One

by Patrick Holland

  Nixon said nothing.

  ‘And sometimes they decide to kill a man because they haven’t done so in a while.’

  ‘Like you,’ said Nixon.

  ‘No. Not like me. The innocent are safe with me.’ He faced the Skillington boy. ‘I wonder how far those we met on the road have ridden since their last kill.’

  The boy took a swig from Nixon’s whisky flask and looked over his shoulder into the dark.

  Jim Kenniff saw it.

  ‘Let me tell you something, boy. When a man wants to kill you. Even a savage. Especially a savage. There’s nothing in the world that can stop him apart from you killin him first. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?’

  Nixon eyed Jim Kenniff then extended his hand to the Skillington boy.

  ‘Give me that flask, lad.’

  Nixon took a drink and offered it to Jim Kenniff who shook his head.

  ‘A sip does me more harm than good. I’ll save it till I’m more comfortable.’

  ‘That could be a while.’

  ‘Maybe. Sleep well, Sergeant Nixon. I’ll stay watch.’

  Nixon took another drink of whisky and passed the flask back to the boy.

  Before they bedded down Nixon took the Skillington boy and King Edward aside.

  ‘His men might be close by.’

  ‘You said they’d be frightened.’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong. Just look at him sitting there.’ Nixon took up his flask. ‘Have you ever seen a man in irons so certain he’s gonna get out of them?’ He drank. ‘Edward, you take the first watch. I’ll take the second. And lad, you the last – by then it will be near dawn.’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  ‘Are you alright, Edward?’

  King Edward nodded.

  ‘Don’t talk to him,’ said Nixon. ‘No talkin.’

  King Edward nodded.

  ‘No talkin, boss.’

  ‘Good.’ He turned to the Skillington boy. ‘Let’s bed down and get some sleep.’

  Nixon woke from strange dreams with King Edward’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Your watch, boss.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘No. Nothin.’

  A wind was rising in the south.

  ‘How are the horses?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Not spooked by that wind?’

  ‘Wind?’

  ‘Guwara?’

  ‘No guwara. Only small wind.’

  Nixon rubbed his eyes and looked at Jim Kenniff. Perhaps he was sleeping.

  ‘Has he said anything? He speak?’

  ‘Little. He ask for water.’

  ‘Did you give him water?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good man. Now sleep.’

  Nixon went to the fire. There was no flame and only red coals. He pushed a half-burnt log into the middle with the heel of his boot. He took a spray of dry eucalypt leaves and held the tips of the leaves in the coals till they caught.

  ‘Why do you do what you do?’

  Nixon turned and saw Jim Kenniff’s green eyes open and staring at him.

  After a time of silence Nixon spoke.

  ‘I hardly know. I suppose in the beginning it was hope of achieving justice. Though I knew better then what that word meant.’

  He rolled a cigarette. He looked at Jim then looked back to the fire. There was a gust of cold wind and the fire flushed red.

  ‘But my mother was killed when I was a boy. One afternoon I came home and she was dead. Bushrangers or Aborigines. No one ever discovered.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry, man.’

  Then he nodded towards King Edward who was sleeping against a rock. Nixon had placed a pistol in the black boy’s hand for the night watch and asleep he gripped it still.

  ‘As I have seen it,’ Jim Kenniff said, ‘violence is power. And power makes your laws. In a new land like this, you see it without its mask.’

  ‘I reckoned you’d be Catholic. Doesn’t all the power and glory belong to God?’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘If power belongs to God them let Him wield it. No man can judge me.’

  ‘I know what you and your boys have done, Jim Kenniff.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘I’m not surprised you can’t admit it. But the men you killed weren’t like you and me. They didn’t drink or lie with whores. They wrote letters to their mothers and sent parcels of money. Did you think of that when you butchered and burnt them on a rock like some coward Stone Age pagan?’

  Each man stared into the other’s eyes.

  Jim spat into the fire.

  ‘Let me tell you about my encounters with the law, Sergeant Nixon. I will tell you three of em. All before I was twelve years old.

