I was drenched from head to toe and stiff with mud and blood. I stripped clean off and we washed every stitch of my clothes in the trough behind the shed. The night did not seem so warm, stark naked, but the breeze was velvet. The moon was in the gutter of the sky with its parking lights on and the pines grouped around the stile and along the fence between the paddock and the ruined Fitzherbert mansion were skinny old men leaning on their walking sticks.
We wrung the clothes out and hung them from rusty nails around the walls of the shed, and I went and sat in the pile of lucerne hay. Les and I had gone swimming in the ‘nuddy’ time and time again, but it had never given me a feeling like this before, a feeling too delicious by far to be anything but evil. I wanted to make the feeling get worse, so I lit a cigarette, completely unconcerned whether tobacco stumped your growth or not. The school of thought which maintained tobacco stumped your growth was probably quite wrong anyway, I thought to myself. If you believed everything you read about what to eat and what not to eat, don’t do this, don’t do that, and you listened to everything every screwball told you, a guy was going to end up too scared to move, I reasoned.
(1963)
O.E. Middleton, ‘Killers’
‘I hope the road’s not like this all the way,’ grumbled the man.
‘It can’t be much further now,’ coaxed the boy.
‘Why haven’t they widened it and sealed it I wonder,’ chimed in the woman.
‘We’d be lucky to find any mussels down here then,’ rejoined the man. ‘As it is, no doubt only the locals come down here.’
‘Can’t say I’d like to live hereabouts anyway,’ sniffed the woman. ‘Did you see those ramshackle old houses?’
‘There are plenty of fine new cowsheds though,’ joked the man. ‘Where do you think all our city milk comes from?’
‘Look! What’s that?’asked the girl, suddenly leaning forward.
‘It’s a hawk!’ cried the boy.
‘Making a meal off something too,’ added the man.
‘The beastly thing!’ shuddered the woman.
As though it were taking up the slack in a trigger, the man’s foot went down on the accelerator. The car surged forward. ‘I wonder if I can get him,’ he muttered.
As though they were sighting down a rifle, four pairs of eyes became fixed on the shape at the road’s edge. Just as it seemed about to be engulfed, the bird raised its head and lifting sudden wings, pulled itself up with uncanny speed. Spinning tyres ground the carcase of the rabbit into the road. The escaping bird skimmed the onrushing bonnet, cartwheeled into a blackberry bush. Three heads craned back, scanning the roadside.
‘It got away!’ cried the girl, swallowing because her throat had gone dry.
‘Oh, the cruel thing!’ shrilled the woman. ‘Wasn’t that a poor little rabbit?’
‘You got him I think,’ the boy exulted, turning and meeting his father’s gaze in the rear-vision mirror.
‘Yes I got him—but only just.’ The man let out a rush of pent-up breath, slackened his foot on the pedal. ‘He thought he had time for another mouthful, but our speed fooled him.’
‘Why were such murderous creatures made I wonder?’ sighed the woman.
‘They’re killers all right,’ agreed the man. ‘Nothing is safe from them.’ He fumbled for a cigarette, fed it into his mouth. ‘No doubt the hicks around here are too busy milking cows to keep them down.’ He inhaled and blew out some smoke. ‘Now look at that,’ he went on, nodding at something that had caught his eye.
Across the paddocks a man in a black singlet was planting a post, steadying it with one hand while he tamped the earth around it with short even strokes from a rammer.
‘Can you beat that!’ gasped the man. ‘And on a Sunday morning too! He’s never heard of mechanisation, that’s for sure! He must be one of the original pioneers.’
‘He’s more like something out of the Stone Age if you ask me,’ tittered the woman.
‘Slow down now,’ urged the boy. ‘We can’t be far now from that old wharf.’
The harrier awoke to find herself tumbled among dusty leaves. She smelt blood, remembered the rabbit she had dispatched, the savour of its warm flesh. She struggled to sit upright, saw the looped threads spilling from her belly, the useless wing. As though in a dream, she saw the hurtling car, heard again like the crackle of ripe gorse pods, the snapping of bones fragile as the hollow stems of fennel. Sharper than the rabbit’s, her own blood-scent rose in her nostrils. As feeling came back, pain began to gnaw, to drag at her. From time to time, another vehicle passed, making the leaves and grass-blades tremble, ruffling her feathers, scattering a fine dust over everything. The sun crawled up over the ragged rim of the bush and glared down at her. She twisted and turned her head, tearing at turf and the tough vine-stems and by the strength of her jaws and neck, dragged herself into a crouching posture.
