by Tanya Moir
Kyeburn, Todd said later. Wedderburn. Idaburn.
Flames eating up a dry brown map and sure enough, before long, there they were pulling up on green grass and Todd turned his head from side to side surveying it or maybe just stretching his neck and then he looked straight at Winstone and smiled.
We’re home, Todd said.
In those days Winstone was very tired, so tired that things sometimes got mixed up, but he wasn’t too far gone to know that a few pine trees and grazing cattle and a polythene-lined irrigation pond didn’t make it The Ponderosa. Todd’s place was a white board house with a red tin roof and a lot of windows and pointy bits and an old macrocarpa hedge on three sides and beside the Pajero in the drive was a pink plastic tricycle with streamers on the handlebars and a crapped-out looking Nissan Sunny.
Come on. Todd grabbed Winstone’s big bag from the back and Winstone picked up his schoolbag and held it to his ribs with both arms and came around the Pajero to stand beside Todd. Todd waved one hand at the house and Winstone followed it fast so the other hand didn’t find his shoulder. Todd wasn’t Lorne Greene. He was about Bic’s age probably. A fit guy. A big guy. If he looked like any of the Cartwright boys it was probably Hoss but time would tell if he was a Hoss on the inside too and until he knew for sure Winstone planned to keep his distance.
There was a cracked concrete path leading up to a red front door with green things growing in pots either side but they didn’t go that way. They walked to the back and up a couple of steps and through a sticking door to a closed-in porch that smelled of mud and old apples and half-dry gear and the bowl of cat food on top of the washing machine. Marlene’s pink gumboots were by the back door. They brought him up short.
Come on, Todd said. Inside.
WEST
WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE Mr Cooper? the Bandit King said. His hands rested on the table in front of him and between his hands was a wide and empty space and outside his right hand lay a knife.
Your men brought us here, Cooper said.
The Bandit King raised his hands from the table and brought them together in front of his chest and he steepled his fingers and stretched them some. Behind his chair was a rock wall and an open window and through the window the range under a turbulence of wings and wind and sun.
Before Ramon there rounded us up, Cooper said, we was mindin our own business.
That is not possible, El Rabbitoh said. All business here is mine.
We aint lookin for trouble, Cooper said.
What are you looking for?
The Kid and Cooper stood silent. They stood with their hands behind their backs but they were not tied and their feet were braced and they met the Bandit King’s eyes and did not look at each other.
El Rabbitoh tapped his steepled fingers to his chin. We do not always find what we seek, he said, or seek what we find. It could be that trouble is looking for you. It could be that it has found you.
Has it? Cooper said.
Perhaps, El Rabbitoh said and he spread his hands once more upon the table. I was told you would come, he said, and that you would not say why.
Told, Cooper said. Told by who?
Ah, said the Bandit King. Now you wish to know something of me.
He looked across the table at them as if their thoughts might hatch from their skins and his fingers stroked the hilt of the knife.
Or perhaps you think you can guess, he said.
Still the Kid and Cooper said nothing.
El Rabbitoh picked up the knife. Lightly he dangled it from the haft and let the blade drop and it lodged in the table top as easily as if the wood were a pat of butter.
Take Mr Cooper back to his quarters, El Rabbitoh said.
Ramon looked at the Kid. What about him?
He stays with me, El Rabbitoh said.
Cooper shrugged off Ramon’s hands and his eyes as they found the Kid’s were sparking trouble. The Kid did not flinch.
Go on, he said. I’ll be right along.
Ramon’s gun pressed into the cotton of Cooper’s shirt. Good advice Mr Cooper, Ramon said.
The Bandit King had not moved. His eyes remained on the Kid and his face was without expression.
Behind the Kid the door opened and passing through it Cooper struggled and tried to turn back but the Kid had only one focus and that was El Rabbitoh and all else was indistinct and though he heard the scuffle and the door close he did not look behind him.
The Bandit King put a finger to the haft of the knife standing out of the table and rocked it and the Kid watched his hand and the blade and the Bandit King let the knife fall.
You are not as I thought you would be, El Rabbitoh said. You are not as she described you.
The Bandit King got up. He turned his back on the Kid and walked to the window and looked out. He wore no guns. The Kid looked at El Rabbitoh’s broad back edged in sun and his right hand on the stone of the sill and the knife on the table between them. El Rabbitoh did not turn.
A wing shadow passed over the room. In the angled light something flashed and the Kid saw that in front of the Bandit King a tiny mirror was set in the stone and in it their eyes met.
Who’s she? said the Kid, and the Bandit King smiled but the smile did not reach his eyes and the Kid watching the mirror could not see it.
Do you not know? El Rabbitoh said.
How about you go on and tell me, said the Kid. Then we’ll both know.
You do not seem like a bounty hunter, said El Rabbitoh.
I aint.
What then?
Don’t you know?
El Rabbitoh smiled again. Perhaps, he said.
El Rabbitoh turned and in his left hand gleamed a blade. And your friend Mr Cooper, he said. What is he?
Just that, the Kid said. My friend. We look out for each other.
Like brothers.
Bettern brothers, the Kid said.
