by Greg McLean
There’d been hope until then that his sister could be alive, despite the trauma Mick must have seen. But although Mick had lain awake in bed listening for footsteps, angry that he’d let her die, they never came. Instead there’d just been the sound of soft crying, and his father’s low voice as he comforted his mother before the burial the next day. And somehow that was worse.
The men came night after night for a while: neighbours who would sit around the table with their endless bottles of beer, talking about the dagos and wops moving in and taking jobs, and who knows what they’ve done before, who we have living next to us. Look at what those eye-ties and krauts and Nazi cunts did during the war and now we’re letting them in to the country ta take our jobs and work on the land. Ya said it was a foreign cunt, didn’t ya, boy? Everyone would look over at him standing in the doorway or in the corner and he’d feel all their eyes on him and nod. Can’t have been a local, someone said. Has to be an outsider. Australians don’t do that shit. And they’d talk of finding the man, of making their community safe again. There could be no rest until he was found.
Then there was an argument one night, his father having drunk too much, and he’d got out his rifle and chased them out, with their empty words that wouldn’t bring back his daughter. They didn’t come back, nor the women with their casseroles, and the family was alone again.
After that his father would sit beneath the old farming equipment and knives from his slaughterhouse days mounted on the kitchen wall, muttering as he drank. Wouldn’t say anything when Mick’s mother called her son in to her gin-stenched room and hugged him close in bed as she told him about when he was little, as if it was happening in front of her eyes. When she’d first held each of her children, pink and clean and newly born. His and his sister’s first steps. That first time the little girl’d taken a bath and liked it so much she wouldn’t come out. And now it was all gone somehow, just memories, and soon Mick would be dead too, and she’d cry acid tears of alcohol as she clutched his neck, until his father would storm in and rescue him, pushing her back.
‘Not my boy too, Jim,’ she’d bawl. ‘Don’t let them take him.’
His father would say nothing, as if he wished that’s what happened.
The days passed and the calls from the newspapers stopped and the rest of the world moved on. Their family would never be the same again. Whereas his father used to go away for days at a time stalking the dogs, he now stayed close to home, gun at hand, insisting Mick drive with him into town for food or to the pub, seeing as it was still another month before school started again. Mick would sit high in the cabin of the truck as his father drove and barely hear him rail about the world. It was the most time they’d ever spent together. I’ve asked meself why, night after night, his father would say. That sweet fetid smell of whisky breath. Speaking to that fuckstick upstairs. But there’s never been an answer. You know why, boy? ’Cause it’s just us. Us and this fucken dry endless land. None of it makes any sense. Yet we keep goin’, thinkin’ it’s all for a reason. Just have to work hard and all our dreams’ll come true. It’s bullshit. He’d point out the dark windows to the cleared paddocks somewhere beyond. We used to own all this. Our family. You know that? Me grandfather drew up the boundaries then me father pissed it all away. We coulda been something. Should own the town. Instead we’re shit. We’re cursed.
Then one evening they were driving back from picking up a side of lamb from the Ballards over in Kelmore, and his father had been unusually quiet, not offering his usual rants.
‘Something don’t add up,’ the man said eventually, and Mick tightened at the tone in his voice. ‘Ya said it was a Caddy, right? Bob Ballard said he was speaking again to Johnno Thornton. He’d seen you two pass on the track, then you come home alone. Johnno sees everything, sitting in his wheelchair on his veranda. He mentioned to the wallopers a dark car passing that day, said at the time it coulda been a Cadillac. But now he’s sure it was a Holden. FC he reckons. Thing I said is, my son’d know the difference in a heartbeat.’
‘I’m . . . not sure.’
‘So it wasn’t a foreigner?’
‘I didn’t say he was. Just that he kind of sounded like it. Talked slow.’
‘So he spoke to you, drove off, then came back at the lake. Just pulled up and took her.’
‘Yeah. I . . . think so. I can’t remember —’
‘And your cane?’
Mick began to shake. ‘He hit me with it. Then grabbed her and held her down and . . . I just remember waking up. Seein’ her blood on the ground.’
‘Then you should’ve got a good look at him. When he was speakin’ to you before.’
‘Please, Dad,’ Mick said softly.
‘Not asking you to tell me what he did. Just wanna know what you remember.’