The teeming life disturbed by her fall began to venture forth once more and to explore her promising contours. A column of ants, excited by the reports of scouts, set out to harvest the treasure congealed on leaves and grass-blades, but scenting the richer spoils above, began to swarm over her toes and up her legs. With deft strokes of her beak, she drove them back, crushed or dashed down whole companies. But more came on and once safe in downy hiding-places on her thighs, began their slow, methodical flensing.
A blowfly, like some bustling land-agent who has got wind of a choice subdivision, bumbled through the bushes in search of her. Lesser flies followed, intent on their share. For a time she kept them at bay, but soon they too had staked their claims.
From inborn habit, not from hope, she scanned the sky, seeking the soaring cross-shape of her kind. Now that she was cut off from it, the air called to her with an insistence she had known only at nesting-time. Whenever the torments of her predators grew more than she could bear, she drove her beak into the turf, tearing up grass-roots with her curved mandibles, laying waste whole commonwealths in the red-brown earth.
Towards evening when she lay hoarding her failing strength, there were other visitors.
‘This must be the place!’ cried an eager young voice. ‘There’s the rabbit that chap told us about. The hawk can’t be far away.’
‘We could hack off the legs with my knife,’ said the second voice, ‘and go halves in the bounty from the County Office.’
The harrier froze into watchful stillness. The boys put down their bicycles, began to probe the bushes.
‘There it is!’ cried one, catching sight of her.
‘Holy smoke!’ gasped the other. ‘Look at those flies!’ He drove them off with his stick, but came no closer.
‘Shivers!’ said the one who had seen her first. ‘I’m not touching that. Its guts is coming out.’
‘Pity we hadn’t come sooner,’ agreed the other. ‘While it was still fresh.’ They withdrew. The hum of their tyres, the murmur of their voices grew faint, were drowned at last by the myriad tiny voices close at hand.
Evening brought more heavy-tyred vehicles humming, roaring, rushing by, each leaving its cloud of choking dust. Her head sank once more, the beak agape, the tongue shuttling like a tiny lizard. At first, nightfall brought a lessening of pain. By scraping dew from grass and leaves within the orbit of her beak, she eased her fiery thirst. But soon the full force of the cold felt out the naked nerves. From time to time throughout the night she was roused by yet another rush and roar and the bush was swept by blinding lights. A stoat, hard on the heels of a frog, halted her wavering chase and lifting her delicate nose, weighed the merits of this surprising find. The harrier summoned a harsh cry, clashed her terrible mandibles, and the smouldering eyes sheered off again after the easier prey. A large rat, heavy with young, glided silently from nowhere and began to gnaw the putrifying remnant of the rabbit. She dragged it under the cover of a neighbouring bush and ate voraciously and noisily a long while.
As though to mock her plight, flocks of black swan on their way to watery feeding-places, honk
ed to each other high overhead. An opossum, his belly full of fruit from some homestead orchard, squeaked the wires of the roadside boundary fence and, skirting the bush in which she lay, trundled across the road. From their grazing grounds almost a mile away, swamp-hens sent up their piercing earth-bound shrieks.
Near dawn, she was wakened by the lowing of cattle close at hand. A dairy herd straggled past on its way to milking, picking at the dusty herbage, blowing and lowing as it crept along. One old cow, pushing her steaming muzzle between the stalks, caught sight of her. She snorted, tossing her head, but when she had stood a while, looking down, thoughtfully went her way.
Not long after, a young cattle dog padded by. To her alarm he stopped, cocked his leg against the bush, and began to sniff the grass. Instead of finding her, he stumbled on the opossum’s trail and, bounding off joyfully, nose-to-ground, left the herd to wend its own way to the shed.
As the sun began to fleer and grimace at her once more above the bush, the small armies set out again, singing their work-songs. Showers of dust drenched her anew as first a milk tanker, then a school bus, came and went. Swarms of flies, their greed raised to a fine frenzy, returned to gorge on her. A lone questing wasp, the first of countless others, hung over her for a time, measuring her bulk with all her glittering eyes.