  ‘The first was seeing men in the coat you’re wearing now, draggin my father out of his house on his back, ankles lashed with rawhide, in front of my mother, for the theft of a bullock that was unmarked and would’ve run wild all its life had the old man not roped it and dragged it down out of the stones. I was nine. That is the first thing I remember about the police.

  ‘Here is the second. I was with a hunting party, me and some Irish boys in the snow country on the border. We’d ridden into some country that was new to us. Wooded hills. A patrol of police tracked us. We found an abandoned settler’s hut. The police shot at the walls of the hut through the night. Maybe they reckoned they were marking their territory. We were too scared to fire back. Once they knew this they rode down to the hut, made us lie down on the ground and spread our hands and broke our knuckles with the butts of their rifles. To this day Paddy can’t hold a cigarette in his left hand. But Paddy got up to fight and one of the policeman hit him in the side of the head with the stock of a revolver. Could’ve killed him. They were men. Not one of us was eighteen. They left us lying in the snow.

  ‘That was the second time. Now let me tell you the third time. Back in Stanthorpe a rogue tribe of blacks raided a store, killed the man keepin it. The tribe was long gone into the bush before word even got back to town. But afterwards the police and a gang of men they deputised on the spot walked through the bush and shot every black man, woman and child they found, includin two that were working on my dad’s place, before the government took it from him. That violence went to review and was deemed excessive. So after that, any trouble from any one of the blacks in town and the police’d round up the lot and make them drunk on cheap liquor mixed with tobacco, so you’d see them lyin in the street, where men could test the thickness of their skulls with bullwhips and rifle stocks.’

  ‘Any more?’ said Nixon.

  ‘Yes. Many. But more than that I’m too tired to tell you. Only this – every man of the police, and every man who rides with the police, is my enemy.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘It was the Crown that gave you that land you’re fighting for.’

  ‘Fuck the Crown. And I’m not fighting for land.’

  ‘So –’

  ‘So don’t ask. Everybody asks. And I can’t put it in words.’

  Nixon was silent.

  Jim Kenniff stared up at the stars. Then out at the dark.

  ‘All you do is take from me. I have no stake in the world. No home.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘When my mother was killed I was away with my father. My father was no good after that. He turned to drink. He was shot at a card table by an Irish bandit. He didn’t die of that, but of syphilis a year later. Since eleven I have lived in the care of the government.’

  Jim nodded.

  ‘Again, I am sorry for that, man.’

  ‘Me as well.’

  ‘You have a woman?’

  ‘No. There was one once. I was engaged. Years ago. But this life doesn’t suit a woman. This country doesn’t suit a woman. But in truth, I was not a good man to her. I wasn’t worthy. I couldn’t love her in the way a woman should be loved. And now …’

  ‘I can only love what is broken.’

  ‘What needs most defe
nding.’

  Nixon looked in Jim’s eyes. Again they sat in silence. Jim spoke.

  ‘When I was young and I wanted to be … I don’t know. Later I told myself I was a rebel and a freedom fighter. And there were days I was that. And you were always hunting me. In one form or another. In one man or one agent of the law or another. And now I do not care what happens to me. But now I have a woman. A girl – I spose you could say I have a girl.’

  Nixon looked up from the fire. Jim Kenniff raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You couldn’t roll me one of those smokes, could you?’

  Nixon pinched the tobacco in his pouch. He laid the tobacco along the paper and rolled and lit the cigarette and put it in Jim’s mouth.

  Jim drew on the cigarette and turned his head and blew the ash into the dark.

  ‘You were saying about a girl,’ Nixon said.

  Jim laughed. He spoke through the cigarette.

  ‘I met her … God, I can’t even remember how. Probably I was drunk. Half-dark half-Chink slip of a thing.’ He smiled through his cigarette. ‘I’ve only ever given her trouble, like every other man, I spose. Tough as goat’s hide. Yet gentle.’

  Nixon nodded.

  ‘I think I know …’ He frowned. Looked away into the dark. He drank.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘I’ve known women like that.’

  Jim Kenniff nodded.

