The Shepherd's Hut

by Tim Winton

  Don’t look at me, I told him.

  Whatsay?

  Nothing.

  I do beg your pardon, he said. I forget myself.

  So how long you been here? I asked him.

  Oh, he said hoiking tea leaves on the dirt. A long time. Years.

  Like how many years?

  Oh, eight? Yes, I think eight.

  And you walked here too? I asked, even though I could see he couldn’t possibly of walked here with all this shit he had.

  No, he said. Of course not. I was delivered. Which is a slippery word, is it not?

  You mean someone brung you out here?

  They did.

  With all this stuff ?

  He nodded.

  From where?

  As you surely know, son, it doesn’t really matter.

  They just left you out here?

  Aye.

  Jesus.

  Indeed. But this is refuge as much as exile. You might say I find myself a captive at large. Have you read your man Dostoevski, then? Do they teach him at school?

  I shook me head.

  A pity.

  Too much stuff.

  And he tipped his head which was scaly and ginger-looking like he’d copped more sun than a fella like him was designed for.

  Whatsay?

  I said you got too much stuff. You didn’t come here with food for eight years.

  No, no. Someone comes. Easter and Christmas. In the main. In the main.

  Who? Who does?

  Whoever they are, Jaxie. You hardly need to know. I thought we understood each other. Well orright. But shit.

  Twice a year someone comes with food and necessities, a few books, a little news. But Easter has been and gone and, well, nobody. So.

  What happens if they don’t come at Christmas?

  Well, we’ll see then, won’t we?

  I didn’t feel it was a good moment to tell him I wouldn’t see at all. Because I wasn’t gunna be here at Christmas. Man, that was months and months away.

  By now, he said filling up the pannikins, a man should have learnt that nothing is certain. This is what I tell myself, of course, but it’s an effort to discipline the mind. A fella can’t help pining for a bit of solid ground. So I take quare comfort when the sun pops up there across the lake every morning and the roof is on and there’s a goat in the yard. I tell myself, here it is, another today – surely this is enough. But the feeling, sad to say, it doesn’t last. You see, even a man with no future gets himself into conniptions of . . . of anticipation. What next? When will it be? Will they come? Is that all? What will happen?

  And then he went off into one of them long quiets. He chewed his plastic teeth and I listened to the spinifex pigeons coming and going and blew on me tea and drank it quick as I could. After a while of this I figured it was worth trying to bust a move.

  Listen, I said, getting up and chucking me dregs, I got some ground to cover.

  What? he said. Now?

  He looked me up and down like he only just remembered I was there.

  I have to get back, I said.

  Back where?

  Me camp.

  Ah. Yes. And where is this bivouac?

  South, I said. I left a roo hanging. It’ll be nearly on the turn.

  Oh, a slab of kangaroo, now what I wouldn’t give for that. The goats have been the saving of me, Jaxie, but oh the monotony.

  I could bring you some now and then, I said, not really sure if I meant it. Swap you maybe.

  He waved me down again but I stood there, restless and nervy.

  Your laundry, he said. It won’t be dry.

  No odds to me, I said, even though I hate hiking in damp duds, and wet socks suck to the shithouse.

  Stay for lunch, he said. There’s meat left, more than enough.

  Nah, I said. I’ll get going.

  You hardly look well enough.

  I’m fine, I said, but I was feeling pretty rooted and everything was sore.

  Well, he said, before you go, would you do an auld man a favour, Jaxie?

  Depends, I said.

  I need to be getting in some wood, you see. Whatsay we get in a barrowload? Then I’ll pack you some goat.

  Well, I said with a shrug. Orright. I’ll go get me boots.

  No need, he said. I have some here for you. Give your things a little longer to dry, anyroad.

  It felt weird enough already being in his clothes. Still, I sat on a crate under his verandah, with no socks, pulling on a strange pair of boots. He had the .243 on his shoulder and I didn’t want to rock the boat.

