The Shiralee

by D'Arcy Niland

  Her gaze swung back to his again. Their eyes clashed. She flushed a deep red.

  ‘And if you want to know what it is,’ Macauley said, turning at the door, ‘I’ll tell you at the dance next year.’

  Some twenty yards from the shop, Macauley told Buster to look behind them and see if the girl was watching them. Buster said she was standing on the shop step. Macauley smiled to himself.

  Some would have hit him a swipe over the moosh, he thought, if he looked at them the way he had looked at her. But she was the romantic type who played furtively for excitement – the nice quiet type, the quiet waters running deep, the best of the lot. The cheeky ones, the ones that knew all the answers, they split into two kinds: they were barber’s cats, all wind and water, or they were town bikes. The first had never been closer to a man than the heat of his eyes and the panting of his breath, and they saw to it they never got any closer. They screamed for help when the game got real. The second, they were so often in the saddling paddock it wasn’t natural.

  Yet, Macauley realised as he thought of her that the girl meant nothing to him. He didn’t know whether her name was Susie or Fanny. He didn’t know whether she could read or write; whether she studied the piano, ate meat on Fridays and helped little Oscar with his homework. He didn’t know whether she suffered from constipation, took sugar in her tea or squeezed her face before the mirror. He knew nothing about her background and habits, and he didn’t care. He wasn’t shook on her. She was just a stimulus for his virility and an image on which to sublimate it. She was no more than the embodiment of carnality.

  And that way she stayed with him as he trudged on.

  The rain came with a helter-skelter brustle at the end of the murky evening. There was no shelter. A light glimmered like a star through the scrub, but it was a long way away. Macauley knew there was a bridge over a dry watercourse ten minutes walk ahead, and he hurried towards it, Buster beside him, neck drawn down.

  ‘Hold my hand,’ she screeched, as Macauley picked his way down the gully and came in under the bridge on the higher ground. They found a spot and sat there, Macauley needing to bend forward to keep his head from touching the planks. They said nothing. All was darkness and the slish, the wet tossing of wind. The rain drummed on the bridge and dripped through the chinks of the deck, unseen and unseeing but finding the flesh of their hands and faces, forcing them to shuffle together like dogs in the roost of that bank. The wet wind swirled in. He was cold. He felt the kid beside him shivering. He unstrapped the bluey and threw a blanket over their legs and bodies and the groundsheet over that.

  This was no hardship for Macauley. This was apple and pie. In out of the rain and getting warm. A real nook, snug and cosy – comfort could have been improved a bit – but, hell, who’d growl about that. Could have been worse. He could have been out there in the boo-eye, thrusting his body into the wind and rain, getting blown about like an old moll at a plonk party. He expected to hear Buster complain, but no complaint came.

  On the contrary, she snuggled against him with pleasure, with impulses of delight.

  ‘I like it here, dad,’ she said joyfully. ‘It’s nice.’

  He was reflecting on the day and its happenings. He was thinking of a thousand things, done and going and to come. Sparks of thought that flared and died; pictures that focused and blurred. He saw Christy’s face, and he could see it as a baby with the dirty whiskers on it still and the same murderous eyes, and to think that a mother loved it, even though Christy the baby took his milk bottle and smashed the end of it and playfully jabbed it in his mother’s face, the dear little thing. The thought made him chuckle.

  Buster chuckled, too, infectiously.

  And Macauley thought of Jim Muldoon, nervous as a dog with a ghost, shit-scared, and yet coming in to lend a hand: hanging around, not turning tail and finding a hurried excuse to be somewhere else. Muldoon, white to the gills, with the sick nausea of fear in his belly – and yet coming in to lend a hand. That took guts. Real guts.

  And he thought of the girl. Minny, Mary or Mable. And he wanted her. And he saw how he wanted her. He wanted her running away from him laughing; and he wanted to catch her and take her and stop the laughing and hear the sweet groaning, the rapture, the last delicious frenzy, and stand up and away from her, the masterful, the vanquisher, leaving her wounded with ecstasy.