  ‘Aye, you’d think she’d be afraid of me. But she isn’t. And it’s been good to lie beside her when I can, out here in this wilderness. Feel her hand in mine. I remember that first time, she smelt so clean. I guess whores are typically clean.’

  Nixon looked up at the stars then down to the fire and closed his eyes.

  ‘Will you go back to her?’

  Jim Kenniff laughed and shook his tied hands.

  ‘If you could,’ said Nixon. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Nixon nodded. Jim laughed.

  ‘You aren’t gonna ask me where she is now?’

  ‘No. But have you lain with her? In the Biblical sense?’

  ‘Hell, man, what’s that to you?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing, I spose.’

  ‘Surely you’ve had women, Sergeant Nixon? In the Biblical sense?’

  ‘Many. None who loved me.’

  ‘You were engaged.’

  ‘She was a good girl. From a good family. But the girl you spoke of before, do you love her?’

  Jim Kenniff furrowed his brow. He spat the end of his cigarette into the fire and looked up at the stars. Tears came to his eyes. He said nothing.

  Nixon spoke again.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Jim breathed deep.

  ‘Some weeks ago, I reckon.’

  ‘Was she … was she well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jim looked into Nixon’s eyes.

  Nixon nodded and checked the breech of his rifle.

  ‘I hope your girl does well for herself. Somehow. I hope things do not go too badly for her.’

  ‘Me as well.’

  They sat in silence. Nixon had been looking at the fire gone to red embers. Now he glanced at Jim Kenniff. Saw pain in his face. He wanted to put his hand on the man’s shoulder. It was a fool thing to do. But he put his hand on Jim Kenniff’s shoulder.

  Jim looked up at him and smiled. He nodded to the camp. He looked at the stars. The stars rode the horizon. It was very late now.

  ‘Your boy’s rousing,’ said Jim. ‘Get some sleep, Sergeant. Your prisoner will sleep now too. I’ve got nothin to say to the boy.’

  Nixon motioned to the boy to come. The wind had come again and blew fire into the coals though it made the air beyond the fire colder.

  Nixon lay down on his bedroll and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them Jim Kenniff was flanked by Tom Lawton on one side and Paddy and Elden Calhoun on the other. Tom Lawton’s rifle was pointed squarely at Nixon’s head. The other two had revolvers aimed at King Edward and the Skillington boy. The Skillington boy slept. His chin on his chest. Nixon sat up. He heard the hammer of Tom’s rifle click fast. No one said a word. Tom shook his head. Jim stood. Nixon saw another man standing in the dark with four horses. The Skillington boy was awake now and looking to Nixon for instruction.

  Paddy spoke.

  ‘Keys.’

  Then there was the report of a carbine and a wild howling. A horse flashed by the camp with a black and grinning rider naked to the waist. The rider aimed a revolver into the camp and fired and the bullet nicked a rock and ricocheted above their heads. The horse rode on to join the howls on the plain.

  All the men in the camp ducked low. King Edward scuttled to shelter.

  Jim Kenniff shouted,

  ‘It’s the native police come back.’

  The Skillington boy stood in the open.

  ‘Do they want King Edward?’

  His eyes were open wide. He wanted to move his feet but could not.

  Nixon pulled the Skillington boy behind a rock. The Kenniff gang was behind an outcrop on the other side of the camp along with King Edward. Nixon looked out to the south and saw the flash of carbine fire. Then return fire came from further out on the plain.

  ‘No. They’ve caught up with some other lot.’

  ‘Should we fire a flare?’

  ‘Who will see it?’

  More fire came from the north and drew nearer. Then the fire was right in front of them and in the moonlight a black and bearded face was illuminated, hacking at the body of a native policeman with a tomahawk. Then the man ran into a stand of timber.

  Nixon pulled the boy hard into his shoulder.

  All the plain rang with bawling and swearing, and the cries of the injured, and the bellowing of frightened animals.

  ‘We’re in the crossfire. Keep your gun at the ready and stay beside me.’

  A second bullet ricocheted above their heads.

  Then Nixon looked around and saw Jim Kenniff crawling towards them along the ground.

