by Ron Elliott
Some hours later David went to find his uncle to see about food. He came upon a carriage called ‘Buffet’ and opened the door. There was Jack Tanner. He was sitting at the table just inside the door drinking a cup of tea. He looked up at David and glared. David stopped, and backed out instantly.
All through the morning, David rechecked. Jack Tanner would sometimes be playing cards, sometimes eating and sometimes just talking. And the people with him, both ladies and gentlemen and less gentle men, would change, but not Jack Tanner. This became his place on the train, between David and his uncle who he guessed was somewhere beyond, and also between David and food. Yet each time, when David willed himself to go to that carriage, he couldn’t bring himself to pass the batsman who he knew would continue to be unkind. And it seemed to David, as the morning dragged, and lunchtime came and went, that Jack Tanner was taking delight in keeping David out.
So David sat in the day carriage and watched the country go flat and dry. It didn’t seem like a desert, as there was so much scrub and bush, but the colours were white like bone and grey like dead leaves, and even though every window of the train was open, and they sped fast enough to make a breeze, he could feel the heat coming off the land and pulling at his face as his head bobbed and swayed.
At dusk the sky turned orange and the kangaroos and rabbits came, and later the foxes and dingos. Inside the train, people went past dressed for dinner. And still Uncle Mike had not returned and still Jack Tanner sat, this time eating his dinner. David’s stomach howled at him.
When they lit the lights inside the buffet David noticed that if he leaned forward, he could see the glass window at the place where the carriages joined. Every time someone came and went, and they opened the buffet door, there was a flash of Jack Tanner, reflected in the door window. David waited. Half an hour after Tanner had eaten he got up and left the table.
David went to the buffet door, in time to see Tanner heave himself out the other end of the carriage. David went in. They had tables, with tablecloths and a servery, but they were clearing up now. People drank beer and wine, but had finished eating it seemed. David would have to find his uncle to get some money for a meal.
He went to the other end of the buffet in time to see Tanner disappear into a toilet room. David entered that carriage, passing a little kitchen room and through another sit up. He went through another carriage filled with curtained sleepers and into yet another carriage. This one was filled with smoke and laughter and shouts. It was a bar, like a hotel on the train.
David came up behind his uncle who was playing cards for money. A woman was sitting next to him, laughing. She seemed old. Older than Mrs Pringle. But she was quite well dressed, with lots of pearls. David supposed she was not a floozy like Alice the barmaid.
‘Now that, Mrs Miller, is why you should be wary of bluffing with a pair of twos,’ explained his uncle to the lady. ‘If anyone has anything at all, you’re ... down the gurgler. Which is why I never bluff.’
‘Yeah, right. An’ pigs might fly,’ grumbled one of the men on the other side of the table.
‘What about on their way to pig heaven?’ said Michael, fast.
The lady looked shocked a moment, before pushing against Michael, with her shoulder. ‘Oh, you. You have an answer for everything.’
‘Gidday, laddie,’ said the other man, looking up at David. ‘Let me give yer a tip. Never gamble. With your own money, that is.’
They all laughed, loud and harshly. They were drunk.
Michael turned and saw him. ‘David. Where ya been?’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Hello there, David,’ said the lady. She had thin eyebrows and soft eyes. Her mouth had lipstick on. Her earrings were black, like three little black grapes that peaked out from her cloche hat. When David didn’t say anything, she turned and asked Michael, ‘Yours?’
‘No,’ said David, loud and sudden.
‘My brother’s son. David, let me introduce you. Ned is in sales. Fred is a bushy going home. And last, but not last at all, let me introduce you to Mrs Elizabeth Miller who is recently widowed and travelling to Melbourne to see her sister and family. Mrs Miller likes whist but not poker and she is proving of inestimable assistance in my eternal search for both convivial conversation and paltry riches.’
The lady giggled. The Ned man winked at David. The Fred man said, ‘You a bullshit artist too? Your uncle can talk the leg off a chair.’
