by Greg McLean
‘Any consolation, I’m on the run from me family too. My sisters used to dress me up in their clothes when my parents were out. Put makeup on and everything.’
Mick snorts. ‘I didn’t need to know that.’
‘It was nice to get the attention, at least,’ Opey says, grinning.
‘Cutting the ring off your balls’ll have to be enough from me.’
Opey gets up for mugs of tea and Mick glances over at Cutter again. This time Jock’s looking at him instead, grinning as he feeds his dog. Cups a piece of mutton like it’s a set of balls, snips his fingers and lets the dog gobble it up.
Mick ignores him and waits for the tables to be cleared for the night’s 500, so Jock and his cronies will leave for Cunningham’s shack, but then Simpson storms in.
‘God’s sake, Jock! Fucken thing’s done it again.’
The rabbiter’s instantly on the attack. ‘What’s yer problem?’ His dog keeps slobbering at his hand for scraps, robbing him of some dignity.
‘That damn thing.’ Simpson points to Bullet. ‘Shit in the hallway outside me room again. Stepped in it on me way past.’
‘So it’s my fault you can’t look where you’re walkin’?’
Simpson looks fit to explode. ‘Why the hell would I be looking for shit in the hallway? I told ya last time, keep it with the other mutts by the drums.’
Jock drops a hand protectively to the dog’s neck. ‘She don’t sleep outside. I told you all when I come here.’
‘You also said the mutt was housetrained! Now I have shit on me shoes. And you’re washing ’em.’
Jock looks around, cheeks reddening, and sees Mick smirking. ‘Think this is funny, boy? Gonna make another joke about me and me dog? After your Scareda’cunt night?’
‘Yep. Get a dog up ya, Jock.’
The others crack up and Jock fumes. Even Cutter’s laughing and Jock’s stupid enough to take him on. ‘So ya can laugh, ya social retard.’
‘Fuck you say?’
‘Ya swan in when ya feel like it, say squat to everyone, sittin’ by yerself. Then think ya can laugh at us.’
‘Still shutty I took your job hey, boy? Too fucken bad.’ Cutter smiles as he gets up and heads out. ‘Least the rabbits’re happy. When’s the lust time you caught one?’
‘Last time I fucked your mother. I gotta pile outside me door as big as her arsehole now.’
The room falls silent. Something ugly in Cutter’s face. ‘Me mother’s dead.’
But Jock doesn’t know when to stop. ‘Might be a dry root but fuck those bones are tight.’ He grins his rot-teeth and Cutter launches at him. Pete and Rodge barely manage to stop him.
‘Jesus, ya don’t say that shit,’ Simpson says, shocked.
Jock curls his lip and reaches down to grab his dog.
‘You keep an eye on that bitch o’yours,’ the shooter says. ‘I catch it I’ll strung it up meself.’
‘You stay away from me fucken dog!’ Jock yells and now it’s him being held back. ‘Cocksucker! You leave me dog alone!’ Bullet stands panting happily, looking back and forth at Cutter and its master.
Cutter smirks at the dog and leaves. Jock looks like he’s going to explode and stares at his mates.
‘He threatened me fucken dog. Why’d he threaten me dog?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mick says. ‘Ya can still root it afterwards. Just like Cutter’s mum.’
Only Simpson jumping in stops Jock burying his fork in Mick’s eye. The air vibrates in front of his face. ‘I’ll fucken kill you meself! Fucken Scareda’cunt piece a shit!’ Jock froths as Pete and Rodge drag him out.
Mick, still sitting but with fists clenched, watches him go.
‘Jesus, Mick,’ Opey says. ‘You have to do the opposite of what I say?’
Dammit. He has to control himself better than that. ‘Ya ask someone nicely to control their mutt and this is the response you get,’ he says, then rubs his hands together. ‘So who’s ready to lose some money?’ Simpson starts laughing, then Opey and the whole room.
‘Fucken shitting dog,’ Simpson says. ‘Does it again I’ll gut it myself.’