  So we pushed the barrow up the track a way, well I pushed it and he yammered on next to me, and his boots felt heavy and crooked and the ruts looked wavy and a coupla times I thought I wasn’t quite right, but it wasn’t bad enough I’d puke. It was gunna be a nice old trip back to the diggings feeling this ordinary.

  We got out past the junkpile and into a mob of salmon gums and jams where the ground was jumbled with sticks and ant-eaten limbs and it didn’t take long to fill the barrow. I felt better heading back in and the old man was poxing on about how we were near enough to being neighbours and if I was to come by one day with a feed of roo it was best we had ourselves some kind of signal, like a call or a whistle. When he asked me did I know a bird noise we might use I couldn’t think what to tell him, so I give out the noise of a shithawk and he laughed like a loony and said that was perfect. Said whenever I come by I should hang back in the bush and do the birdcall and he’d know it was safe, and I said fair enough just for something to say when really I didn’t give a rat’s ring.

  When we come by the killing tree I set the barrow down and went into the scrub to get me pack and glasses and jacket. And I thought he’d take up the load and wheel it in himself but he come along with me, nattering all the way. When I bent in to pick everything up the ground went soft under me and I fell to me knees. He said something behind me I couldn’t properly hear and I thought right then, you old prick, you’ve drugged me.

  You been clobbered enough you know the feeling. The world’s a long way off, fizzing outside of you like a bad TV signal. It’s like when you get a boot from an electric fence and everything’s wavy and dotty for a bit and then after a minute or so the world comes pouring back in. I spose I was like that. I could smell blood and meat and sawdust and I thought, fucking hell, I’ve been poleaxed again, I’m gunna kill the cunt.

  And then there’s clanging and some bastard singing and I open me eyes and over me there’s corry iron and jarrah beams and woodsmoke all round. The smell of desert pine burning. And the ground’s luxury soft under me. So I blink and turn me head real careful and there’s orange dirt and a puddle of ash and the killing tree and everything out front of the shepherd’s hut. But the shadows are all wrong. Like it’s afternoon already.

  What the fuck?

  I sat up and cracked me arm against the tin wall and Fintan MacGillis stuck his head round the doorframe.

  So, how ye?

  What’d you give me?

  Whatsay?

  What the fuck you do to me?

  Well, I got you on the barrow, more or less. We’ll collect the wood later.

  You give me something!

  Tea and damper, I believe. And I’m after getting some chops on if you’re still hungry.

  I was parked on a swag under the verandah. I didn’t remember getting there. But I knew I was hungry. Christ, I was hole in the guts starving.

  Took a bit of a turn there, lad. Dehydrated is my guess. Are ye well now?

  I spose, I said.

  Fact was I had a bastard headache but I didn’t feel so woozy.

  What’s Magnet?

  What?

  Something you were saying, is all.

  Nothing, I said. It’s nothing.

  He pursed his lips like he didn’t believe me but wasn’t gunna push it.

  It’s afternoon, I said, getting up. It’s late.

  I leant against the verandah post and remember
ed I wasn’t in me own clothes. When I patted the pockets of them shorts there wasn’t any phone.

  It’s in here on the table, said the Irishman.

  You fucking took it?

  Fell from your pocket, Jaxie. Don’t be getting ahead of yourself, now. It’s here with all your other kit.

  And you had a good stickybeak I bet.

  Steady now. You don’t want to be losing a friend here, not when you’re short of them already.

  He give me that fuck-you grin and then I knew the old bastard had been through me phone. He’d had half the fricken day to scroll through me pics and messages. His eyes and fingers had been all over Lee, across me whole bloody life. He’d seen her with her head shaved when it was raw and ugly and that was worse than if he seen her stripped naked. Jesus, I coulda popped his eyeballs out with me own two thumbs right then, I coulda strangled him with a hank of fencewire.

  I’ve opened a tin of mushrooms for the occasion, he said, sweet as cupcakes. And there’s still the odd tomato.

  I wanted to tell him to shove the lot of it up his freckle and set fire to it but the talk of food made the inside of me mouth twitch.

  Your duds’re dry, he said.