El Rabbitoh nodded and spun the knife in the air and caught the haft and picked at the fingernails of his right hand. Yes, he said. In this fort there are many men who are better than brothers.
He looked up at the Kid.
Would he die for you? El Rabbitoh said.
Nossir, said the Kid. Not if I could help it.
The Bandit King slid the blade back up his sleeve. This path you are on, he said. It must end far from this place. Do you understand?
Yessir.
You will wait here one more day, El Rabbitoh said.
Don’t reckon I got much of a choice, the Kid said.
Give me your word you will not try to escape, El Rabbitoh said, and I will give you back your guns.
An why would you want to go doin that? the Kid said.
Because my friend, El Rabbitoh said, I would not wish you to miss the sport. Tomorrow we go hunting.
The Kid looked at the Bandit King.
Break your word to me and you die, El Rabbitoh said. Keep it and in one day’s time I will tell you where to find the ones you seek.
You know that, the Kid said.
I do.
How?
El Rabbitoh smiled.
He told me.
In the beginning it had been hard to go it alone without Zane and sometimes it still was.
Winstone raised himself on his elbows and watched a swarm of small birds rise and swirl and settle back on the top wire of the fence as though the earth was about to tip and they needed something to hold onto and he wondered if that was the spectacle they’d arrived at the top of the range to see. In the long grass between him and the fence and the birds the tip of a striped tail twitched and Winstone thought that knowing where a thing was also meant you knew where it wasn’t. Up ahead or on your trail or behind your shoulder watching you to see what you would do.
Zane who? the lady who answered the phone at the district council had said when Winstone rang from the emergency home, there’s no Zane here is that even a name is this a joke does your mother know you’re calling?
Winstone only had bits of Zane left
now. The further west he had come the more had got lost and he didn’t really know what to do with what remained because every time he tried to make the parts up they turned into something different.
He sat and watched the kitten stalk the birds but the birds were too smart and too fast and every which way the kitten came at them they always got away. After a while of watching Winstone got bored and the kitten did too and he got up and walked to where it had folded itself up in the grass to wait for an easier meal and to his surprise the kitten didn’t run away. He squatted beside the kitten and still the kitten didn’t bolt but looked up at him with its slitty eyes and its mouth opened up in a little pink cry all gums and kitten teeth.
I don’t have anything for you, he said. Not a thing.
The kitten didn’t believe him, you could tell. It cried again and he thought about trying to touch it but he didn’t not yet because the kitten wasn’t sitting there to be touched it was hungry that was all and a crawly tail or potato chunk or a little squishy warm feathered bird were all it wanted.
You’ll get them one day, he said. Those birds. They’ll be sitting up there and they won’t see you coming.
CENTRAL
Jim-jam-Jemma. Jemma-jam. She had long wavy hair the colour of runny honey with the sun shining through but never, not once, did Winstone mistake her for Marlene. She smelled a lot better for a start. And she was smaller than Marlene. Too small to go to school.
His first day at Glentrool Primary she was waiting when he got home. She wanted to know all about it.
Jemma’s made you a cake, Todd’s wife Debbie said, and she had. It was blue and green and smelled like some kind of putty and she pretended to give it to him and Winstone pretended to eat it.
It’s not a real cake, Jemma said.
I know.
Did you go on the bus? Jemma said.
You know he did, Debbie said, we watched him get on this morning.
Did you make friends at school?
Debbie was on the other side of the kitchen with her back half-turned folding shirts and Winstone saw her go all stiff trying to look like she wasn’t listening. Yeah, he said. Sure.
Can you read?
Yeah, Winstone said, I can read.
Jemma thought about that. Can you read Llama Llama?
Winstone didn’t know.
I think Winstone probably can, Debbie said and she was smiling at him. Would you like him to read it to you?
Jemma didn’t bother answering, she just slipped down off her chair and gathered a slithery armful of books from the box beside the TV and brought them back to Winstone. No, she said, when he started to open one, over here, and she pulled at his sleeve and led him round to the living room side of the bench, her stubby legs going up and down boom boom boom on the wooden floor. She had a pink and blue sequin butterfly on the leg of her jeans and he thought about the way Marlene’s eyes would go if she saw something like that and Jemma climbed up on the couch and he sat down beside her. She found the right book which was a baby’s book with the thick cardboard pages crusty and sticky and maybe chewed and she squeezed under Winstone’s arm and leaned back and then she said wait and leaned out the other way and yanked the cat up into her lap so it could listen too.
He read Llama Llama Red Pyjama and Llama Llama Nighty Night and the cat purred and Jemma breathed loud through her mouth and she was warm and heavy and her hair smelled a bit like the tropical mango sorbets that he used to have at Zane’s place. Debbie said he didn’t have to read any more books after that but Winstone didn’t mind.
That morning he’d stood beside the blue and yellow plastic letterbox at the end of the drive in the lifting grey and a ground fog that felt more than half risen frost and he’d looked at the mud the rural delivery van had churned up in the neat grass of the verge. There were strangers watching him from the house behind and a busload more on the road up ahead and all around him from horizon to horizon, and of all the people he’d known in his life before there was only one he was sure he knew where to find right then and the permanence of Marlene’s address gave him no comfort.