A pair of sparrows flew down to bathe in the dust at the roadside, filling the air with their shrill chatter. First a plump blackbird, then a thrush, swooped overhead. All she could do was stare up helplessly, like a man trapped in a well.
By late afternoon she lay defeated, neck awry, her carcase racked and twisted. Sharp voices roused her yet again, while it was still light. She raised her head, struck out blindly as the sounds drew near.
‘Holy smoke!’ cried out the first boy. ‘She’s still alive ….’
‘She can’t be,’ quavered the second. ‘She was dead yesterday—or so we thought.’
‘The poor thing!’ cried the first, closing the knife.
The first stones, flung from too far off, by trembling hands missed altogether. Only when the braver boy, edging close, gave her a well-aimed blow to the head, was she set free. Still unsure, he bent forward, another stone poised. At length he let it fall.
‘Imagine going on living all that time, like that,’ the boy beside him whispered as they turned away.
As he got out of the car that evening the man noticed what seemed to be a leaf, caught in the radiator grille. He plucked it out, saw that it was a feather and, for a lark, stuck it in the band of his hat. As he opened the door, he smelt the mussels they were having for tea and smacked his lips.
‘What on earth have you got in your hat?’ the woman demanded, hands on hips.
‘Just a feather. Doesn’t it suit me? I say, those mussels smell good!’
As she took his hat, the girl slipped out the feather. She stood it in a small vase on her dressing-table where the light caught it and brought to life colours that reminded her of earth, blood, and fierce sunlight. When her mother called her for tea, she answered that she was not hungry, and softly closed the door of her room.
‘If I were a harrier hawk,’ she said to herself as she lay looking at the feather, ‘I would stay out of the way in wild places among the hills and swamps.’
Much later, when the others had eaten, the woman was surprised to find the child already asleep, the light on, and that awful feather burning in the vase on the dressing-table like some pitiless flame.
(1972)
The Problem of Engineless Flight
David Ballantyne, from Sydney Bridge Upside Down
The noise of the hooves is so loud that I am running frightened even before I see Sydney Bridge Upside Down galloping through the dusk towards me. The noise gets louder as I run it is as if there are many horses stampeding towards the works trying to get there before I do and the faster I run the further away seem the works and all the time the hooves get closer and I keep taking frightened looks over my shoulder to try to see if it really is only Sydney Bridge Upside Down making all that noise. Until suddenly I am in the works and going up the stairs still running still hearing the hooves. (We begin on the ground floor, dear Caroline, because this is where the animals were delivered. Most came in lorries, some came by rail from the wharf, picked up by ships at Port Crummer down the coast. Dad said there was seldom much noise on the ground floor because the animals didn’t know what they were in for when they arrived, and by the time they were downstairs again they were carcasses, ready for the cold chambers that are now like spooky dungeons. Up on the other floors, the killing-floors, was where you heard the squealing and groaning, where you saw the pools of blood. Even now, when you walk across those concrete floors, you can imagine stains, and some days on the top floor I’ve heard squeals and groans below me and I’ve thought it is not the wind I can hear. Now the wind blows through broken walls, cement chips fall, the stains are sprinkled with cement dust. I stayed up here in the rain one day because I was annoyed at Dad. He had chased me with the whip, and although I knew he soon stopped being angry after these chases I guessed I had better keep out of his way a while longer and too bad for him if I got pneumonia through not being able to shelter. Actually, I could have sheltered in the dungeons, or in the lower-floor killing-rooms, or even down in the yard where there is the furnace they used for burning left-overs, like eyes and ears and hairy bits. The furnace-house is not so easy to hide in because there is only one way of getting in now that the doors are rusted shut; you drop through a hole in the top, down to the black bricks on the floor, and unless you have dangled a rope there is no way of getting out. If you forget the rope and nobody comes along to lower one you could stay in there for ever, and it wouldn’t be much use shouting for help because the brick walls are so thick and the hole at the top is so small. You could die in there. I kidded Dibs into dropping in there once, I said it would be easy for me to reach down and grab his hand if he jumped, but I knew it would not be easy, I knew it would be impossible. So he had to stay in there until I got a rope and it took me an hour to do that. Dibs said later it was awful waiting for me to get back, he said it seemed much longer than an hour, and even though it was a fine day and he could see the piece of blue