‘Fellow travellers, this is David Donald, the greatest spin bowler that has ever been born. He’s about to play for the Australian team and prove it to the entire world.’
They laughed. Fred sounded like he would choke. Ned slapped his leg, spit coming from his open mouth. Mrs Miller nodded her head into Michael’s shoulder. They laughed, all except Uncle Mike, who watched them laughing without a smile.
David felt his face go hot.
‘Stop your teasing now.’ It was Mrs Miller. She had stopped and was looking kindly. She had powder on her face, quite a lot of powder.
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Well, get something to eat, mate,’ said his uncle.
‘I haven’t got any money.’
‘What?’
‘I haven’t got any money.’
‘Yeah, an’ I won’t in a tick the way I’m going either,’ said the Ned man.
‘Come on,’ said Fred. ‘We playin’ cards or what?’
‘Just a sec,’ said his uncle. ‘You just show your ticket, David. The food’s included.’
David thought about this. He had his ticket in his pocket. Maybe he should have read it. Found out the rules of the train ride. He’d do that when he got back to their sleeper.
‘Do you want me to come with you, David?’ It was Mrs Miller. ‘I can help you get your dinner if you like?’
‘No way, Lizzie,’ said one of the men. ‘You’re the only one I’m winnin’ off.’
‘He’ll be right,’ said Michael.
She smiled at David, and did a twitchy thing with her nose, before turning back to the men. ‘You bunch of brutes.’
They all laughed.
David went back to the buffet car. Jack Tanner was back in his seat, but with his back to David now. No one was eating, but they all looked like passengers and not train workers. He went back to the kitchen room, where a man dressed in white clothes was washing dishes.
David stood at the door until the man noticed him.
‘Eh, boy. What you want?’ The man was an Italian like Mr Buralli, who had a farm further up river in Dungarin.
‘I want some dinner, sir.’ David took out his ticket and showed it.
‘Dinner finish. No more.’
‘I can have dinner because of my ticket.’
‘No, no. Five-thirty sitting. Seven o’clock sitting. Dinner finish.’ The man gestured with both hands to all the dishes in the sink.
David looked at all the dishes. He saw one that hadn’t been scraped. There was a half bread roll and some gravy. David pointed. The man threw down his washcloth and said lots of angry Italian words. David looked back towards the card game end of the train, and wondered if he should go back and ask for the kind Mrs Miller’s help. But the Italian man came out of another door, carrying a plate with a metal lid on it. He pointed at David, and said, ‘Breadfast sitting. Lunch sitting. Yes?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said David.
The man gave him the plate, and smiled and slapped David on the cheek. It was not so much a slap, as a hard pat. Then before David could react, the Italian man pushed David towards the buffet carriage, saying, ‘Eat.’
David went, knowing that in spite of all the slapping and yelling and pushing it had been friendly, and that the man had broken some rules so that David could have his dinner.
Jack Tanner was back in his seat at the other end of the buffet car, so David stood in the alcove between the kitchen car and the buffet car. It swayed violently and he could see the tracks rushing past, but he felt he could eat in peace. He lifted the metal l
id to find a chicken leg and some salad and two bread rolls with butter. David tried to make himself eat slowly but was soon sucking on the fleshless chicken bone.
He wondered whether he should take the plate back to the Italian man, but didn’t want to. So he edged into the buffet car, and put the plate on the first table, and then crept along until he was just a few feet behind Tanner. Then he ran to the door.
As he grabbed the handle to turn it, he could hear, ‘What are you doing, skulking around?’
But David didn’t turn and didn’t stop. He ran straight out, leaving the door flap unlatched, as he made it to the other door and went through, slamming that shut tight, before running on, all the way to his sleeper number seven.
David panted as he lay on the small bed behind the curtain. His heart was beating fast and he listened to it until it slowed and he wasn’t aware of it any more. The train swayed. He listened to the regular click of wheel on rail.
David woke as he was pulled forward by the force of the train suddenly stopping. It was night. There were people calling in urgent voices, the sound of running feet. David pulled aside his sleeping curtain to see stewards scrambling. Someone was yelling for water.
