by Greg McLean
That’d given him still more energy and he began to venture out from the house on weak legs, hunting to sustain himself. He managed to club a snake with a stick and caught a rabbit in its burrow. But it was the dingoes that fed him best, and were the hardest and most rewarding to catch. He lay in wait for an eternity downwind from the den of the first and when it slinked back one day he impaled its leg with a crude spear. He tracked it until morning and found it lying exhausted in a dry creek bed watching him come to it out of the early light. He used the spear – sharpened by long hours ground against the corrugated iron lip of the water tank – to hack its throat then grabbed its back leg and worked against the joint until it ripped clean. Did the same for the other side then headed back to the house using the spear as a crutch with two nice thick hind legs over one shoulder. He hung them to dry, then cooked them up and cured them with salt from the nearby dry lake bed to make them last.
He began to enjoy the hunt: the waiting; the thinking about angles and routes of escape; the thrill when he’d be proven right; the panic in the animal when he’d suddenly appear in its bolting path. He even surprised an emu this way, rising as a pair came stampeding towards him – the smaller female barrelled straight at him and he impaled it on the spear as if he was St George fighting a dragon, though he fell on his arse. It fed him well and he was even lucky enough to find a perfect egg up in its guts. He used a rusted bin lid to fry it up and the yolk was like an explosion of flavour. He laughed out loud, his voice cracking after not using it so long.
Most of the native plants were poisonous, he knew, but he managed to find a few quandong trees and came back sparingly to raid their branches. The little red fruits were like peaches. When the first one burst in his mouth he remembered his father pointing them out to him on a camping trip – always giving little hints on survival in the bush – and he sat on the ground and nearly cried with everything that had happened.
Mick had sat in the cold of the desert night as the darkness gathered around him and a rushing wind swept over the sands, and it was like there was something out there watching him, like the land itself was becoming aware of him. It wasn’t like his father stalking him. It was as if the night was opening up, awakening to him, and the winds began howling like when he’d almost died of fever, and he grabbed a couple more of the quandongs and rushed back to the house and sat on the rotting floorboards inside, as the wind surged and called to him outside.
‘Leave me alone,’ he whispered, huddled into himself, a strangled fear clamping his chest as if it was his father outside with his shotgun. ‘Leave me alone!’
He wakes sweating with Rose leaning over him like a cat sucking the air from his lungs in one of the stories his mother once read to him, and he pushes her away and presses up against the wall.
‘Mick? You were dreaming.’
He looks at her with eyes still confused from sleep, barely remembers where he is.
‘It’s okay. You’re awake now.’
His face closes up. He starts to get out of bed and she holds his arm.
‘You don’t have to be embarrassed, Mick. I have nightmares too. I remember things.’
‘I have to get up.’
‘Just wait. You should talk about this. You were really upset.’ He glares at her, heavy-lidded, but she doesn’t take the hint. ‘You kept saying, “Leave me alone.”’
‘So why won’t you?’
She sits cross-legged, showing him far too much beneath her nightie. He won’t look at her.
‘Is it what happened in Queensland? Why you left? Something with your parents?’ He still doesn’t say anything and she pushes it further. ‘With your father?’
He snaps at her. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You’ve just . . . you’ve mentioned him once or twice. In your sleep. Just words. “No, Dad.” That kind of thing.’
He can feel his anger rising. ‘Got nothing to do with you.’
‘But it’s obviously something still troubling you, Mick.’ She hesitates. ‘Is it something he did to you?’
‘I said I don’t want to talk about it!’ he yells, and he could snap her neck right now. It’d be as easy as killing a sheep.
But he just hunches over, not looking at her.
‘I know you don’t,’ she says softly. ‘But the past doesn’t have to control you, Mick. You can control it.’ She takes his face gently in her hands. Her touch burns. ‘Anything you could do to him won’t change what happened. You need to let it go.’
He doesn’t say anything. Can’t.
‘Just . . . just realise you’re not alone anymore, Mick. Okay?’
He nods and she kisses him then. And he lets her.