Mick reaches for the cards, fights to keep them from trembling in his hands. His pulse races in his temples and his vision seems charged with light, the anger still so close he can taste it.
Blackall pulls Mick aside the next day while they’re drafting the two-year-olds for drenching. ‘Been hearing some stories, Michael. You having troubles with the other men?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Sometimes people just don’t fit in,’ the manager says, his attention drifting to the banked sheep in the pens behind. ‘Much as they try. That what your problem is, son?’
‘No, sir. Just finding my place.’
‘So many blokes living together, no sheilas around, there’s always personality clashes. Cutter can be a prick. Give the new fellas a hard time. Jock too. But once you prove yourself the others’ll ease up. You’ve just got to stick it out. Not take their bait.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You want this, right?’
‘Very much.’
‘You’re a good kid. I think. I put my neck out for Tommo. Reckon I owe him a favour or two over the years. Don’t let him down. Or me.’
Mick nods and stands there quiet as Blackall slips into his four-wheel drive and heads back to the homestead, surveying the land as he goes.
Opey’s waiting for Mick to return. ‘What was all that about?’
‘Nothing. Just our almighty manager doing his one bit of work for the day.’
‘Hey,’ Opey says low, ‘what he says goes, right? Gotta be able to take orders.’
‘Never have before. Why start now?’
‘Because you said you needed this job. Remember?’
‘Yeah,’ Mick says annoyed. Now the other jackaroo’s on about it too?
‘I’ve taken shit from day one. You think I care what anyone else thinks about me? If they call me names? You think Scareda’cunt’s any worse than Opium?’
Mick flushes, looks away. ‘Yes.’
‘Only because you take it that way. You were the one telling me not to give them any satisfaction. Not show them anything. Forgotten already?’
‘Yeah, alright. Jesus. Givin’ me a fucken lashing.’
‘’Cause you need it. You see: now you’re taking advice from a retard.’
‘You’re not a retard.’
‘I told ya. It’s only a word. I don’t care. You shouldn’t either.’ He heads back to his post to draft the rest of the sheep.
Mick joins him after a moment. But he can still feel the tension across his back, and keeps looking behind expecting to see Jock standing there with his ferret-faced sneer in the nearby trees, his dog with its nose shoved deep into his hand as if up his arse.
Some of the others head off drinking again that weekend, but Mick asks Simmo if he can borrow his ute for a drive and takes off alone. He considers inviting Opey as well but needs some time to himself after living in the bloke’s bunk for so many weeks now.
He heads south in the rackety vehicle, its suspension working hard on the dirt roads, and the landscape opens out to him. He can breathe clear now. Stop thinking about Jock and his dog for once. And about that pruck Cutter.
Without thinking about it he continues on to Wills. When he gets to the town he sits staring at the big Victorian pub with its whorehouse in the back, quiet during the day, then instead heads to a smaller one down the road.
It still has the sawdust on the floor and unsmiling publican behind the counter, but it’s only a quarter full and nowhere near as loud. Mick orders a beer – the owner assuming he’s eighteen because of his size, or not caring to check – and he stands sipping and looking around the bar. Groups of drinkers hunch in clumps at tables, deep in conversation about stock prices, drought, that fucken war in Asia – secret men’s business – while there’s a couple of others like him: alone, staring into space, lost in their own troubles. A big man at the end
of the bar, taller even than him, nurses a coffee and Mick heads past him to the dunny and on the way back bumps his shoulder.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Mick says.
‘Spilled me drink, ya bastard,’ the man rumbles.
‘Yeah? Lemme buy you another. Two beers, bartender.’
‘Nah, I’m not drinkin’ beer. Just a coffee again, Trev. I gotta long haul —’ he starts explaining to Mick.
‘Sheila, are ya?’
The man stares at him.
‘Man buys you a drink and ya won’t drink with him?’
‘I told ya. I gotta roadtrain to take to Broome and I —’
‘Ah, you’re one of them truckie sheilas. Okay, I shoulda known. Enjoy your coffee, mate.’ He starts to walk off.