  Then when he heard the snores at his side it all passed, the whole passionate delusion, and he became aware of the frail weight against him with the straw hat drooping. He looked down. There was a melancholy in the reality of the wind and rain and darkness. He felt as though somebody had been looking into the privacy of his thoughts, and the feeling in turn gave him a sense of wretchedness and abasement.

  ‘Ah, Christ!’ he said dully.

  He looked again at the sleeping child, and he was incensed, inflamed to a quick malice, spoiling for the release of his guilty anger. He shook her roughly. ‘Hey, wake up. Wake up. You’ll get a crick in your neck.’

  She jerked, and he saw her eyes open in an unconscious stare and nod again, and he felt her slump gently on her return to sleep. His lips tightened, but he went no farther. He eased her back against the hard earth, and she lay there with her head to one side. He twisted his hands with tension, but it was going from him, and he was feeling easier, and in a little while he was all right, quiet and reasoning. He took a look at himself and he stood by what he saw.

  I’m a man, he thought. And I want a woman. That’s straight. I won’t deny it before God himself. If I didn’t want one I’d start to think there was something the matter with me. I want a woman all right. Leave it at that. For all the good it is thinking about it, I might as well be docked. Leave that as it is, too. I don’t have to go on like a pimply-faced whore-chaser, do I?

  The rain didn’t look like diminishing, though the wind was sweeping about in a twist of currents, and blowing now against the side of the bridge. He drew his feet up, put his arms round his legs and rested his chin on his knees. He saw the faint glisten of water below his boots. There was nothing else to do but stay where he was. He had no regrets. He knew what he would have done if he had had the choice. He wouldn’t have left Boomi. He would have hung round there until the weather declared itself. Nobody but a bunny with his brains bashed out would venture a black-soil road with a sky ready to leak at any tick of the clock.

  But Boomi was no good. Not when a copper put a time limit on a man. It never paid to cross a john. They had memories like elephants and they could be as vindictive as a tossed-out mother-in-law. They had the weight and they could throw it about; if they were a bit nasty from birth let alone from other reasons the uniform gave authority to the dirt in their natures. Defy an order, get tough, and you might as well wipe off a town for good. They never let you stay in it on your return. A few hours, and they had smelled you out and were giving you the push: We’re moving you on; we don’t want your type here. Get going. They could do more than that. They could throw you in the peter stone-cold sober, mess up your good looks, take your clothes and fling them back at you next morning with your roll missing and only a few bob left in your pockets to help you heed the advice they dished out: Get out of here, you drunken hooer.

  And once they gave you the prod to get out of town it was a good idea to do it without delay. The sergeant back there – he wasn’t a bad bloke. But he would have picked him all right, and if he wasn’t the type to put the boot in later, to hold a grudge in perpetuity, he wouldn’t have spared him when it came to the magistrate hearing about the trouble in the town. And what a fool a man would have been to put that trouble on his back when it could be avoided. Without delay – that was always the ticket. Because sometimes they changed their minds. Even though the sergeant back there that wasn’t a bad bloke looked the other way, became a lamb of the law for a moment, instead of a limb about it, it was quite on the cards for him to come back five minutes later and pinch a man.

  So he left the town, and in leaving it he knew what m
ight lie ahead. But the risk had to be taken. There was always the chance of striking a farmhouse, a camp, an old shack with an old man living in it alone since the wife died; or the other way about. And there was always a chance that the change in the weather wouldn’t come to anything.

  But tomorrow is the worry. Plodding along on that sticky road. They wouldn’t make much headway. And there wouldn’t be much chance of a lift. Traffic would be held up. Still, no use thinking about that now; time enough later. But he wished he was on his own. On his own he would have tackled it without a thought and kept going, slow and all as the going might be. With the kid it was doubly hard; more than that – a failure from the start.

  Macauley passed a hand over his eyes. He felt the ache of weariness behind them and the drag of sleep. He reshuffled himself so that he could lay his head back. He wriggled the stones more comfortably under his back. He slipped his hat over his face to keep off the spray, dug his heels into the dirt to keep his propped position and dozed.