sky through the hole he said it was chilly and quiet and creepy in there and he had the feeling he was buried, he said he had felt like shouting but when he tried to shout nothing happened because his voice seemed to have dried up, he said he would never go in there again no matter how often I promised to save him, he said he did not trust me. I told him he should think himself lucky the furnace hadn’t been lit, what say barrows of leftovers had been tipped on him and set alight? Don’t blame me for the bad time you had, I said. Nobody forced you to go in there, I said. Remind me not to drag you out next time, I said. And all he said was there would be no next time, not for him. He said I could get Cal to jump in, see how he liked it. But I wouldn’t frighten Cal like that. I know he’s a pest of a kid sometimes and I shout at him and throw things at him, but I wouldn’t want to scare him to death, it’s better to have a brother than not to have one. I can tell him things even when I don’t care if he hears me or understands what I’m saying. What matters is that I am not on my own and I don’t have to go on thinking and wondering and worrying, I can talk. So I don’t care when he climbs the chute, doing what Dad warns him not to do, he’s a good climber and he won’t fall, he moves like a squirrel. When we get to the top floor I’ll show you where he pops up out of the chute. That’s how he always goes to the top floor, not like me, I always go up the stairs, I reckon the chute would collapse if I went up it too often, though it’s not so bad going down because you go so fast the chute doesn’t have time to collapse. But don’t you try it, dear Caroline. It’s best to wear pants when you’re whizzing down that. Thick pants. And sandshoes for the braking. I don’t think any girl would want to try it, I can’t imagine Susan Prosser for instance being brave enough to even look down the chute, supposing she was ever brave enough to go to the top floor. One o
f these days I might ask her to go up there, to test her, to see if she’s brave as well as clever, not that she doesn’t know the works, she knows this place sure enough, I mean in the secret way of people who do more than notice that a place is where it is, they go to it as well, they visit it when they want to be on their own, when they have something special to think about. I followed her in the moonlight the other night. I waited by the side of Dibs’ house for her to leave, I waited there because I still wasn’t sure what she meant about Dibs’ nasty habits and I thought I might clear that up while I was waiting, and when I saw what he did from the veranda in the moonlight I knew what Susan Prosser meant, and it was not long after the dirty dog had done it that I saw Susan going along her side-path and out into the road, and I waited till she was a good way along the road, before I followed her, and this is where she came, she came to the works. But she did not come to this floor or to the ones above or even to the stairs. She sat in the moonlight on the concrete steps at the front, and that was all she did. I watched her from behind the furnace-house. I heard the swamp frogs and, a long way away, the waves that reached the rocks and the funny steps. I didn’t know what Susan Prosser was thinking, she was just sitting there in the moonlight, staring. I could have called to her. I could have watched her jump and run. I could have chased her. I could have made her so frightened she wouldn’t dare write to my mother. But I didn’t. I just waited in the moonlight and watched her. I hoped she wouldn’t learn from Mrs Kelly, who knows everything, that my mother still isn’t saying how long she reckons on being away. You know, my mother surprised Dad in her latest letter by not even mentioning how much she misses us or how she’s looking forward to seeing us all again soon, not even asking how we’re off for ginger beer, so it seems she is enjoying the city and is in no hurry to end her holiday, though we know she’ll be back for the start of school, mothers are always home then. Of course, Dad doesn’t mind if she stays away another week or two, because he hasn’t started painting the house and I know he wants to have this under way before she gets back. Anyhow, dear Caroline, that was what I was thinking while I watched Susan Prosser sitting in the moonlight on the works steps. Don’t you dare write to my mother, I kept thinking. Then I thought: Please please don’t write to her, Susan, I’ll be your friend if you don’t write, I’ll stick up for you whenever other kids pick on you, I’ll say you are pretty and not skinny and snoopy, I’ll bop anybody who says you’re dippy. And I kept behind her when she went home in the moonlight. I don’t know if following her did me any good. I don’t suppose it did. Because she still worries me) still hearing the hooves still running still going up the stairs and now I know I will never get to the top before Sydney Bridge Upside Down reaches the works. I haven’t been able to go fast enough Sydney Bridge Upside Down will be right behind me right on top of me at any second now. Now the noise of the hooves