‘I . . . I thought he sounded strange. I didn’t recognise him.’
‘You thought the car looked like a Cadillac, too.’
Mick didn’t say anything and then his father swore and slowed. His heart hiccupped but his father was looking out the window and Mick followed his stare – for a moment expecting to see the shadow of the man against the horizon waiting for them with his dirty hat and unshaved face. Or maybe his sister staring back at him. But instead the loping silhouette of a dog ducked behind a far spread of trees. His father stopped and grabbed his .243 rifle and some traps, then hesitated, deciding whether to trust him. ‘Keep fucken quiet.’
Mick ran in his wake towards a nearby ridge. They lay in the dirt as his father looked through his old binoculars at a clearing. ‘Yep, that’s the bitch Evanston wanted me to get. Says he saw a mother and her pups on his east corner and lined up a shot. Thought he could save himself paying me.’ He snorted. ‘Dogs are smarter than that; smarter than him. She’ll be a nice tenner. Put some food on the table again.’ Mick knew the pasture protection board paid five quid a pelt for dingoes, but his father would also get paid that again by the local graziers per dog. A week’s wages in one night. He made sure he didn’t make a noise in case he stuffed it up.
A shadow slipped out of the clearing towards the gully. ‘Searching for water maybe,’ his father whispered, then stole down to the den as the sun began to set to lay the traps near a hollow in the ground. He erased his path as he came back. Then they moved downwind to wait. His father sat motionless staring through his binoculars, distracted by work, that unsettling anger gone, and Mick was drifting to sleep by his side when there was a yelp in the distance. His father gave a small grin. Mick prepared to follow him to the den but his father waited. Realised his son was staring at him. ‘You see any pups? That wasn’t the mother – that was the partner. We trap him as bait, she’ll come, then we’ll get her too.’
In the last of the light Mick saw a group of shadows moving over a ridge. The cream-coloured mother, three pups. The captured dingo whimpered and the mother came down cautiously, sniffing the air. Stopped at the edge of the clearing. Her partner cawed but still she didn’t move, snapping at one of the pups moving forward.
‘Fucken smart bitch.’ His father frowned, waiting for her to edge closer. Instead she left the pups and circled the clearing. Mick’s father snarled. ‘Gonna smell the traps.’ He hefted the light rifle and dropped in the dust.
The dingo sniffed the buried metal and bared its teeth, abandoning her partner and running sleekly to her pups. Mick jammed his fingers in his ears as the mother yipped at the clutch to follow her and bolted for the ridge, then the shot boomed next to him. Even from this distance he could see the red spray from the top of her head as she keeled dead. The pups came back, nudging her and whimpering, and they were still there when his father walked up to them. Mick stayed as far behind as he could.
‘Get up here, boy,’ his father said, grabbing the limp body of the mother and carrying it, swinging, to the clearing. He stood appraising the male caught howling in the trap. ‘Good, no mange.’ Then he shot it in the head. The crack rang out against the horizon. Mick jumped. ‘Watch.’ His fath
er knelt and drew his bowie knife, turned the mother over on a rock and drew a line down her underside. The dingo’s guts spilled into the air, steaming red and pink, and one leg kicked slightly in death as if protest. Ignoring it, his father cut up the side of each leg, behind and around her ears and then in one pull, planted a foot on her skull and ripped the pelt off complete. It hung dripping and flayed in the air. He handed it over to be scraped clean and Mick had held the warm fur in one outstretched hand as his father went to the dead male.
The whole time the dingo puppies milled at the edge of the clearing. Mick knew that his father wouldn’t get paid for their pelts. He’d heard of other doggers letting the offspring go so they could make money down the track. Even though he knew his father didn’t approve of that, he was still surprised when, after skinning the male, the man went to the pups, picked them up one by one and brained them against the rock. Bits of fur and skull and grey meat splayed the dirt and his father’s shoes. The man was calm as he hunted each one. ‘Ya can’t risk anything gettin’ away,’ he told his son, but as he went on he seemed to become wild-eyed, lost in the violence, and when he kept smashing the last animal again and again against the stone, until it began to break apart and bits of bone and blood skittled across the ground, as it disintegrated in his hand, some of it slapping against Mick’s legs, the boy couldn’t take it anymore and ran for the car.
