‘What are you waiting for?’ Dougal whispered.
‘How do you want me to hold it?’ Colin asked, trying to picture the tackle in his mind.
‘Just hold it. It doesn’t matter how. Go on.’
Colin inched closer and the sheep’s head came up and turned to the side.
‘He knows I’m here.’
‘What are you waiting for, an introduction?’
‘It’s harder than you think.’
‘Just go,’ Dougal pushed his shoulder. The sheep sprang forward and Colin, spurred into action by the sudden movement, launched himself on. One, two, three paces. The sheep was ahead of him, changing direction at every bounce, but Colin was definitely gaining. He jumped at the animal’s woolly back and grasped its neck, trying to use his weight to ride it to the ground, but the sheep was strong enough to hold him up. Colin slid to the ground and was dragged behind it.
‘Hold him still. Hold him still,’ Dougal screamed.
‘Just do it.’
There were other sounds now as the rest of the animals gave voice to their distress. The dog’s barking reached a frenzy as Dougal made his attack. It was a clumsy, inexpert approach. He was unable to get a fix on the animal’s throat and instead the blade sank in at the shoulders, just above where Colin was holding on. The sheep leapt with the pain of it and this time Colin let go. Dougal fell on top of him. The sheep, the knife still stuck in it, ran about in mad, pained circles, bleating piteously.
‘What did you let go for?’
‘Why didn’t you slit its throat like you said you would?’
‘You can’t do it when it’s moving can you?’
‘Well you’re going to have to try again. We can’t leave it like that. It’s cruel.’
‘Bugger cruel, it’s dinner.’
The boys stood up and had just begun to move into position for the second attack when a rifle shot split the air. A clump of dirt was blasted free only a few feet in front of them.
‘Jesus.’
The two of them froze, long enough for a second shot to ring out. This time the bullet smashed into the side of the building.
‘He’s over there.’
Colin looked back to where Dougal pointed. The farmer was three paddocks away but approaching quickly; then dropping to his knees for another shot.
‘The mad bastard means to kill us.’
‘He’s a distance off. He won’t be able to get us from there.’
‘Then he’ll kill us by accident.’ A third shot rang out.
‘Come on, let’s go.’ Dougal led the charge to the hills and Colin followed close behind. It would have ended just like that, if the farmer hadn’t let off a fourth shot. It took the stuck sheep, square between the eyes, and lowered it instantly. Dougal, seeing what had happened, changed course.
‘Come on, grab an end, we’ll take it with us.’
‘You’re crazy. He’ll catch us.’
‘We’ve got a handy lead.’
‘He’ll set the dogs on us.’
But as Colin was fast learning, arguing with Dougal didn’t change things. Already he had one end of the dead animal draped across his shoulders and was crouched over, waiting for Colin to take his share. They stumbled back into the bush with the dead weight draped about them like some grotesque scarf. Colin could feel the warmth of its recent life against him. The wet stickiness of blood ran down his neck and the living juices of its stomach sloshed about with every step. They ran hard, or as hard as was possible, and apart from two more shots overhead, they heard no more from the farmer.
FIVE
Bush
‘WHAT are you doing?’ Dougal asked.
‘I’m cold.’
‘That won’t warm you.’
‘The wool’s warm.’
They had been staggering through the bush for over an hour and it was exhaustion, rather than a feeling of safety, that had made them stop. The sheep, heavy enough to start with, had increased its burden with every step and now lay stretched out on the ground beneath a punga. Colin lay beside it, hugging the dead body closely.
‘You look sick like that.’
‘I don’t care how I look. You should have got us coats. Why didn’t you bring coats with you?’
‘I was in a hurry.’
Dougal, sitting with his knees to his chest and his arms tight around himself, looked no better prepared for the change in the weather. Bare feet, same as Colin, grey trousers that might once have been thick, and a cotton shirt, too big for him with nothing to say to the cold.
‘That’s right. I forgot. The fire.’
‘I never said there was a fire.’
‘Not everything needs saying. Are we staying here?’
‘Why should I have to decide everything? What am I, your mother?’ Dougal asked.
‘All right. We’ll stay,’ Colin replied.
‘He might still be following.’
‘We’d have heard him.’
‘Not if he went slowly.’
‘If he went slowly he will have lost us.’
‘He might have the dog with him. We’d be easy enough to track, with that bleeding thing.’
‘It’s not bleeding any more. Look.’
Colin pushed his finger into the bullet hole, as far as the first knuckle. A blob of congealed blood squeezed out and formed a dark ring in the surrounding wool.
‘You feel the brain?’
‘No. Probably they’re quite small.’
‘Why?’
‘Well they’re stupid aren’t they?’
‘That one was,’ Dougal laughed.
‘Just standing there while he shot at us. You can eat brains you know. They’re quite good.’
‘I bet you never have.’
‘I have too.’
‘Eat this one then.’
‘I’d have to be hungry’
‘I’m hungry, so are you.’
‘You eat it then.’
‘Rather eat the meat. Shall we cut some off, start a fire? You have matches right?’ asked Colin.
‘Course I’ve got matches. I’m not sure we’ve gone far enough for a fire though. They might see us.’