  He went back inside and I heard the stovetop clank and something started hissing in a pan.

  I went round to the tank and took a long suck from the tap like I should of the night before and I looked at the greens growing in kero tins and tomato plants crowded up against the wall. The easterly was petering out to nothing when I went down the mill in them slope-sided boots of his, the blades of the thing was hardly turning. The lake was gone pink with the evening sun and a mob of birds stretched across the sky like a scratch. I felt so flat. And stupid. I thought of all that roo meat on the turn back at the diggings. Even if I got going there and then, no way would I be getting back to me own place tonight. I’d be lucky to make it the day after.

  I got all me clobber on and pulled on dry socks and proper boots at last. Then I brung his gear back to the hut and the place was full of frying smoke and me mouth just run with spit, so that was that.

  We et sitting at the table and for once the old man didn’t say nothing. The hut wasn’t so gloomy with the sun piling in through the open door and the shutter above the sink. I still had some of that stunned feeling hanging on but the food perked me up. He had those rack chops fried up hard and salted and crusty. I gnawed every one of them down to the speary bit of bone and he watched me like I was something on TV.

  When I was finished and he was making a brew I looked round at his boxes and stacks of tins. Fintan MacGillis had powdered milk, sugar, cans of butter, bags of flour in plastic tubs, dried peas, kerosene, cooking oil. He was set up pretty good, even if his mates didn’t come again till Christmas. There was a pile of goat meat in the safe. For all I knew he had more salted down in them plastic barrels pushed into the corner.

  And I dunno why but I thought after eight years living out here he might have put photos up, but all he had was books and some pictures cut out of magazines. There was one of a little white house with soft green grass all round it and a thatch roof. Another one was a dude black as the night standing in a boat up to his knees in fish and he’s laughing his tits off. He had big flat teeth like a hippo and they was stained red like he’d been eating meat raw off the bone. And there was one more picture of a pair of dirty sandals, just sandals on dry cracked mud, that was it. All them cut-outs, he had them glued on bits of packing case or cardboard and hung on nails and they were bubbly and wrinkled like he’d made the paste himself the way we used to when we was kids.

  The old man’s books were stood up in a fruit crate and in front of that, layed out flat, was this necklace thing or a bracelet maybe, made of coloured beads, blue, red, green, orange, yellow, white, black.

  You make that? I said, pointing to it.

  No, he said. I did not.

  He give me a pannikin of tea and he sat back down and drunk his slow and methodical. I looked back at that bead thing on the shelf. It was way out of place in a hut like this, in an old dude’s stuff, and he could see me sussing it out and I thought for sure he’d get on his hind legs and say fifty-nine things about it but the look on his face said that wasn’t gunna happen, like it was off limits.

  Good chops, I said.

  How old are you, son?

  Seventeen, I told him.

  Closer to fifteen, he said. That’s my guess.

  You can guess all you like.

  A perilous age to be out here alone, wouldn’t you say?

  I shrugged. I looked at the plate and lined all me chop bones up.

  But I see you’re a handy lad, he said. It’s not every boy who can keep himself alive. At fifteen I still needed me mam to do for me. But she sent me off anyroad. They all did, the mams, and what a quare pack of goms we were, Jaxie. Nobody was giving the likes of us a Browning rifle, either, not out our way. We had to settle for the fear of God, boiled cabbage and the comforts of the strap.

  He went quiet for a bit. Then he looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there.

  Have you far to go?

  I nodded.

  But it’ll be dark in an hour.

  I’ll get far as I can and camp up.

  With not even a blanket to your name?

  Done it plenty of times, I said.

  You’d be safer after a night’s rest. You’re worn out.

  You want me to stay here?

  If you fancy. You’ll be the better for it. There’s space enough.

  I thought of another night in the salmon gums. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I come down for salt. A fuck-up was how it felt. And this failed feeling come down on me and I knew I didn’t have it in me to set off now.

  Okay, I said. Maybe I will. Just for tonight.

  Well, he said. You’re very welcome.