His father appeared out of the night later. He tossed the pelts in the back and sat in the cabin, wiped his face of blood. Mick sat breathless beside him – could feel the heat, the radiating anger, the disappointment coming from him. Mick knew he wouldn’t be driving with his father again. They headed back in the night, the car smelling of blood and shit and death.
*
It’s a smell you never get used to, that acrid hit up into the brain. Although being the son of a dogger he should be more hardened to killing animals, when the overseer, Cunningham, passes the stables late in the week and tells Mick it’s his turn to slaughter, he feels a sinking pit in his stomach. There’s a wether waiting in the pens for the coming days’ meals, the overseer says. You know what to do, right? Or you need someone to hold your hand? Mick just shakes his head. Naturally, Opey’s nowhere to be found, having bolted for the bath as soon as they stabled the horses and Mick walks down to the shearing shed in the near dark alone, nails digging into his palms.
The wether calls him on. The nearby herd – milling as close they dare – maa and bleat for it to join them, but the old wether doesn’t have the sense or foresight to jump the fence. It huddles in a corner, no doubt paralysed by its separation from the group.
The white building materialises out of the gloom and he feels his way to the wire. ‘C’mon, ya weak cunt,’ he says to himself and vaults it. The wether bleats once in fear at his coming then falls silent. He heads up the race to turn on the outside globe, and jaundiced light floods the closest yards revealing the sheep up against the back fence.
The wether’s white flank shivers on the edge of the light and Mick walks to it head on. It tries to barrel past, but he’s ready after weeks of wrangling the stupid buggers and plonks a leg in its path. It doubles back, sees fence, then tries to beeline between his legs and he drops a practised knee onto its neck, grabs its back leg and drags the animal towards the gate.
He tries not to think as he hauls the sheep into the killing gate, to not look at its face and its unblinking eyes, which he knows are staring at him. Docile yet waiting for an opening. He tries to go through the motions of locking it between his thighs and positioning it over the grate as he reaches for the hanging knife.
But when he grabs the rusted steel handle he remembers hot blood over his hand. He’s somewhere else as he bends over the thick shoulder and places the blade to the stretched throat.
That hit of metal sudden in the air, a last strangled baa of surprise, and a death shiver runs through the animal. Then there’s only the sound of gushing blood. His own breathing in the dark.
He closes his eyes, letting the warmth run over him, and it’s no longer the sheep beneath him but something else and the night disappears around him. Time stretches away.
When the sheep gives one last kick and sags in his grasp he lets it drop in a crumpled sack onto the grating. His hand looks black in the reach of the light and he wipes the blood on the crust of the sheep’s half-shorn back, then the rest on his pants. Curses when he sees the glaring stain on his leg. Cunningham’d think he fucked up the kill, let it bleed out over him instead of controlling it. Annoyed at himself, he hoists the sheep roughly with the hook and stands back, letting it run out, not watching. Instead, he looks around at the surrounding darkness as the sound of draining fluid whispers in his ear.
A soft snort in the darkness. He sees a shadow against the trees. The big horse pads the ground, impatient, then its rider edges it into the light. Cutter grins white teeth against the stars. ‘Gitting you hard is it, kud?’ Mick can’t see his eyes, but the hat motions down to Mick’s hand and the smile draws wider. ‘What, dud ya fust it?’
Mick wipes the last off. ‘What the fuck’s your problem?’ he says. ‘Every time I turn around, you’re looking at me like ya wanna fuck me.’
‘Na, thunk ya got me confused with Jock,’ Cutter says. ‘He and his boys like playing with other men’s lunchboxes, what I hear. Nearly took yours from you, hey?’
Mick seethes and turns away, busying himself gutting the sheep, trying to remember how. Its entrails spill and thud to the grating in a steaming green pile of half-digested grass. He makes as much noise as he can cutting clumsily through the sinews and skin on its flank but Cutter doesn’t take the hint and leave. When Mick glances beneath an arm the man’s still sitting there high on his horse, smiling down at him.
‘You’re a natural at that, hey? Must spend some time up in the guts of sheep.’
‘Yeah,’ Mick says, scraping the last of the sheep’s gizzards out then holding open the gaping slit down its midsection, ‘and I’m gonna fuck it now. You’re into watching. Ya can tug yourself right there on your horse.’