‘It was just one sheep. He’s not going to chase us all day for it.’
‘Maybe he was very close to it, same as you are,’ Dougal teased.
‘Already told you. I’m cold.’
There was silence then, and a look on Dougal’s face like he was deciding whether to say something more.
‘There’s other people too, who might be looking for us.’
‘What people?’
‘Doesn’t matter. We just have to be careful. That’s all you have to know.’
‘And I’m not walking any further,’ Colin told him. ‘Not tonight. And that’s all you have to know.’ Colin stood and the cold hit him again. ‘Come on. Let’s get a fire or we’ll freeze.’
‘This isn’t cold.’ Dougal tried to shrug it off but he was shivering too. ‘I suppose if it’ll stop you complaining.’
Colin collected the wood while Dougal arranged the fire. It didn’t need discussing, it was just the way it was. Dougal was the leader. Anything that needed doing, anything that wasn’t simple, that could go wrong, Dougal would do it. Colin watched him, crouched over his collection of sticks, placing them carefully one at a time, his face screwed up in concentration like they might combust by the force of his will alone. And Colin was reminded of the flames from the night before, and the blood on the handle of the knife, and although he didn’t know exactly what had happened, it was getting easier to guess.
The fire took quickly and soon embers had fallen to the centre, glowing orange and red. Colin sat with his feet so close they ached. He felt the warmth spread up his body, and across from him Dougal’s face sweated red through the flames. It was late and evening had already fallen beneath the bush. The light of the fire danced on the trunks of the surrounding trees and Colin might even have felt contentment, were it not for the gnawing in his stomach.
>
‘I’m still hungry you know. Shall we start to cook the meat?’
‘We need to gut it first, and skin it too. The skin can keep us warm.’
‘How do you do that?’
Dougal looked at him, like he thought he might be joking.
‘Don’t know much do you, for a farm boy.’
‘It was cows.’
‘That’ll be useful, if we find one needs milking. Come on then. You can still help.’
Colin followed Dougal’s instructions, first holding the unlucky beast by the shoulders while Dougal hacked through its neck, causing the head to loll about as if in protest. Then he was through and the sheep was no longer a sheep. It was a collection of wool, and skin and meat and bone, and other useful things that would have to last them until the next time they killed. Dougal made a great show of taking the head and placing it in the fork of a tree, so that it could look down on proceedings. He looked at Colin, like he was hoping he would laugh, or protest, but it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t anything. It was just meat, and Colin was hungry.
Next they found some young supplejack, thin enough to act as twine, and while Colin held the carcass over his shoulder Dougal tied its forelegs to an overhead branch, so it hung as if by a hook behind a butcher’s counter. They found two rocks, just bigger than their hands with sharp edges, and scooped out a hole beneath the animal, wide enough for both of them to stand in, and as deep as their knees when they did.
Dougal had evidently done these things before, or had watched carefully while someone else had. With careful quick slits around the legs and shoulders, and with much pulling on Colin’s part, they were able to peel the skin off in a single piece. Next Dougal ran a deeper cut up the stomach and stood back as the insides fell out in a noisy rush of twists and bulges. He cut them free and they slopped into the hole. Dougal took down the head and threw it in as well, before they covered it over and tramped the dirt back down.
‘So they won’t know we were here,’ Dougal said. Colin wasn’t about to ask again who ‘they’ were, and Dougal wasn’t about to tell.
It was another two hours before Dougal was satisfied the beast was cooked. They had it stuck through with a strong stick and balanced across two uprights, and they watched it sizzle and colour over the flames, stirring to turn it occasionally, talking even less. For Colin it wasn’t because there was nothing to say, but more that there was too much. The longer they didn’t speak the easier the silence became, until eventually even the thought of talking felt unnatural. It was like an evening in with Dad. No point talking when there’s nothing needs saying he’d say, nodding his head in time with the words and then, when he’d finished, repeating them, as if the sentence only made sense when said twice. Colin wouldn’t disagree.
They had an end of a leg each. The meat was hot and full of juice, and tastier the closer it got to the bone. Colin held both ends tight and felt the blood and fat dribble down his chin, and watched Dougal through the flames doing the same. For the first time since he saw the ship Colin felt a happiness that didn’t come with sleep.
Behind him, stretched out between two sticks stuck in the ground, wool faced away from the flames, the skin of the sheep the farmer shot dried out.
‘Shall we bury the bones too?’ Colin asked, when he had sucked the leg white and clean.
‘We’ll do it tomorrow, when we hide the fire.’
‘What about the rest of the meat?’
‘We’ll eat more in the morning. We’ll carry the rest with us.’
‘Carry it where?’
‘Where we’re going,’ was all Dougal said, and in a way that made it obvious he didn’t want to hear the next question.
But Colin still asked, because it worried him now and it would worry him more in the morning. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Wherever you want to go.’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
‘You want to go back there?’ Dougal motioned with his head back towards the farmlands of the valley.
‘No.’
‘We’ll that’s where we’re going then. We’re not going back down there.’ He said it like that was the last word to be said on the matter and Colin said nothing, because he couldn’t think of any others.
