by Ali Lewis
We were up to our elbows in blood when the Pommie wandered in. I reckoned she was on her way to see Dingo. She was always checking up on him. He’d got a bit bigger, mainly thanks to all the time she’d spent feeding him and filling him full of medicine. Even so, his back legs were still weak from where he’d been attacked. Anyway, I don’t think she’d ever seen a killer before. She just stared at the hide and then the body Dad was sawing in half. I guess he looked a bit like a madman. I shouted for her to come and have a look at my killer, but she shook her head and went away again. Dad laughed, he said, ‘I don’t think vegetarians make very good butchers, Danny.’ It wasn’t like she had to eat any of it.
When Dad and me finished butchering the killer, he said he was going for a shower and that I had to do the same once I’d taken the hide to the farm tip. I said I wanted to do some training with Buzz first. Dad thought about it, and then said, ‘Fair enough – but afterwards, you take the hide straight to the tip.’
I washed the killer’s blood off my hands using one of the hoses at the chook pens and then went to see Buzz. He head-butted me a couple of times, just to wind me up. I swatted him away and told him not to be a total drongo. We walked towards the gate, which took us out to the south of the station. Buzz got all excited when he saw the open desert and started skipping about. I teased him with the gate by opening it real slowly, which made him so impatient that when it was finally open wide enough for him to get through, he kicked his legs and almost flew into the desert. By the time I’d got the gate shut, Buzz was miles ahead of me, so I started to run after him. I shouted his name, so he’d know I was coming, but he didn’t look back. It was like he’d been fired from a cannon. Nothing got in his way. The spinifex and little bushes seemed invisible for him, as I jumped and tripped over them.
I had to stop and have a breather. It was pretty hot and we’d run a long way from the station. Buzz didn’t stop though and, as I kept an eye on his brown body on the horizon, I got worried. He’d never run that far away from me before. I needed my inhaler, so I told myself to trust Buzz as I sucked on it. I told myself he’d come back. As he got smaller and smaller in the distance, I knew there was no point in running after him – he was too far away to catch. So I stood still and shouted his name as loud as I could while I stared hard at the desert, trying not to lose sight of him. From where I was, I couldn’t tell if he had stopped or not, and my eyes kept playing tricks on me. I’d see Buzz, then start focusing on a bush instead. I decided to walk towards where he was, hoping I hadn’t mistaken a tree for him. It’s harder than you think to keep your eye on a little camel in the desert. The heat haze confuses you and soon everything starts to look like a camel. Everywhere I looked, there was something on the horizon that could have been Buzz. I felt like crying. I shouted his name as I jogged towards what I hoped was him. I got so scared, I kept turning round to make sure the station was still behind me, so I’d know I was running in the right direction.
I was thinking about going back to the station to get the Old Rover, when one of the brown spots on the horizon started getting bigger, until it grew long legs and a neck. My chest loosened and the lump in my throat slipped away as I waved my arms and shouted, ‘Buzz! Here, Buzz!’ As he ran towards me, relief flooded through my body. I guess that’s how the desert felt when we had good rains and the creeks filled up. He skidded towards me so I could put my arms round his neck and tickle his ears. I didn’t want to be angry with him – he’d come back to me. But as I threw my arms round him, I squeezed a bit harder than normal.
We walked back to the station together. I kept my arm on his neck the whole way. Just in case. I hadn’t time to go chasing after him again. I had to take the hide to the tip or Dad would go ape.
After I’d put Buzz back in his pen, I jumped in the Old Rover. I reversed him up to the hide and went to get a hook. The hide was carpeted with flies. The Pommie came over to see what I was doing as I folded one side of the hide onto the other and then in half again. I explained I had to carefully hook the metal through the hide, without it ripping, so I could attach it to the Old Rover and drag it to the tip.