Below him, his uncle’s bed was empty and unused. There was an odd sound somewhere, like screaming, but not like any screaming David knew.
He put on his boots and moved up towards the end of the carriage, pushing past other passengers who asked, ‘What’s happened?’, ‘What’s wrong?’ The door at the end was open, revealing an orange glow outside. And still the distant screaming, low and pained and fearful.
Lanterns were moving outside. More shouts. David jumped down onto the rough ground next to the tracks.
There was a cattle train with half its carriages overturned. A fire. Cows were wandering and calling. Some limped. Some were down. Most were bleeding. Men ran, lanterns swaying and shuddering. The fire was billowing halfway down the carriages, like a big yellow flower. A driver from David’s train had attached a canvas hose behind the steam engine. Men were filling buckets with water from it. Everyone was shouting.
Jack Tanner reared up out of the smashed wood of the guard’s van with a man over his shoulders and staggered over wreckage. ‘Doctor! We need medics here.’
Then David saw where the screams were coming from. There were cows trapped in the shattered cattle trucks. The wooden planking had splintered in places, stabbing and spearing them. Many looked dead. Others were gashed or had stakes of wood sticking out from their stomachs, their flanks, their faces. Other cows, David saw, were not dead, nor even wounded, but still trapped and struggling. Their eyes were huge and open, reflecting the approaching fire.
David thought he saw his uncle on the other side of that carriage, pulling down a broken piece of wood so the cows could escape. A lantern swayed.
‘Dynamite!’ someone called.
Up ahead some of the cattle train was still on the tracks, including the engines. Men were trying to unshackle the fallen carriages to get the upright ones away. Men were throwing buckets of water on the fire, then running back to the passenger train to refill them. A man came out of a wagon with a wooden box. ‘Get out, there’s dynamite.’ Men backed away. ‘Get it out of there.’ Jack Tanner, his derby gone, jumped up into the dynamite wagon.
David saw another carriage near the fire. The cattle in there were stomping their hooves in puddles of blood as they tried to back away. They whimpered. They called. David grabbed onto the side of the wagon and hauled himself up at the gate. The metal pin holding it closed was already warm.
‘Get out. Get out,’ yelled someone.
David was trying to pull the pin up, but his long fingers were awkward with this kind of fiddly work and the pin kept falling back down into the slot.
‘The dynamite’s gunna go.’
‘Run!’
David pulled the pin out and threw it to the ground. But the gate stayed closed. He grabbed it with both hands, and pushed hard against the side with his feet. The gate swung out and he held on, riding it away. Then just as it reached the end of its arc, he let go. But one of those long stupid fingers of his caught on something. The third finger of his right hand jammed, and took the whole weight of David’s body for a moment before it came free.
He fell to the ground as the cattle poured out of the wagon. The first hit the ground, breaking its forelegs. It floundered and collapsed, as others jumped down on top running off into the night.
A hand grabbed his shoulder. It was Jack Tanner. ‘This is no place for a boy.’
‘The cattle. Got to get them away.’
‘You get back. Now!’ He shoved David hard towards their train.
David staggered a few steps but looked back to see Tanner go to the cow that had jumped first. It struggled uselessly. Jack Tanner had a pistol. He fired into its head.
Then the dynamite exploded. The wagon holding it disappeared in white light, followed by a dull, short whumph. It and half the next wagon were gone. The air shook and puffed alive for a moment. Burning bits of wood fell from the sky.
David was on his knees. He could see Mrs Miller, standing in a white nightgown off to the other side of the track. It was darker there but the firelight showed her trying to pull at a sitting man. David climbed between two carriages and went to them.
‘Michael please,’ said the lady, dragging at his uncle’s shoulder.
Michael sat in the dirt, with a cow, its head in his lap. ‘And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall. By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.’ Michael stroked the cow’s cheek. It lay, unmoving, but with an eye open, carefully watching the man. Michael looked off at one of the rifle shots. ‘Shoot straight and kill them all,’ he said without emotion.