‘Oi. What the fuck you on about? “Truckie sheila”? Where’d you get that from?’
‘That’s what me dad always called you blokes. Said you sat on your arse all day while the rest of us worked.’
The man looks at him like he’s insane. ‘Ya know how hard it is to drive twenty hours, then back it up?’
‘I bet ya back it up,’ Mick says, with a wink. ‘That’s what he says you do with hitchhikers. Blokes, a’course. Them long-haired hippies ya can imagine is girls on yer balls.’
The man stands to his full height, a head taller than Mick, and squints down at the kid yanking his chain. ‘You’re fucken crazy, boy.’
The publican glances over, cottons on there’s an argument brewing and grabs a cricket bat behind the bar.
Mick sees the move and grins. ‘Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe this is your sheila here, ’bout to step in and save you.’
‘Your fucken funeral, mate,’ the huge truckie says and clobbers Mick to the side of the head.
Mick takes the hit, senses the usual thump shudder through his body, inside his bones, and feels himself fall to the floor. The big bloke catches him again on the way down with a loose left uppercut that clangs into his jaw. Mick nearly bites off his own tongue. As he stumbles he slaps a hand out at a chair but the old wood shatters beneath his bodyweight, its legs breaking and splintering beneath him. The man bends and smashes him twice in the face. Mick lies on the floor, blinking up. Motes of light sparkle in front of his eyes. Blood on his teeth.
‘Ya had enough, boy?’
Mick smiles red at him. ‘Have you?’ He pushes up and swings and the big man punches him deep to the stomach, leaving him crumpled on the floor again.
‘Jesus, you are fucken crazy.’ The truckie steps back, shaking his head. Kid takes on the biggest bloke in the pub for no reason. Mick rolls onto his guts, groaning. Stays there.
‘Can take a beating at least,’ one of the nearby drinkers says with respect, and reaches down to haul him up. Mick knocks away his help and launches at the truckie, arms wild. He surges forwards despite the drinker clinging to his back.
Surprised by the assault – a man’s supposed to know when he’s lost – the truckie is pushed against the bar and Mick catches him a good one in the face, then snatches at the floor for the broken chair leg. He slashes it at the man’s neck and would’ve got him except someone grabs his arm and the piece of wood clatters away. The enraged truckie steps in as they hold him, one side-ham fist cocked and Mick bays at him, teeth bared. The man hesitates.
Mick shrugs off the drinkers and stands panting. Then he licks his split lip, smiles. ‘Got me a few good ones there,’ he says to the truckie. ‘Ya big bastard.’
The man stares at him uncertainly. Then nods. Heads back to his place at the bar.
‘You got a deathwish, son?’ the publican asks.
‘Not that I know of,’ Mick says and places a quid on the counter. ‘For the drinks. And the chair.’
The owner looks down at the money. ‘Can buy me a nice replacement for that.’
‘Then everyone wins,’ Mick says, retrieving his hat. He tips it to the glowering truckie as he heads back outside.
He sits in the ute and watches the hulking man come out later. Mick stares as he heads for his truck, flicking his split lip with his tongue. His hands clench the steering wheel as the man hauls into his vehicle and he’s still sitting there when the truck pulls out and away and the night collapses back in like a vacuum, leaving him in the dark street with his face flaring in familiar pain.
His own pain he could take. It was worse when his father hit his mother – bedridden through sickness or choice, he never knew for sure – and Mick would huddle in the next room unable to do anything, hating himself as his father straddled her on the mattress and pummelled her for being a fat useless cunt, or for complaining about the bills, or for always being fucken sick and destroying our lives, ya stupid bitch – all this even after his sister had died. Maybe because of it. Sometimes it’d turn to sex and it’d be hard to tell when one finished and the other began. It often sounded the same until his mother started crying out in pleasure.
‘Micky?’ she’d call, after his father returned to his drinking in the kitchen or out into the yard to work on the cars, maybe embarrassed at what he’d just done. Mick’d go in to the smell of musk and her bedsores and she’d stroke his hair, calm him and croon in his ear about one day taking him far, far away from all this, when she was well. But she wouldn’t look at him as she brushed him, her breath rank with gin, blood on her mouth, and sometimes her hand would stray down his chest and stomach and he’d jump up and leave as she called to him, crying but unable to follow.