He’s sitting in the Black Shanty early in the evening with her words swirling in his head and he wonders whether he should leave after all – forget about the knife and the Others and just take Rose and leave. Where, or how he’d convince her, he doesn’t know. Sure, he’s supposed to stay around in case the police have more questions, but that wouldn’t make him a suspect in the crimes, would it? And so what if it did? They can’t prove anything.
Or . . . or perhaps he should just not go back to her at all. Leave his stuff at the house and never return. She wouldn’t be able to understand what he’d done, what he was capable of – what he might do again, though he’d tried not to think about it since.
What’s his big plan anyway? To find the Others, sneak in and retrieve the knife without any of them noticing, then think everything’s going to be normal after? That he’ll keep playing happy families with Rose, help her build the farm? Is that what he wants? Where he belongs?
Does he belong anywhere?
Not sure of anything anymore, he catches a glimpse through the thread of arms and chequered shirts of a spreading back plonking down at the bar for dinner. There’s something in the tenseness of the fat bastard’s shoulders as he hunches over his plate-sized steak and soggy chips that triggers Mick’s interest. A . . . wariness. As if the bloke doesn’t like having his back to the room.
Mick knows that well.
The man holds his fork in one clubbed hand and shovels great hunks of meat into his mouth like a machine: quick, no-nonsense, then when he’s finished he swivels around so he’s no longer vulnerable. Mick gets a glimpse of a hanging gut like a meat apron over his pants, thick lumpen hands, thinning hair: the man a weathered forty, forty-five maybe. His small eyes rove the room and Mick angles himself behind a miner with arms like sides of beef.
When Mick risks looking up again the man’s chatting to Bruce, his big legs splayed over the stool, and Mick can watch him more closely. Bruce’s girls run past but the man continues talking without pause and there’s not even a flicker of interest or sidelong glance. It’s the way he doesn’t look that’s weird. Like he’s ignoring them. The gangly man on the next stool at least smiles at the girls, but there’s nothing from Hefty at all.
And then when the man gets up to drain the snake, there it is – he can’t help a quick dart of the eyes as he passes. Just that one look is enough for him, amongst all these people. Enough to size the girls up, imagine them in his hands, what he would do. His tongue flicks beyond his teeth and his eyes widen just a tad. And then he’s past and is no doubt thinking of them as he stands in the dunny holding his cock. To Bruce and any of the others watching, the man probably seems the least interested in the girls in the room.
But Mick can see the truth.
He’d driven Rose into town tonight, left her up the road to do her earning and told her he’d be back to pick her up after some tracking at a nearby property. But now he forgets about her; forgets all she’d said, the doubts in his mind, his moment of weakness.
That look on the man’s face is like a hook in his brain and he has to know more.
‘You’re not gonna leave that are ya, boy?’ A shadow hovers above, surprising Mick. He looks up to see a saggy, faded pair of blue Y-fronts, and then a scrawny, wife-beater-covered chest below the mangy head of a local.
The old timer’s eyeing off Mick’s half-finished beer. Mick glances at the man’s underpants again, and regrets it. ‘Stinkin’ hot,’ the man explains. ‘Never wear pants in summer. Ya should try it.’
No one else gives the man a second glance, so it must be okay. Though Mick had come in to the Black Shanty a couple of times already in search of the sicko, he must have been lucky to miss this joker until now. ‘Don’t know if that’s what the ladies need to see,’ he says, trying to peer around him. The fat man’s not back yet.
‘What ladies?’ The old fella looks around. ‘You mean Marge?’ He nods at the troll-like woman bringing out two plates of gruel for the customers. ‘She don’t care. Though she does say if anything flops out in her line’a sight it’s going in the stew.’ He pulls his undies up a bit to be more respectable before she sees him. His eyes are glassy from drink. ‘Name’s Kev,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘Old Kev’ll do. Havent’a seen you ’round before, boy. You one of McLeod’s mob?’
‘Ah, no,’ Mick says, spotting Hefty walking back to his stool. ‘Who’re they?’