I was busy doing all of that when Dad came over. He’d been at the calf pen looking for me – and he wasn’t happy. He asked me why I hadn’t told him Dingo was crook. He reckoned the fact Dingo still wasn’t well meant something serious was wrong with him. I shrugged and said it was the Pommie’s calf, not mine. She smiled at Dad and said she reckoned he was stronger. Dad shook his head and shouted for Lloyd to bring his gun. Dad said, ‘You know the rules, Daniel. Why the hell we’re throwing good money after bad on a sick calf like that, I don’t know. Milk and antibiotics cost a lot.’ I knew he was right. I felt bad for going along with the Pommie for so long. Dad told the Pommie it was cruel to let Dingo carry on. ‘He’s never going to get better,’ he said. The Pommie just stood there, silent, like she wanted to blub, but couldn’t. I felt bad for her. Kind of guilty.
Lloyd brought the calf round into the yard and tied him to a post. Then he loaded his gun, held it to his shoulder and shot Dingo in the head.
The calf folded down into the dirt and a small pool of blood stained the bottom of the post.
Thirteen
Dad said Liz had to take Dingo to the carcass dump. I dunno why, but I said I’d do it. It meant unhooking the hide so I could lift the dead calf into the back of the Old Rover. Dad said I should take Dingo to the dump first because he didn’t want a diseased carcass in the station yard any longer than was necessary.
That night, when I got back, it was too dark to go to the tip with the hide, so I went to check on Buzz. Liz was there with him in the calf pen. I wondered what she was doing. I could tell she’d been crying. She tried to hide her face from me. I didn’t know what to do. I asked her if she was OK. She nodded the back of her head at me. Buzz was trying to butt us, like he wanted to play. He could be a real handful if he wasn’t the centre of attention.
I wanted to explain that sometimes it’s kinder to kill an injured animal than to try to help it, but it came out as, ‘Dingo would have died anyway.’ It was like I’d hit her with the words. She turned on me with her wet cheeks and hissed, ‘How would you like it if they shot Buzz?’
I didn’t see that coming and it made me stand back a bit. Buzz’s ears went flat, like he’d heard what she’d said. ‘I wouldn’t let them,’ I said, half at her, and half to Buzz. She stared back at me and then looked down at the ground, like she knew what I’d said was right. Then she quietly said she wanted to go home. My stomach flipped then – I didn’t want her to go. She said she wished she’d never come to Australia and that she hated it on the station with no one to talk to. I felt bad. I remembered how worried I was when Buzz ran off – I’d felt sick. I guess the Pommie must have felt something like that about Dingo too.
The Pommie looked up at the sky and said how fat our stars were. She thought they were like pebbles. She said the cities’ skies have this skin of pollution over them, and because the desert doesn’t have that, or any street lights, the stars look brighter. I didn’t know if that was true, but I’ve thought about it from time to time since then and I reckon it makes sense. The Pommie said we had different stars to England, on account of Australia being in the southern hemisphere. She said we look out on a different part of the galaxy, or something. I’d never heard that before. She also said our seasons were backwards, so when we’re having our summer, in England it’s winter. That made me think about Jonny. I wondered if there was a northern and a southern hemisphere in heaven, and if he had to stay in ours, or if he could roam around like the seasons.
I asked Liz if she had any brothers or sisters. She didn’t – not really. Just a step-sister who she said she hated. Her mum and dad were divorced. Had been for years. They sent her to boarding school, then university and after her exams she came out to Australia – just for something to do.
We fastened Buzz and the calves in for the night then walked to the house together. She looked at the po
st in the yard, where Lloyd had tied Dingo, but she didn’t stop. Then out of nowhere she said, ‘By the time this muster’s over, you’ll be an uncle.’ I dunno why she said that. Then she shrugged and said she’d never be an aunty. Uncle Danny – I hadn’t thought of that before.
The next morning after smoko, Bobbie reckoned I should take the hide to the tip. She said it was starting to cause a stink. I said I’d have to miss a bit of school, but I guess right then, getting rid of the bad smell was more important to Bobbie than my education. I wasn’t complaining.