She used to stand up to his father once, when he beat on them – go at him with hammers or the dishes, or whatever was close at hand. But then she hit her head on the fridge one night and she’d lain on the floor for a while before Mick could come out and call the hospital. She was never right after that. One of the nurses had asked Mick if everything at home was okay, but his father was watching through the window and he’d nodded and said she just fell.
It wasn’t like anyone else’s house was any different. Once he’d gone around to his friend Eddie’s – or ‘Eddie Boong’ as all the kids called the full-blood from down the road. They’d been running around the yard when Eddie’s father – a squat man with a broken nose and knuckles like lumps of cauliflower from his days boxing – had come round the corner and grabbed Eddie as he darted by and slammed his head against the side of the house. ‘I told ya to get that fucken cow in,’ the man had said and then gone back inside. Eddie had slumped to the ground as if sitting, blinking ahead at the rundown sheds ringing the property. Then the blood began to trickle out his ear and Mick had crept into the house and told Eddie’s mother and they’d taken him to the doctor’s. A week later Mick had gone around again and though Eddie was his usual grinning self he made damn sure this time to tend to the cow before they played. ‘Look like I’ve been in the war, eh?’ he joked to Mick, touching the bandage on his head. ‘Or maybe I’ve got on a turban like one of dem A-rabs.’ Around here, getting beat was just part of life.
The only time Mick really felt at ease was at Eddie’s house when the dad wasn’t home and they could sit in the old barn out back and play marbles, or chase rats, or build straw men. ‘Heya, Dad,’ Eddie would say when he’d made a big stack of straw, then he’d biff the pile in the face and it’d collapse at his feet. They’d giggle and check the entrance to make sure no one was watching and then Mick would have a go.
Eddie was always interested in Mick’s father’s job as the town’s dogger – seeing as his own father hadn’t worked in some years – and he would ask Mick about catching dingoes and whether Mick had done it himself. Mick told him how his father had held the mother dingo down and ripped the skin off in one piece, how warm and soft and slick it’d felt. Eddie sat listening and nodding, fascinated. Skinning’s powerful, Eddie had said. You stole that dog’s spirit. Mick looked at him confused and Eddie’d talked soft in the big barn in case anyone was passing, as though he’d get beaten for talking about secrets. He’d heard of an ancient practice amongst his people: in their warrior clan long ago one member of the community w
ould be picked every few years to rule the tribe for a day, taking the place of the chieftain. He could take his wives, gorge on food, make decrees. Eddie grinned: Sound like good deal, right? But at the end of day the man would be sacrificed at a corroboree and his skin flayed off and worn as covering by the real chieftain to show his reclaiming of power. Renewed, he’d remain chieftain until the next ceremony. Fed on his spirit, ya know? Eddie grinned. Like, every time we eat an animal, we thank it. Same kinda thing.
Fascinated, Mick asked him about more stories and Eddie told him about singing. Some of the peoples believe you can kill with voice alone, he whispered, and once a song is cursed upon you, you’ll die. Then he turned his face to his house and closed his eyes and begun singing an eerie wail as if at his own father. The mournful keening filled the barn. Mick felt ice-pricks up his neck and jumped to his feet, spooked.
Eddie had opened his eyes and flashed a white grin in the gloom. Dunno how to do it though, he shrugged. Wish I did sometimes. Though they reckon magics have a price.
So fucken what, Mick had said and they’d both laughed, and then they’d heard the sound of a car returning and they ran out of the barn before they got in trouble for something.
That night Mick had lain awake in bed, listening to the sounds from his parents’ bedroom next door. Then he closed his eyes and angled his head to the wall, and began softly singing a keening tuneless wail.
He smiled as he opened his eyes to the unchanged bricks, the noises continuing beyond. He didn’t know how to do it either. But at least it was something.