  Suddenly he pricked up his ears. There was a new sound in the wind and the rain and it belonged to neither. Macauley sat up. He strained his hearing, the sound was irregular, a beat, then a vague elusive note. It was distant and whiffling, but a reality. He scrambled carefully from under the bridge and peered round the pitchy, blown countryside. Far down the road, but approaching, he saw two blurry orbs of yellow light.

  He scuttled back and shook Buster awake, and he let her sit up and rub and yawn the sleep away as he quickly heaped the swag into a convenient roll, which was all he could do in the circumstances. He strapped it tightly.

  ‘What’s the matter, dad?’

  He didn’t answer. He lurched away, and looked down the road again. The orbs were bigger. He waited. He heard the sound coming up stronger – chukkachukkachukkachukka. It was like a winch running out the cable. What sort of maniac was this he wondered. But he wasn’t worrying. Didn’t matter if it was the Devil himself so long as he could help them.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Buster. She clutched his trouser leg as he clambered up the slope and squelched on to the roadway. He stood in the middle, waving his hands. Buster took the lead and waved hers. The rain beat in their faces. They saw the lidless eyes coming up bigger, glaring in the seethe of rain, and, unsure that he was seen, Macauley stepped to the side of the road, still waving, shouting. He heard the sound of the engine change to a chud-chud of dying power. The truck stopped.

  ‘How far are you going?’ Macauley cupped his hands to his mouth, walking round to the driver’s side.

  A nose and eyes between hat and coat collar was all he saw pressed against the window.

  ‘Right through – Moree.’

  ‘You got room for a couple more?’

  The answer came from the back of the truck. ‘Yeah, come on, mate, hop on.’

  Another voice said, ‘Hurry up, for the luvva Mike, and let’s get moving.’

  Macauley looked at the window and the nose was motioning him to climb aboard. He dumped his swag in willy-nilly and heard the yelp of a dog. He lifted Buster and willing hands grabbed her. The truck had started off, clugging madly, as Macauley hauled himself over the sideboards. His legs and arms touched men and dogs: if they didn’t touch them in one direction they touched them in another.

  ‘Up here, mate, there’s a possy, if you can work yourself in.’

  Macauley found there were five men altogether. Three were in the tray. Their mate, an old man, they let sit under cover with the tin lizzie’s owner and driver, Slippery Dick. Now with him and Buster added, that made twelve of a kind in the back of the little truck – seven sheepdogs, four men and a child, and all their gear. The only covering they had was a couple of station-tweed blankets, or woolpacks.

  The dogs were tied up short, three on one side and four on the other. The truck slithered sharply, zigzagged, then righted itself again.

  ‘Seems to be in a hurry,’ Macauley said.

  ‘Ah, the bastard’s mad; he’ll have us all killed before he’s finished.’

  ‘Can’t wait to get home to mum.’

  ‘He won’t be on no bloody nest if he keeps that up.’

  Macauley knew this Slippery Dick by name, repute, and to look at, but he had never had any personal truck with him. He was tall and lean with melancholy eyes. He had some ginger hair on his head – that was if you could find it – and some more on his top lip. His face was like a withered passionfruit. He was a drover and burr-cutters’ cook, and possessed very little regard for his personal appearance.

  As the truck went for another snaky slide, men and beasts were all thrown together, rolling from one side to the other.

  ‘By hell, Slippery Dick’s right,’ someone called out.

  ‘I heard his name was Dirty Dick,’ another man said. ‘In the burr camps as a cook. But he changed it a bit to Slippery.’

  ‘What’s the flamin’ difference? I’ll bet he was still slippery with dirt and grease in the cookhouse, and you couldn’t look at him there without slippin’ your eyes.’

  The night seemed to get even darker and the continual rain swept and swamped them as they sat and kneeled in all positions amongst the dogs, all fighting in the little congested area for cover under the station nap. The old boneshaker didn’t improve their hearing. It seemed to become frantic – chugging, coughing, spluttering, backfiring – as though it were about to come down with a bad turn. Macauley said he didn’t think it could swim. It was slipping and sliding everywhere now and churning the mud into their midst.