The hide did stink a bit and it seemed to be twice as heavy as it had been the day before. Maybe because of all the flies on it. As I hooked it onto the Old Rover, the Pommie showed up. I said what I was doing and that Bobbie had asked me to do it – just in case she thought I was wagging. She didn’t question it though. So I asked her if she wanted to come to the tip with me. She said she would because she’d never been before. I was surprised she wanted to come, especially with the hide. The Pommie stared at the blood that had gone brown and hard on my hands and under my fingernails. Then she looked at the hide folded like a hairy hanky behind us. She didn’t say it was disgusting or anything, though. As we went along, the wind blew her hair back off her face and I noticed she’d closed her eyes. She looked different – kind of peaceful. I dunno how long I’d been watching her for, but I hit a rock at the side of the road, and that kind of reminded me to look where I was going. It kind of woke Liz up too. So we chatted about the muster and how it was only about ten days until things would get under way.
When we got to the tip, I think she liked it. While I unhooked the hide, she had a little wander along to look at all our old rubbish. It was just the normal stuff: old fridges; an armchair; a chest without any drawers; a pile of magazines and newspapers; broken pots and pans; Emily’s old buggy; the Christmas wrapping paper, which was torn and faded; old tin cans; rags; cardboard boxes, which had gone mushy and deformed in the rains and then baked hard by the sun again. Nothing special.
When I started the Old Rover I shouted for her to get in. She looked like I’d interrupted her. She came over and smiled at me, then said the tip was like a museum to my family. I didn’t get it. I thought museums were places where important things were kept. But then I realised what she meant. She handed me a card with a picture of a cricket bat on the front. I didn’t recognise it, but when I looked inside, it felt like happiness and sadness were fighting over me. It said: To danny. happy 7th birthday. From jonny.
I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure if it was mine, or if it belonged to the desert. The Pommie looked at me and said, ‘Should I have left it?’ I shook my head and a tear fell off my face, onto my bloody hands, smudging the grubby card with blood. I was busy running my thumb over Jonny’s words, trying to remember him giving me the card.
After a while the Pommie asked me about Jonny. I guess she saw the look on my face because then she said I didn’t have to talk about it if I didn’t want to, she was just curious. That made me shrug and ask her what she wanted to know. She shrugged back at me, and said, ‘Anything.’ I guess I could have told her about Jonny’s cattle book and how he kept real good records in it about our herds. Or I could have told her about how Jonny was the best bowler his school had ever had – he won a cup for it. But I didn’t tell her those things. As I looked away, everything I remembered about the day of the accident fell out of my mouth. I’d never told anyone about it before.
It was the October school holidays, so Jonny and Sissy were at home. It was real hot, so I wanted to go to Clear Water Dam for a swim. Jonny wasn’t interested. He wanted to stay at home and work on his bowling. I didn’t get it. He’d been practising his bowling for ages – it was all he did. It wasn’t even as though I got to be in bat when he practised, he just wanted to bowl the balls at the wickets he’d drawn on the side of the shop, over and over again. He reckoned he needed to perfect his technique. He wanted to bowl a ball of the century just like Shane Warne had in the Ashes series a few months before. It was boring. Anyway, I went to Clear Water Dam on the motorbike on my own. I was gone a while, I guess. Time stands still when I think back to that day now.
When I got back to the station, I parked the motorbike and walked past the chooks; they seemed all flighty and strung out, but I didn’t think too much about it. I hopped up the steps to the back door and opened the fly screen as normal. I walked into the dining room. That’s when normal stopped. I knew straight away something bad had happened. It was weird. Everyone was in there – except Jonny, of course – but it wasn’t dinner time. No one was speaking. They were just kind of staring, but not at anything in particular. I didn’t know if I was allowed to ask what was going on, so I just stood there hoping someone would tell me what to do. It was Mum who told me to sit down. I walked to the seat next to her and put my wet swimming things on the table in front of me. I saw Mum’s hand on top of Dad’s. Their hands were just resting in front of them on the tablecloth – like they weren’t really theirs. Mum’s voice was smaller than normal when she said, ‘There’s been an accident.’ I listened and waited. It was like she didn’t know what to say next. My mind felt woolly and empty all at once. Like sounds weren’t real. Eventually Mum said, ‘It’s Jonny.’ As I looked round the table I knew it had to be him. He was the only one missing.