* * *
The cold crept back in as the embers faded. Colin lay as close to the reminder of fire as he could and wrapped himself in the sheepskin, which smelt more of smoke now than death. At first Dougal stayed sitting up, ‘on watch’ he said, but the cold must have got to him too, or the efforts of the day.
‘Give us some of that then.’
Dougal pulled on the sheepskin, and lay down so his front was warm against Colin’s back. The closeness forced the cold into retreat, and Colin would have slept then but for the sounds Dougal was making. At first Colin thought it was a cough, but it was too quiet for that; regular, gulped swallowing, like he was trying to stop himself from choking, then his body moving, racked with painful, silent spasms. Colin could feel the wet warmth of sadness on his neck. He wondered if he should say something, or turn around and confront the crying, but he knew there was no real point. Whatever it was that was troubling his friend, he was keeping it to himself.
Colin didn’t expect the dreams to come. It was too strange here, and he was too tired to think of anything much, and the images that first sealed his eyelids were nothing more than the usual jumble of half thoughts and memories that had lost their way in the dark. But slowly and irresistibly a new picture formed, as clear as any of the other dreams, but different too.
To start with, Colin wasn’t part of it. It was as if he had looked in on a dream that was perfectly happy unfolding without him, or it was somebody else’s dream. It was daylight, but only just. The sun was low and burnt an angry orange against the fading grey-green of the hills. It was back at the farm. The truck was parked out front, the tray still loaded with milk cans, unusual for that time of day. Not unusual were the sounds. Mrs Sowby mostly, in full flight, using every phrase she knew to explain to her husband just how useless he was, and then, when the supply was exhausted, inventing new ones. Her hair was down again, and her eyes shone with a rage past Colin’s imagination. From the place where Colin’s dream had set him he couldn’t see much of Mr Sowby’s reaction. All that was on show was the broad of his back, and the rolls of fat at his neck expanding and compressing as he nodded his agreement and slowly backed away.
Someone else was there too. He stepped into view from behind the truck, straightening as if he might have been stooped down, inspecting something. Dressed for inspection too, with a thick blue uniform buttoned silver at the breast, and the peaked black hat of a policeman. His face didn’t belong to that world, and its expression showed he knew it. Shaved too close, protected too well against the sun, mouth too tight and careful to survive in a place like this. He had a notebook, and obviously wanted to say something, but first Mrs Sowby would have to stop, and in dreams there’s no need to draw breath.
Then there was a fourth, and silence came so that they all, Colin and players too, looked his way. He was grey, the not-quite-colour between everything and nothing. Not a person and not a ghost. Not ghoulish, not dripping flesh or rotting on the bone, just grey and empty, and terrible for it. Grey as if burnt, the crust turned lightly to soot, a breath away from nothingness. He stood among them and they were silent, and the sight of him filled Colin with such fear that he didn’t dare breathe, or wake.
The apparition opened his mouth as if to speak and Colin saw the greyness covered everything; lips, tongue, teeth and the darkness beyond. Colin jumped. Away from the image, away from the dream, away from Dougal who had been holding him. He sat, wide awake in the darkness, the shapes of the bush distinguishable only by the depth of their blackness.
‘You can hear it too can’t you?’ Dougal’s voice, sitting up now, careful and quiet and filled with fear.
‘Hear what?’
‘What made you sit up just th
en?’
‘It was just a dream.’
‘You weren’t dreaming. He’s here. He’s followed us.’
‘Who’s followed us?’
‘Ssh.’ Colin felt Dougal’s hand on his shoulder, a warning at first, but it didn’t move. Colin listened to the sounds of the bush, a breeze working its way through the leaves, a small animal somewhere, possum, stumbling through the undergrowth, a branch letting go and falling to the ground. He strained his eyes to see through the blackness, but the only shapes to form were the shapes of his imagination, grey and dangerous.
‘Why do we have to be quiet?’
‘He’s listening,’ Dougal whispered, and Colin wanted to tell him to stop, because the darkness and the silence and Dougal’s grip, still tight on his shoulder, were frightening him.
‘If you don’t tell me who he is I’m going to scream you know, so loud the whole damned valley will be able to find us.’
‘Do it and I’ll slit your throat.’
‘Like you slit that sheep,’ Colin replied.
‘You should have held it still.’
‘You were dreaming, that’s all,’ Colin told him. ‘Same as I was.’
‘It weren’t no dream. I saw him.’
‘It’s too dark to see your own hand.’
‘There’s things you don’t know,’ Dougal told him.
‘So is he still here?’
‘I don’t think so. Here, listen, let’s be quiet for a bit.’
They lay down again, side by side, the sheepskin stretched across them. Colin listened but the only new sound was the beating of Dougal’s heart, as hard and insistent as his own.
‘I think it’s all right. I think he’s gone,’ Dougal said, and Colin didn’t answer because it was like he’d been telling it to himself.
‘I’ll stay awake now, I think,’ Dougal said a little later. ‘To be safe. You can have your turn tomorrow.’
‘Dougal?’
‘What?’
‘What did he look like?’
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