He’d scoured and scrubbed in the Jacksons’ tin shower and his clothes were clean and whole and fitted him right and it made not one bit of difference to Glentrool Primary School and he hadn’t expected it would. Some things were ingrained. There wasn’t a kid on that bus or in Room 3 or the whole of the school who couldn’t see through his new hoodie and trackies and dark underpants to what was below and they needed no graffiti to tell them what a Haskett was, it was standing right there, and it was yellow with dirt-black veins.
There was a girl sitting at the top of Room 3, a tall girl, a year older than Winstone, maybe more, because she was wearing a bra and he knew because he could see the pink ribbon strap and she couldn’t stop fiddling with it and he couldn’t stop watching her do it. She had seal-brown hair pulled back in a knot on the back of her head sitting just above where the hair got wispy and her neck got soft all the bones of it disappearing and there was a shine to her like somebody groomed her a lot. Her name was Tara.
The new kid’s kinda creepy, her friend said after the playtime bell while they stood there waiting for sunscreen.
He looks like Gollum, Tara said.
She turned her head then and saw Winstone behind her and she bit her lip and blushed and he was pleased because she hadn’t meant for him to hear it.
For the fifteen minutes of playtime no one bothered him for good or bad and he found a dry bit of bench and sat in the sun and ate the biscuit but not the carrot sticks that Debbie had put in his lunchbox. It had cars on it. The lunchbox.
Lunch was a longer time to get through and he might have left but Glentrool was a pretty small town and he didn’t know where to go. The Room 3 kids had scattered about business in which he did not and could never have any part and in front of him in the playground were just little kids swarming the swings and the slide and the climbing wall and quarrying the sandpit. The racket they were making bounced off the valley sides like they were all in a hole and somewhere not very far up the brown grass hills was a lid and above it there was silence. The sky up there was a raw cold blue with puffed-up cloud and a busy wind prying down under the valley lid and drying the tennis courts and blowing the world around to summer again and Winstone thought about it being September now and Marlene never making it out of July and he hunched his shoulders against the wind’s shove.
The wind ducked down and skittered the dead leaves under his bench and when it came up it had a familiar scent. He looked down the bench and seated at its far end, her gumboots not touching the ground, was an unbrushed girl with pale pink leggings tending to black and a stiff denim skirt and she was watching another girl come down the slide with her legs in the air and the crotch of her striped tights showing. The wind or maybe the smell on it stung Winstone’s eyes and he could have slid along the bench and talked to the girl but he didn’t think she’d thank him for his notice. Instead he dropped his chin and disappeared inside his hoodie as much as he could and nobody west of the pass could have said what he was crying for because nobody knew Marlene and they never would.
The afternoon was better.
The Jacksons’ farm was over the river in Glentrool West and the school bus quartered the valley under the hills shedding kids up and down shingle roads until it was pretty much just him and the driver squinting into the sun and the rattle and rumble of the bus and the turn of the stones and the country music station the driver was listening to wrapped around and made a silence.
He could see the Jacksons’ place coming up, dog motel and implement shed, the top of a shiny red roof above the squared-off hedge, and the bus started to slow and he almost wished there were a few more kids left to see him get off there. The driver turned the radio down and spoke over her shoulder to Winstone in the seat behind, not taking her eyes off the empty road. Here you go, love. This is you.
Winstone wondered how much she knew about him and the Jacksons and how he came to be
there. She stopped the bus and opened the door and he stood up and got off, not looking at her either. He walked down the grass verge to the back of the bus which was taking up pretty much the whole of the road anyway and crossed the shingle and walked up the Jacksons’ drive and the bus was just a ball of dust rolling up the road when he remembered he should have said thank you to the driver.
The windows at the front of the house were empty and dull and he walked to the back and shoved open the porch door scaring the cat which took flight from the top of the washing machine and crouched among the gumboots miaowing at him, and he hesitated in front of the kitchen door wondering if he should knock and the longer he did so the harder it was to put his hand to the door and then the handle rattled and the door swung in and behind it were lights and the woodburner going and a pile of washing half-folded and Debbie smiling at him and Jemma with her plastic oven baking cupcakes. Hello Winson, she said.
WEST
BANG BANG BANG went the bandit guns and a pheasant fell from the morning sky and the echoes and feathers tumbled. The sky was clear and blue and the mountains were clear and bluer and between glinting rocks and purple-flowering sage the dust upon which the pheasant fell was creamy and thick as the palomino’s mane.
Bandit hooves bit the dust and whoops and hollers thickened the air and a lizard spun and ran for its life and as the hooves galloped by the tip of a shotgun lifted the dead bird from the dust and tossed it back into the air and the rider caught it in his gloved hand and held the bird high and reined in and the hollering redoubled. The bandit shoved the pheasant into a sack and as he did so another bird broke from the brush and the cry went up and shot from a dozen guns tore the morning air.
Far behind the furious flapping of wings the brown grass country ran still and wide and there a lone rider sat his horse and the sun was behind him and rider and horse were a blade of darkness slicing the sage and their shadow swam before them.