  They whirled sometimes through space, it seemed to them, and not with the greatest of ease, either: sometimes the truck would nearly turn round as though to go back the way it had come. But the worst was to come. They had been traversing the best part of the road, it appeared to them, when they saw what they were up against now.

  The truck began to drag, stick, skid, pull away, and crawl on again. But not for long. It staggered on lumpy wheels. It clawed the mud out of its face. It tried hard, but it was on its tyres. It signified defeat with a whine and a flutter. When everybody had thought that life had gone, it fooled them by giving a last fizzy burp, leaping forward and collapsing with a jerk.

  Slippery Dick got out.

  One of the men cried cheerfully, ‘What have we stopped for, Slippery – tea and scones?’

  Slippery Dick was moving around the vehicle, his boots clogging and squelching, the rain drumming on his hat. ‘She’s broken down – and if that wasn’t enough we’re flamin’ well bogged as well.’

  ‘Give it away, Slippery. Let’s stick it out here till the mornin’.’

  ‘Mornin’, be buggered,’ said Slippery Dick. ‘You want us to get bogged proper, dumped here for a week. I want to get home before the road gets too bad.’

  The men laughed heartily. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Come on, you pack of lazy cows,’ Slippery Dick said. ‘While there’s life there’s hope, my mother always said.’

  ‘If your mother was like you,’ came the retort, ‘she’d tell you anything.’

  For all their badinage the men were glad of the change from their cramped quarters, and the dogs were pleased, too, to feel they had more room and station-tweed. Macauley told Buster to stay where she was in the corner and he jumped down with the rest. They rolled their trousers up to the knees, ready for any emergency while Slippery repaired the disordered truck. It was only a minor trouble, according to him, and he muttered about spark plugs and distributors. They felt the babble was all designed to keep them good-tempered.

  Finally, he got the engine started, and with all hands pushing hell-on-wheels, as Macauley christened the truck, struggled to get free. She roared in low gear, grinding fruitlessly, jerking, spinning her wheels hysterically. The men joked and chaffed Slippery Dick. He wanted to be careful the engine didn’t drop out of her, they told him. It didn’t matter about the mudguards falling off. They were no use anyway. Was a safety pin any good to him, they wanted to know.

  ‘Righto,’ squeal
ed Slippery Dick with the strain. ‘This time.’

  ‘Okay. Let her go.’

  They put all their weight behind hell-on-wheels. With demented screeching and rapturous straining she made a terrific effort, clearing herself.

  ‘Good on yer, Slippery.’

  ‘Keep pushing, for God’s sake,’ bleated Slippery. ‘I don’t want her to cut out again.’

  He kept her going slowly for about two miles with the men pushing from the ground, skidding in mud and slush. One man lost his footing and down he went bodily into the sticky spew. Slowly as they were moving, he had to move quickly to catch up, twisting and slithering like a drunk on a dance floor, and not without having several more falls. When he grabbed the tailboard he was laughing. It was he they ought to call Slippery Dick after that, he reckoned.

  ‘All right,’ Slippery Dick shouted back. ‘I think we can get along good enough now if you get into the truck.’

  They clambered in, just a mass of mud, glued and dried to their legs and arms and faces, and while the old rattletrap, giving out noises to terrify the countryside, dragged itself doubtfully along the road in the drizzling darkness, a fight went on for the survival of the fittest between men and dogs.

  The dogs were more hostile than they had been during the first part of the journey, for while the truck was being pushed they had had the relief of more room and the comfort of the woolpacks, but now the interlopers were back – and they were rougher and bigger men with the stickfast black soil padding their bodies: and the lot of them were terribly in each other’s way: slipping, sliding, bumping and rocking among themselves, dogs and all clashing in a tangled-up mass. And no matter how much they tried to keep out some of the cold chill and rain, or protect themselves, they couldn’t fail to miss a dog, mostly his backside which collided with their faces, brushed their faces, swacked their faces and bunted their faces.

  ‘Poow!’ exploded a man. ‘Get out of this, you rotten mongrel!’

  ‘Hell, I’d sooner smell the kitchen gas than go through this ordeal again.’