  And then I got up and stood in the door. Because the food was done and I’d said I’d stay and now I didn’t know what to do. I felt so rotten I could cry. But I didn’t cry.

  Lad, are you well?

  Fine, I said with me back to him.

  Do you feel strong enough to walk a little way?

  Where?

  This time of day I like to take a step on the lake. Not far. For the kindly light, you know. And to see what the lake might do.

  It’s a salt lake, I said. It can’t do nothing.

  Ah, but it moves all day, he said. It’s forever changing.

  I turned back to him. He had this idiot look on his face.

  Have you not seen it crawl upon itself and fill and empty in the afternoons? Now and then, you know, I see the eastern shore in the sky, all those stunted trees standing on their heads above the desert.

  That’s mirages, I said.

  Mebbe so, he said. But there’s life in them.

  And he got up and pushed past me into the light which was gone all milky.

  Come on, Jaxie, lad, I’ll show you.

  I don’t know why I followed him. Coulda been because I was feeling so low and shitty. Or maybe just to shut him up. But also because he left the rifle behind. He waited outside a sec and it was just two of us equal. And I thought, fuck it, fair’s fair, he’s being decent.

  And that’s how we went, two people side by side. And it wasn’t far we went. Past the windmill, out through the samphire and onto the lake a little way.

  The old man was in no hurry and that suited me fine. He slopped along in his gumboots and the going was easy. Except he kept bloody talking. It was like he couldn’t stop himself. I went along next to him feeling a bit sorry for meself again and wishing he’d shut up. We stopped walking soon enough but the talk, that never dried up.

  Will ye look at this, boy. What a picture! What a provocation!

  I pulled up right beside him and looked out at the salt and the sky and the wafty light between.

  I used to think it was Hell itself. This place I’d been consigned to. The heat and salt and flies. A place so empty a fella’s thoughts com
e back from it as echoes. Look out there, now, how it goes on forever, like a dream there’s no escaping. Can you imagine how it might have seemed to the likes of me? Terrible, strange, inhuman. And those mirages, by God, they haunted me. Every one a distortion, a travesty. Some days I used to think the lake, the salt, the whole countryside was calling to me, like something infernal. Fintan, lad, come out and die!

  He must of seen the look I give him because he shrugged a bit.

  Of course I was not well in myself, he said. Not quite a whole man, let’s say. Anyroad, I ask you, lad, could a guilty fella conjure up a landscape more penitential than this one?

  I really wished he wouldn’t ask me. Because I didn’t know what he was on about. And then I saw he wasn’t really asking me at all, he was just gobbing on. Calling me Jaxie like he knew me all his life.

  Tiny, he said. That’s how I felt. Just a speck. And so terribly alone, as if I were a man in a space fillum. I would walk myself to the edge and no further. I didn’t trust the salt, the crust, you see. I was afraid I’d come out here and sink to the neck, and there’d be no one for a thousand miles to hear me crying out. Dear God, can you imagine?

  I could, I really could, but it give me the yips to think about it. I wondered how he was still alive, this old prick, letting himself think shit like this.

  But that was early days, lad. Now I see it clear. And it’s a rare and beautiful place, don’t you think? With a memory. Sometimes I think perhaps it’s all memory. Here, look at this.

  He pointed at a line of emu tracks and scratches and dents left by roos and goats.

  Everything that ever happened here is still present now. In the crust, underneath, in the vapours. These days I look out there and it says to me: Here I am, son, still here. I was here before the likes of you and yours were born. Before you even drew breath, I am.

  Well, I said. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. There’s nothing here but us. There’s no one talking but you. Jesus, how would anyone get a bloody word in edgeways?

  And the old man give off a wheezy laugh and slapped me arm in a way made me step back a bit.

  Aw, he said. The cheek of him!

  Just saying, I said. And he smiled and scratched his whiskers a sec.

  Yes, Jaxie, it’s a grand place for a fella to go off his head in. But here’s the joke of it, my friend. If I had the chance to leave this place now, I’m not sure I would.