Mrs Miller looked to David. She was frightened.
‘Shh, shh, matey. Let it go. Just let it go, and slip into the warm water. Like a swim, they say. Like swimming in a warm bit of river, floating.’ Michael talked gently, soothing. ‘Good news, mate. You’re all here. All your bits and pieces all together. In heaven, you’ll be you. That’s a comfort, surely.’
David could see blood covering the cow’s stomach. Its chest moved slowly. Barely.
‘Please,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘he’s talking crazy.’
Michael ignored her, talking only to the dying cow. ‘Bugger the poetry, buddy. That’s what the yanks call their mates. Buddy. I’ll find your hands, Ernie. I promise, I’ll look around in the mud here and I’ll find them sure. Be somewhere near my toe, I reckon. I’ll tell ’em you went easy. I’ll tell them, you died quick, with no pain. They’ll like that, won’t they. Clean it up to make them feel better. Be a medal in this. Someone better send a bloody medal home.’
‘Please Michael, come away. You’re frightening me.’
David couldn’t speak. He stood with Mrs Miller watching.
‘I can see down into your eyes, all the way, to the other side. Pain. It’s like hot, melting metal being pushed into the smithy’s water, like lightning frozen into the sky. Watch. Watch. There. It’s going now, mate. I can see it going. I’m not lying. I’m watching the pain go. It’s already miles away and flying. Just drift, mate. Just relax and let go and float away. Good lad.’
David looked down into the cow’s eye as the pain seeped away. A moment later, you could see the life go too, just as his uncle had described it. Like a match blown out.
Michael started to laugh. It was happy and light and awful in the gore and fire by the train tracks.
Jack Tanner stepped from nowhere, his pistol in his hand.
‘No,’ called David, thinking in that instant that Tanner might actually use the gun on Michael.
But Tanner stepped forward, slapping Michael hard with an open hand.
Mrs Miller gave a small gasp. Michael’s head jolted back from the blow. He seemed to wake and look around.
‘Pull yourself together, man.’
Tanner walked off, as Michael looked down at the dead cow a moment. He seemed confused and surpris
ed and stupid all at once, as though trying to remember something. Then he looked around at David and Mrs Miller. ‘Don’t need to pull myself anywhere, man. I have Liz here.’ He reached up towards her, trying to smile. His nose was bleeding a little from Tanner’s blow. His cheeks were wet. ‘Oh, Lizzie, I need to lie on those wonderful breasts and forget about this head I’ve got on.’
He grabbed at her nightgown, and she jumped back. ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No, Michael. Not now.’ There was a smudge of blood on the nightgown where Michael had grabbed. She turned to David. ‘We only just met. Fun like. I can’t ... No.’ Then she got angry with Michael. ‘And you have no right to expect it.’ She started to walk back towards their train, but then she ran. There were other women gathered back there, watching her with fear.
David looked back the other way. There was only one carriage still burning. Men with buckets ran dark against the fire. The dynamite had exploded a gap in the train. There was less moaning from the cows, and fewer gun shots. The accident had taken on a calm and order.
‘Stupid old cow,’ said Michael, as he patted the dead thing on his lap. ‘Help us up would you old bean? My leg seems to have gone to sleep.’
David pulled at his uncle up.
‘You know,’ said Michael, ‘you look a lot like your father sometimes.’
He limped badly as David led him back towards the train. Someone gasped as they saw how much blood was on him.
A voice said, ‘Was it bad?’
‘Is anyone hurt?’ said another.
David helped his uncle lie down in the sleeper and stayed with him.
He looked at his finger, which hurt, and saw it swelling. He could barely wriggle any of his fingers on his bowling hand. He pushed it under his left armpit where the warmth settled the pain a little.
He looked to his uncle who was laying in his bloody clothes with his eyes closed. ‘Is that the war you were talking about? Out there, Uncle Mike?’
‘Did I have a bit of a turn, mate?’
David didn’t answer.
‘Say some silly things?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Scary things?’