‘Station few miles down the way. Can see with yer skins you’re a jack. Thought you must be close by.’
‘Not with McLeod.’
‘Looking for work then?’
Mick glances at him. Kev with his saggy daks hasn’t shaved in years and his hair is a great mop of white down to his shoulders. He looks like some sort of outback yeti. ‘I’m right for a job at the moment. Doin’ some doggin’.’
‘Hunter, are ya? Y’d be wasting your time compared to what I got. ’Cause I hunt gold, boy.’
‘Riiight.’
‘Tell you what, buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.’
‘So it’s going well, then?’
Then Kev’s grabbing his arm and dragging him to the bar, and before Mick can stop him they’re almost beside the fat pedo-whatsit. Mick angles his back so the man can’t see his face. He stands stock-still at the bar as Kev signals for Bruce’s attention. ‘Oi! Brucey. Got me a catch here.’
Bruce ambles over and raises an eyebrow at Mick. ‘He roped you in, Mick?’
‘No,’ Mick says, keeping himself angled from the man three down. ‘I dun even know what —’
‘Maybe there’s a line, maybe there isn’t,’ Bruce says with a crooked smile, speaking low to Mick. ‘But no one’s going to work it out from Kev. Believe me.’
‘Oh, pig’s arse, Bruce,’ Kev says and thumps the bar. ‘Just give us our drinks.’ He downs half his beer in one swallow and Mick hands over his money, still confused what this is about. But from here he can see Hefty in the back mirror out of the corner of his eye. ‘So, gold, boy. You like it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Of course you do. And you’d do anything for it, right? Well I found a vein once out past Rudall River, deep inland, that’d make you weep, send the ones in Kalgoorlie to shame. Ten inches across, who knows how long. Just like my dick.’
He rattles off a story about returning to make a claim but not being able to find it again, spending a year wandering the desert retracing his steps. Doctors said he got sunstroke and put him in a rest home for a while, but as soon as he could he got out and went back again. And’s kept going back ever since, for fifty years. But he knows it’s out there, and all it’ll take is for that one lucky spot again and it’ll open up. A strapping young fella like himself would be able to search better though, ’s long as he agrees to split it. Half each, right? You could make a fortune, more than all the dingoes in the world.
Mick’s only half-listening, his attention focused elsewhere. He sees movement at the bar as Hefty lifts himself off his stool and claps the man next to him on the back, shakes Bruce’s hand – Bruce calls him Jerry as he leaves, which is what Cutter had said, so it’s definitely the right bloke – then downs the last of his drink and heads for the door. He takes one last glance at the two girls, in pyjamas now and sitting at a back table eating their dinner. He allows himself a longer look this time.
Mick waits as long as he can then follows suit, skolling his beer in one practised gulp. He thumps Kev on the shoulder mid-sentence and says he has to head.
‘Wait a minute,’ Kev says, grabbing his arm confused. ‘We haven’t even shaked hands yet. You telling me you isn’t interested in being a millionaire?’
Angry at being touched, Mick spins and jams his hand over the man’s. He has to fight to only pluck the hand off and not crush the old-timer’s fragile bones. But he can’t help leaning in and speaking low: ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck.’
‘Coulda just said no,’ Kev says irritably. He beelines for Marge. She sees him coming and frowns, trotting like a grandma elephant back to the kitchen.
Mick curses at nearly losing his temper and pays up, nodding goodbye to Bruce.
But he can’t just blunder out and risk the man seeing him outside so soon afterwards. The bloke could well be waiting to see who follows. Instead Mick doubles back and ducks out the back door, comes around the corner and peers into the street. Jerry could’ve anticipated this too – if he cottoned on to Mick watching him at the bar. He may be creeping up even now.
But, no, the fat bastard’s waddling across the road towards a run-down ute with dust caking the sides that you wouldn’t look at twice. A real rock spider, Jerry.
It’s only as the man starts his car that Mick remembers Rose is up the street and he promised to pick her up.
But he might not get another opportunity to get the jump on the man.
And he has to see that mine site.