I stopped talking to the Pommie then and put the card into my shirt pocket – it felt real stiff against my chest. Liz asked, ‘What happened then?’ So I told her how I was too scared to ask Mum anything else. I stared at my swimming gear on the table in front of me for what felt like ages, wondering what to do. I didn’t dare look up. I kept thinking if I could just get up and go outside, I could come back in again and things would go back to normal. I dunno why, but I couldn’t move. I looked up and saw Jonny’s picture smiling back at me from the top of the piano on the other side of the table and somehow I knew he’d gone. Dad pulled his hand out from under Mum’s, his chair scraped back on the wooden floor and he stood up and went outside. He didn’t say anything. Not long after that Mum got up and went into their bedroom. I heard the door shut.
I looked across at Sissy and Emily on the other side of the table. Their faces were all weird, kind of blank or empty, or something, like they’d got stuck. I whispered to Sissy to ask what had happened to Jonny. I dunno why I whispered, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She started to cry – so Emily did too. In between all the tears, she got a few words out to explain everything. She said Dad had been in the yard, checking the generator. He thought he heard a scream, but he wasn’t sure because of the noise from the generator. I guess he just thought it was us kids messing around. A few minutes later one of the dogs went over to him with blood on her nose. Dad knew something was wrong then, for sure. He followed her round to the side of the house and that’s when he found Jonny and all the blood. He’d fallen off the house roof and landed on an old, metal fence post. Sissy said it went straight through him. By the time the flying doctor arrived, it was too late. Jonny had lost too much blood.
I needed to see where it had happened. I can’t remember getting up from the table and walking outside. But I must have. I just remember being at the side of the house where our bedroom windows are. On the ground there were all these flies, with the fence post sticking out of the middle of them. Seeing all the flies swarming over the ground like they did when we left the hide of a killer outside the cool room, made me wave my arms and legs around to try and scare them away. I wanted to get them off what was left of Jonny, I guess. I touched the fence post too. Just with my fingers at first, but then I kind of held it. It felt hot from the sun, but there wasn’t anything on it – it wasn’t sticky like I thought it would be. I dunno if someone had wiped it, or something.
The Pommie kind of squirmed in her seat then. I looked up and noticed her face was all twisted and she looked like she was going to cry. She turned away. Then I heard her say in this real quiet voice, ‘I’m so sorry, Danny … I had no idea …’ I f
elt like I didn’t have anything else to say then, so I started the engine and drove back to the station. We didn’t say anything on the way home. I tried not to think about Jonny, but my hands were trembling and they were real sweaty and kept slipping on the steering wheel. I dunno why, but that made me think about him even more.
When we got back, school had almost finished. The Pommie said that if I wanted, we could tell Bobbie we’d had engine problems with the Old Rover, and that’s why we were so late back. She did all the talking, so I didn’t have to say anything – I just nodded every now and then. Bobbie believed every word.
Fourteen
It was only about three days until Dad reckoned Reg and his mob would arrive at the station. Reg Evans had a team of fellas that travelled round the territory, mustering from station to station. Dad hired them to help us with our muster each year. I wanted to go to Jaben Point to see the fellas. I was pretty sick of being at the station with just a bunch of girls for company, but I knew the fellas would be busy building the yards over there and that was real hot, boring work – lifting fence panels and stuff. I was trying to decide, when the Pommie showed up at the calf pen. She needed help lifting some stuff into the Old Rover to take to the tip. I left Buzz and went to give her a hand.
She’d been clearing out the space under the house, so there was quite a lot of rubbish. Once we had it all loaded into the Old Rover, she asked if I’d got time to help her unload it at the tip. I told her she’d be able to manage on her own – the rubbish wasn’t that heavy. She looked embarrassed then and said quietly, ‘Danny, I can’t remember the way to the tip – so I need someone to come with me.’ I laughed at her and then she smiled at me and said, ‘I know – I’m useless.’