Cutter keeps smiling that glittering smile. ‘You got some anger in you, heven’t you, SC?’ Mick simmers at the nickname and Cutter grins at his anger. ‘You see? Cun’t help yourself even now.’ He leans in, high on his horse. ‘Ya wanna know what my problem is with you, shuthead? You’re weak. You’re weak physically with your gammy legs. And you’re weak mentally. You use that smartarse mouth of yours to compensate, but it’s just fucken bravado. And that makes you a liability out here.’ He’s still smiling, but his eyes have turned hard. ‘That’s what I cun’t abide. You come in to my station with your child’s temper and tongue and crupple’s body and think you own the fucken place. You really think you’re bad? You don’t know what bad is, son.’
Mick stands hands clenched, the culling blade hanging by his side. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
Cutter looks at the knife, just laughs. ‘What’s there to know? You’re a skinny-arsed kud who’ll never make it here in a million years. Not built for the country. We trust the man next to us on the land with our lives. What if me horse fell on me leg? Or I got gored by a bull? Or the car rolled? You’d go fucken running. So yeah, kud . . .’ He wheels the horse away, glances down. ‘I’ll keep on pushing you. And then you’ll break and leave my fucken station.’ He kicks the horse’s sides and trots it back up to the stables. ‘You have fun fucking your sheep.’ Mick watches him go with the smell of cooling death behind him.
‘I told ya, mate,’ Opey says quietly at dinner. ‘Best stay outta that joker’s sights.’
Mercer nods next to him. ‘He likes pushing buttons, way I see it. There’s always a stirrer on farms. Someone who gets off on needling a target until they crack, pitting people ’gainst each other. Makin’ up for their own shortcomings.’ He waggles a little finger, then nods over at the rabbiter feeding his dog pieces of slimy mutton at the other table. ‘It’d be Jock if he had any brains. Always one rogue who fucks thi
ngs up. Just like there’s a dunce, hey Opey?’
‘I’m not stupid. Why do you blokes always say I am?’
‘Not stupid. Just slow as shit. Calls it how I sees it. Same with Cutter. He’s a bad seed. So don’t let him get into your head and you’ll be fine. He’ll soon lose interest. I’ve seen it before with ’im. Just lay low, kid, don’t let anything get to you.’ He claps Mick’s shoulder and gets up for some more mashed potato, done just how he likes it.
‘Easy for him to say,’ Opey says. ‘He’s not a jack. Everyone treating you like shit.’ Then he grins. ‘At least one day we’ll become stockhands, then managers and get to treat everyone else like that.’
‘That your aim?’ Mick asks. As they’re talking Cutter has his back to him, as always, sitting over on the far table by himself. Mick stares between his shoulders as if willing him to turn around, so the bastard shooter will see the fury of his gaze.
‘Yeah. Isn’t it yours?’
Mick shrugs.
‘Ah, shit. I’m not gonna ask you about your past again. Already got me into trouble.’
‘Na, it’s alright, Opey,’ Mick says, giving up on Cutter and stirring his remaining veggies. ‘Like I said, weren’t your fault. I’m from Queensland, as I said. Little town called Erebli. Middle of nowhere. Fucken shithole of a place. Glad to see the back of it. Things went a bit pear-shaped there. My father . . . he went off the rails. I ran away for a time. My friend Eddie’s family had people out this way so they thought they’d get me out of there, put me on a camp over here in WA. Been locked away there since.’
‘An abbo camp? Why? To protect you from your father?’
Mick hesitates.
‘Don’t worry —’
‘Hell. Isn’t your fault.’ He takes a breath. ‘Waste of half me life, hiding. Thing is, they tried to help me. But I . . . never really fitted in. Tried to stay away from the drink for one thing, seeing what it did to me father. And there’s only so much you can take of blackfellas before you have to crack their thick skulls. They can fight, I can tell you.’ He smiles but Opey doesn’t join him. ‘All went to shit anyway. Couldn’t join the army on account of the polio. So now I’m here. Last shot. Get a real job, try to go straight. Otherwise I might as well just toss it in, go live in a cave or something. Give up. I just don’t want some prick with a bee in his bonnet fucking it up for me.’