stops and there is another noise and the blind is rattling and I think the other noise must be little spurts of thunder another summer storm has come but the other noise can’t be thunder the sounds are sharp and there are too many of them to be thunderclaps I must be awake because I know I am sitting up and I know Cal is lying beside me and I can hear him breathing and I can hear the blind rattling and I am trying to decide what the other noise can be other noises I realise the noise of running feet the noise of a crutch stomping along the passage the noise of a cracking whip, all those noises and the wind rattling the blind now moans round the corner of the house then whines then suddenly screams and I am awake aren’t I because I can hear Cal breathing still hear the blind rattling now the blind stops rattling Cal stops breathing our house is quiet not a sound I can’t be awake I am asleep or dead. Then far away a small sound then I hear the hooves and I am running again and the noise of the hooves is louder Sydney Bridge Upside Down must be near the furnace-house now galloping closer while I try to reach the next floor if I turn I’ll see him but I can’t turn I have to get to the next floor and suddenly I am there I am lying on the floor face in a stain fingers scratching the cement dust choking still hearing the hooves (And this, dear Caroline, is the killing-floor with the interesting room. It must have been the room where they did special things, because it has an iron door with large bolts, strong enough to keep out anybody while they did the cutting-up. It also has a peep-hole. I found it one day. Well, why make a peep-hole unless what went on in the room was something special? You can imagine all the big killers busy with their knives and sledgehammers, then one of them looks at the others and says he wonders what is happening in the special room today, and how about he takes a peep, and the others tell him to go ahead but to be careful because it’s against the rules to peep, so he strolls over very carefully, makes sure nobody in charge is looking, then he reaches up like this and takes out this brick, then he reaches in like this and takes out another brick—and there! He can look into the room. What does he see? Say he sees a body stretched on a table and a man with a knife bending over it, making fancy twirls with the knife before he sticks it into the body, you can hear him humming as he twirls the knife, chuckling as he sticks it in. Or say he sees something funny, like three killers playing cards with chops and kidneys, having bets and pretending to hide their cards when the others in the game are staring at them, giving nothing away, bluffing like Dad says he used to bluff when he played poker, like the time he won his whip off a stockman who thought Dad must have a great hand, he was sitting so calm and sure, the stockman too scared to have a go at keeping the whip he’d thrown on the table, then losing it because he hadn’t guessed Dad was bluffing. Or say he sees a battle between an angry animal and some killers armed with all sorts of weapons, because this is the room they keep for the animals that won’t give in even after they have been bashed with sledgehammers and stabbed with knives, where any animal that won’t give in is taught a real lesson, by the time it has been shot at and slashed and whacked in here it wishes it had given in quickly like the other animals, no animal has a chance in here, this is where it must end. Or say he sees something sweet, like the men who are not strong enough to be killers making sausages, long strings of them, hanging them round their necks, making skirts of them, turning them into fancy costumes, dancing and singing in this special part of the killing-floor, maybe the only happy ones in the place. Or say he sees say he sees say he sees) still hearing the hooves scratching in the dust and trying to get up and make for the next lot of stairs because I am sure this is not a safe place I must go higher in the works I must get to the top nobody can get me up there I can hit back from up there I can throw bricks at Sydney Bridge Upside Down from up there teach that mad horse a lesson. Now the noise of the hooves is so loud I tell myself I might as well give in I will never make it to the next lot of stairs. Then I do move an inch or so and I try harder and at last I am moving inch by inch towards the stairs clawing my way through the stains and the dust expecting at any moment to hear the hooves thunder into the works knowing the noise will be much greater then because of the echoes like when I called to Cal through the chute and the Cal-Cal-Cal echoed on the great echo of the hooves might even bring down the walls but I can’t go back now I must get to the top I must get to the next lot of stairs (I fooled the other kids one day last summer, dear Caroline. I came up here and I was puffed that day, like you now. I was tired from running up and down hills. I was the hare in the annual paper chase. Mr Dalloway picked me for hare because he said he’d noticed I was a good runner, but I think it was because he’d noticed in earlier years that I took my time as a hound and left it to the other hounds to pick up the trail, this year he wanted to be sure I was kept busy. Anyhow, I gave them a good run. I shot up the hill behind the school, ducked through the trees and along the valley to the line of hills up from the houses, and I went along the top for a while, then down again through the trees and along to the high parts up from the wharf, where our caves are, then down the track to the picnic clearing and over the rocks to the beach, along the beach to where the river crosses to the sea, and that
