Fertile Ground
An extract from this short story was published by The Guardian, as part of the 2019 Richell Prize awarded to short story collection Nearly Curtains.
She walks into town to buy the small amount of groceries they can afford, her boots scuffing on the dry earth beside the bitumen. She’s always liked to walk, not that there’s much choice now with the petrol prices. The land around her is colourless, the hills worn almost bare. She can see a figure up by the Harris’s sheds, too far to make out whether it’s Tommy or Paul, hand-feeding livestock from the back of the ute. She raises an arm in greeting. The beasts pull hunks of hay from his hands, but Lo can’t help thinking it would be kinder to shoot them; nothing left but fur-covered bones. This all used to be dairy land, but these cows can’t calve anymore and no calves means no milk. Nature’s defence mechanism: when the system can’t support new life, it stops creating it. Lo thinks of rabbits, the way the pregnant does will reabsorb their litter if they are struggling or starving. She puts a hand against her belly. Barely more than a glob of cells yet, but already such a weight to carry.