He pulls out after the fat bastard, staying back far enough that hopefully his headlights won’t be too obvious. When they get to open road he’ll have to drive blind though. He’d been racking his brain wondering how Cutter had managed to follow him without attracting attention. Canny bastard must’ve hung well back on the open roads driving on pure instinct without headlights, tracking the lights of Mick’s car in the distance and braving suicidal roos and wallabies. Mick had beefed up the bullbar of the ute as precaution, but it’d still be hairy, especially if one managed to smash through the windscreen. They’d been known to kick people to death from the backseat trying to escape. Like a panicked cat in a bucket of water, once you dropped a rat in there too. Not pretty.
As they pass the lines of well-spaced sagging weatherboard homes Mick’s heart leaps. What if Jerry lived in one of these country town houses? Each of them like the other, picket fences all the same, front yards a little overgrown but not too much, dog in the backyard. Ordinary. Perfect for a monster to hide in. He could just pull into one right now instead of heading on to the mine site tonight.
But the sicko must be geared up after seeing the little girlies in the bar, and wants to head out to his little sanctuary to relive past glories – who the fuck knows? – because he continues past the outskirts and east onto open road.
The way he looked at those girls. That there were even people like that . . .
Mick sits forward – he has to concentrate now. He kills his lights and follows at a distance, senses ablaze. The man’s car is like a min-min light in the distance, beckoning him on.
All that matters is finding the mine site. The rest means jackshit.
They travel into flat, empty red desert. The moonlight above shines down on a vast vista of nothingness. Apart from the black scar of the highway stretching away into infinity, there’s no landmarks, no trees or hills or houses that stand out. Just that endless red dirt, glowing in the light. Desert winds blow an occasional tumbleweed alongside the car like an animal trying to keep pace.
Mick strains against his seatbelt. The highway – monotonously straight – at least doesn’t deviate beneath his tyres, but he still has to concentrate hard in case of rocks on the road or a wayward roo. His nerves are frazzled by the time the car ahead turns onto a dirt track without indicating a vast amount of time later and Mick has to race to catch the tell-tale cloud signalling its start. This is going to be even more dang
erous as he risks pulling closer, at least able to follow the cloud on the now curving track in the middle of nowhere. The ute squeaks and protests as its suspension takes a beating. He wills it on.
Finally they begin winding up a small mountain range and when the pedo’s car fades in and out of view in the dips Mick takes the opportunity to click the spotlight to make sure he’s still on the path. Cutter must’ve been one hell of a driver. This is doing his head in.
Then the car appears again and Mick sees a dark cancer on the peak ahead of it. He pulls the ute off the track and has it parked amongst shrubs before he hears the distant engine of the pedo’s car turn off, having arrived at the site. Mick gets out quietly and looks across at the peak some hundred feet away as exterior lights flick on. The darkness of the landscape nearly swallows up the soft glow of the camp. Unless you were travelling overhead you’d be hard-pressed seeing it. Certainly wouldn’t be easy from the plain below. It’s like a fortress out in a place no one even knew existed.
Grateful for the moonlight – so he can leave his torch off – Mick grabs the .22 then picks his way through low-lying prickle grass and emu apple towards the camp. His legs are stronger after the work on the station and he’s able to get up the slope to the site in good order. As he goes he scours for signal wires or traps, remembering Cutter’s warning of booby-traps.
The camp’s well chosen. Above are ragged inaccessible cliffs so the only point in is up from the south along the track. Looking back, the vast plain stretches out beneath. You could see a car coming twenty miles away. If it had its lights on, that is. A run of wire catches a glint of moonlight across the open gate, tied to hanging tin cans. So even if a car somehow did manage to sneak up on the camp, it’d snag the empty cans and Jerry would get warning. Smart fucker.
Mick pulls a blade of grass and drops it on the wire to test if it’s electrified – no – then slides through. He crouches and listens to the night, but hears only insects, a scuttle of something in nearby undergrowth. Then, beneath everything, music. Sounds like the bugger’s having a one-man party.