn’t okay anymore, even in Red Cloud. Because of conservation and all that. 

‘Mine too. She’s going to win that competition next week. Red Cloud Clay Day, or whatever.’

Mum marched in from the kitchen, dusting off her skirt. ‘Oh no, darl, she isn’t. I’ve held that title sixteen years.’ She had a knife in her hand, dripping with fat.

Anna smiled. ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘I have to say, mum’s one of the best in Austria.’

I wondered why Anna had to say everything.

‘Is duck hunting a thing in Austria?’

‘Not really. More of a relic. And it’s pheasants there, not ducks. My mother mostly shoots clay, she’s got a keen eye and a quick hand.’

‘Well, I don’t know how you people do it,’ said Mum. ‘But you gotta shoot them nicely, you know, clean. In the modern way.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Anna was looking mum right in the eye. I’d never seen someone so bold.

‘I’m just saying, you’ve gotta shoot ‘em clean dead. Bam.’ She squeezed an eye shut and made a shooting motion with her hand. ‘You can’t have them flappin’ about. It’s inhumane.’

‘Then I’m not sure nicely’s the best word...’

Mum looked back at this young stranger, clearly confused about what to say next.

‘Well then. If you wash your hands and find your manners, you can join us for lunch,’ she said.

‘I hope this chicken’s okay for you,’ Mum said at the table. ‘They’d run out of the bigger ones. Marley’s Dad thinks the smaller ones are the best, you get two for the same price, but I’m on the fence.’

The four of us each sat on a side of the big table, like we did when someone important came over. The red paper napkins had been taken out of the Christmas drawer.

‘Oh yes, it’s lovely,’ said Anna. She sat straight up. ‘Thank you again so much for the invitation.’

‘So. What’re you folks doing here in Red Cloud?’ asked Dad.

‘My father got a relocation with FarmTech, advising on solar.’

Dad was ripping open his bread roll. ‘I’m not sure we need all that kinda stuff, do we? All solar this and solar that.’

‘Well, it’s made a big difference back home.’

‘Okay sure, but this isn’t Africa,’ said Dad.

‘Austria,’ said Anna.

‘We don’t get many Europeans here,’ I offered. We returned to our meals. I looked to see whether Anna held her fork with a different hand, but it was the same as ours.

‘Is Austria really like The Sound of Music?’ asked Mum, reaching for the potato salad. 

‘Actually, I’ve never seen it.’

‘No way. Have most first-generation Austrians seen it, though?’

Anna laughed. She took a long drink of water from her glass. ‘I think the Von Trapps live in America now. The original ones.’

‘That so?’

‘My mother is actually from Salzburg. Where they came from.’

‘Oh I see. So then how…’

‘My dad’s Ethiopian.’ Anna still looked amused, like she knew more than us. ‘He met my mother at work, at an agro-firm in Vienna. Between the two of them, I’ll have no choice but to love coffee for life.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ said Mum.

There was no sound for a few moments, minus the scraping of forks against plates.

‘Could I trouble you for some salt?’ Anna asked politely.

………………..

Meg Sattler is an emerging writer and poet, published in journals here and there and painstakingly editing her first book, a collection of stories on women’s relationships. She has been a finalist in NYC Midnight, is a friend of the Write Like a Grrrl programme and is currently hiding from the pandemic in the Australian bush.

Twitter: @megsattler