  ‘Uncuff me.’

  Nixon stared at him.

  ‘Do it, man! Look out there, with this wind and this moon. That lot’ll kill anything they see tonight. And your tracker first of all. They’ll cut his bloody head off and be tossin it to each other for sport while you’re trying to find water enough to get home. That’s if you live past dawn. I can take a few of them out if you free me.’

  Nixon stared at him. There came another volley of carbine fire into the outcrops. Jim put his head down. He looked up when the echo was gone.

  ‘We’re all of us gonna get killed here if you don’t. Nixon! Don’t let me get killed by a stray bullet shot by one of these bastards.’ He shook the cuffs. ‘Undo them! You try to kill me when we meet next. But undo the chains!’

  Nixon looked at the Skillington boy who shook his head.

  Jim Kenniff shouted.

  ‘Undo them!’

  Nixon took the key from his coat pocket. He put it in the lockhole and turned it and Jim Keniff shook free.

  His brother tossed a rifle to him across the camp. He caught it and snapped the lever.

  Nixon handed him a box of rounds. And then, with the bullets flying over their heads, he leant hard against the rock with Jim Kenniff at his side, and he thought of the girl they might neither of them get to now for they might not live beyond tonight. And for the first time in longer than he could remember he was at peace.

  Jim leant around the rock and shot a native policeman. There was a scream and then a thud on the packed ground and the sound of a horse getting faster and tearing across the ground in fear and without a rider. A man charged onto the rocks and a spray of fire from his muzzle-loading shotgun hit Jim Kenniff’s shoulder but Tom Lawton shot the man dead on his horse before he could fire again. The horse reared and spun and the dead rider was dragged with his boot in the stirrup across the coals of the patrol’s fire and out onto the plain. Then it seemed the others in the battle saw there was death in the rocks and the
melee moved off to the south.

  There was still faint screaming but the red and yellow flash of the carbines grew dimmer.

  Jim stood up and walked. His men trained their rifles all at Nixon.

  The Skillington boy raised his revolver, his wrist shaking as though the weapon were lead.

  Jim Kenniff shook his head. Tom Lawton and Paddy turned their rifles on the Skillington boy.

  The boy dropped his gun.

  Jim walked, not turning his back till he was within reach of his men. One of the horses had been hit. Paddy and Elden flung themselves onto horses. Tom mounted, with his rifle always trained on Nixon’s head, and he pulled Jim up behind him. They rode into the dawn twilight.

  The Skillington boy fell on his knees. He looked at Nixon.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Nixon put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  King Edward was still under cover, peering out onto the plain where the sounds of battle had vanished. Nixon eyed him and the black boy stared back.

  Nixon looked across the desert. Across the channel country and sand plains.

  ‘They cannot ride forever into that wilderness. They must return.’

  They put their horses at ease. Then saddled them and mounted.

  ‘There’s water out there if you know where to find it,’ said the Skillington boy. ‘I’ve read it. Even flood plains. They could stay in there for months.’

  ‘Not this season.’

  ‘We don’t know what rain’s come from the north. And there are waterholes even in the dune fields. So I read. And if there’s a deluge …’

  Nixon looked at the parching sky.

  ‘That water evaporates as quick as it comes. No smart man would stray far from the towns.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ said the Skillington boy.

  ‘We keep riding the boundary. I reckon I know where they’re going.’

  The gang ran their horses through the night and picketed the horses and made a cold camp in a circle of rocks. Paddy picked Jim’s shoulder clean of metal with the fire-blackened point of his knife.

  They rode onto a salt-bush plain. One waterhole was empty. So was the next. They got water digging in small dry creeks. They fed their half-starved horses on mulga bushes and rolled over logs for the green pick beneath. They stopped in the heat of the day and buried their water pouches in the dirt. Dusk came and they rode on. A camp of Afghans with their camels were gathered around a fire and chanting song or prayer and they paid the Afghans £5 to half fill their skins with water. Dry air drifted north from the heart of the desert and dropped the temperature to below freezing. Then the wind came. Kites and chickenhawks fought against it.