was when I reckoned I was due for a rest. I stopped scattering paper and came across here and sat on the top floor and waited. My first idea had been to go along the river-bank as far as the crossing, then head for the school. What I had done instead was to make the trail end at the river. This would puzzle the hounds. They might reckon I had swum across the river to be awkward, and if they tried to pick up the trail on the other side they would be all the more puzzled, they might even begin to wonder if I had been swept out to sea. This would worry Mr Dalloway, sure enough. Anyway, they had given me ten minutes’ head-start and I had wasted no time on the run, so I could have a good rest and check on how they did. I saw three hounds on a hill above the houses, but they were going so slowly I knew they must be stragglers. I didn’t see the leaders until two of them shot out from the clearing and began sniffing along the beach. There was no wind that day, the paper hadn’t shifted from where I’d dropped it. The two leaders were going pretty fast and there were other hounds not far behind. I couldn’t see Mr Dalloway, he must be rounding up stragglers. What I must decide soon, I thought as I watched the leaders moving along the beach, was when to sneak away from the works and drop more paper. I could keep out of sight of anybody on the dunes by cutting across the paddocks behind the works and then through the trees beside the swamp to the river-bank. I would do this, I thought, when I had seen what happened at the end of the trail. What happened was that the leaders sniffed around so long, trying to pick up the trail, that all the other hounds arrived, even the slowest stragglers. Mr Dalloway arrived too. I saw some of the kids pointing across the river, but it seemed none of them wanted to take the risk of going over, or maybe Mr Dalloway warned them not to try. I waited no longer. I sneaked across the paddocks and through the trees beside the swamp, and when I got to the river-bank I began dropping paper again, and I dropped it all the way back to school. I was at the school maybe twenty minutes before Mr Dalloway and the other kids arrived. Apparently one kid had finally gone far enough along the bank, he had picked up the trail and called to the others. Mr Dalloway was annoyed. How come there was a break in the trail, he wanted to know. I said a sudden breeze must have swept the paper into the river. He said there had been no breeze. I said it might have been a river breeze that had not reached anywhere else. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t care, I’d only done what I had to do. I thought when he called at my home after school next afternoon that he would tell my mother about the paper chase mystery, but she said nothing to me about it later, so I guessed he had called about something else, probably about Cal being such a dud at sums. Anyway, dear Caroline, if what Susan Prosser says is true I won’t have to worry about this year’s paper chase, because Mr Dalloway won’t be here next term, he’s left the bay for good. I don’t care, I’m glad he’s gone, I’m glad I won’t see him again, I’m glad he’s escaped) if I get up this lot of stairs and up the next and scramble up the footholds to the top I’ll escape I’ll be safe. The sound of the hooves is in the works now thundering like I’d imagined they would the echoes shaking the walls and spilling cement dust on me as I scratch my way up the stairs nearly to the next floor nearly there. I look down and I see a rider somebody is in that mad horse’s hollow somebody is forcing Sydney Bridge Upside Down to chase me (Why sit like that, dear Caroline? Why not come to the edge and look across the bay? Don’t you care about the scenery? What are you looking at? What do you want me to do? Do you want to grab my hand and do what you did when we were running the other morning? You know, when you held it down there between your legs and wouldn’t let me take it away. I can’t, dear Caroline, I can’t, I can’t) I can’t get there I can go no higher no matter how loud the hooves are thundering up the stairs now thunder all around me and I can only wait for the horse to reach me to crash upon me and I watch. I watch Sydney Bridge Upside Down leap flying hooves and foam from the stairs and land on the floor below me. I watch Mr Wiggins jump clear. I watch Mr Wiggins run with a knife to Sydney Bridge Upside Down and stab and slash until blood spouts everywhere. Caroline!
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 78