Only Killers and Thieves

by Paul Howarth

  “Yessir,” Billy said. “Yessir, we will.”

  “And you?”

  Billy elbowed Tommy in his side. He nodded.

  “He don’t speak for himself? To my thinking a deal should be agreed out loud.”

  “Say it,” Billy hissed.

  “Yessir.”

  “Good,” Sullivan said, taking up his reins. “Then on your way.”

  The boys backtracked hesitantly, as one by one the group turned their horses and rode toward the trooper holding the two chained men. Only Noone remained. Still smoking his pipe, watching the boys like he hadn’t noticed the others leave. His gaze was steady and firm and his eyes were very white. Tommy felt that gaze run through him. It tiptoed down his spine. Billy tugged on his arm, pulled him away, and they set off scrambling for the distant trees.

  The first time Tommy looked behind him, Noone was still there, watching. The second time he looked, he was gone.

  2

  When they rode into the yard Mother was on the verandah, sweeping, fighting her perpetual war against dust. A thin woman with a thin broom, pale in the shade of the porch, beating the wooden deck. Every day she swept, often many times, driving the dirt from inside their slab-walled house and around the small verandah, then expelling it down the steps. She swept, she cooked; privately, she prayed. She carried eggs from the fowl house in the folds of her apron; she taught all of her children to read. She had a hankering for the city. For city values, at least. She was a country girl now but not by birth—somehow she’d drifted out here. First to Roma, then Bewley, then this parcel of frontier land she’d wistfully named Glendale. Other than the dead center, there was nowhere farther to drift.

  As the two boys dismounted, she finished her round of sweeping, then stood on the front steps with the broom in her hands and watched them walk their horses past the house, toward the stables, across the yard. Tommy felt his throat tighten. Still an urge to run to her, to confess, to allow himself to be held, but Billy had made it clear they weren’t to talk. Said Sullivan only wanted Father knowing because of the trouble it would cause. Mother smiled at them as they crossed in front of the house and Billy said it again: “Not a word, Tommy,” but quietly, through lips pulled tight in a smile of his own.

  “Well?” she called. “What have you brought me?”

  “Scrubs are empty,” Billy replied. “There ain’t nothing left.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure Arthur would have managed fine.”

  “So send him out next time.”

  “Tommy—what’s your excuse?”

  “Sorry, Ma.”

  She flapped a hand dismissively. “Ah, away with you. Useless boys. Me and Mary would fare better. Or maybe you just prefer my potato stew?”

  “Best this side of Bewley!” Billy shouted. Mother laughed and shook her head and went back up the steps and inside.

  They walked on. Past the long bunkhouse that had once held a dozen men and was now home to only two: Arthur plus the new boy, Joseph, Father’s native stockmen. The double doors were open but there was no one inside, and when they got to the stables the other stalls were empty, meaning the men were still out working, seeing to the mob. There wasn’t long before the saleyards: their year, their futures, tallied and sold.

  In silence they unsaddled the horses, brushed them, fed them, tipped water on their backs, hung the damp blankets on the outside rail to dry. They walked down through the yard together, toward the well and the rusted windmill squeaking with each turn. Tommy fell back to let Billy have the first wash; he hauled up the bucket, watching Tommy as he pulled.

  “There ain’t no sense worrying about it. They never meant us any harm.”

  “You were scared the same as me.”

  “Only because of them natives. Bloody hell, Tommy—black police!”

  Billy laughed nervously as he said it, dragging the bucket over the rim of the well and sloshing water onto the ground. He knelt and began drinking, washing himself down; Tommy stole fitful glances across the empty yard. Just the mention of them made him nervous, blurred memories of rifle muzzles and cartridge belts and the uniforms they wore. He hadn’t looked at their faces, hadn’t dared. Tommy knew nothing about the Native Police—Father didn’t like talking about trouble with the blacks. Over the years he’d heard stories about fighting in the district—the whole colony, in fact—from stockmen and drovers and the odd traveler passing through. But Father wouldn’t discuss it. Not their business, he said. They had plenty of their own problems without getting involved in someone else’s war.

  Billy finished washing and stood. Tommy came to take his turn. He tipped out the bucket and threw it into the well, heard it clattering against the walls, then splash into the water far below. He waited while it filled.

  “They probably deserved it,” Billy said. “Might have done anything.”

  “Trespassing, Sullivan reckoned.”

  “All I’m saying is there ain’t no sense worrying about what we don’t know.”

  Tommy didn’t answer. He held Billy’s stare. Billy shook his head and walked around the front of the verandah, toward the steps, and Tommy began pulling on the rope. He paused to listen to his brother’s boots on the verandah boards, the door slapping closed in the frame, then lifted the bucket clear of the well. He knelt on the ground and drank, the water dusty but cool, set about washing his face and neck, and at one point sank in his whole head. He stayed under as long as he was able, eyes closed, listening to the tick of the wood and the beating of his own heart, a strange kind of peace in the confines of the pail, muffling the outside world. But then came a crack of gunfire and he saw the body twitch, the trooper standing over it, performing his little bow, and in the silence of the water he heard the horses advancing upon them, the rumble of their hooves in the ground.

  Tommy lurched out of the bucket, gasping, jerking his head around. The yard behind him was empty. There was laughter from inside the house. Mary’s voice, light and playful, some jibe at Billy’s expense. Tommy pushed himself to standing and collected his hat. Water ran from his hairline, dribbled off his chin. He kicked over the bucket, the dirty puddle seeping into the soil, then he walked around the side of the house scuffing the wetness from his hair. He paused. In the north, beyond the cattle yards, three horses were coming in from the scrubs, lit by the fading sunlight in a rich and golden hue. Father, Joseph, and Arthur, the dogs trotting with them, a thin dust trail behind. Tommy took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. He walked up the steps and went inside.

  * * *

  They sat around the table, mopping potato stew with freshly baked bread, Mary bemoaning her brothers and the lack of meat in the meal. She was eleven years old but thought herself eighteen; round-faced, with her mother’s fair coloring, and little time for a woman’s lot. She’d been pestering Father to let her work the scrubs ever since she was able to ride. Now all she wanted was to go hunting, instead of staying home with her chores.

  “And who would help me?” Mother asked her. “Or do I grow another hand?”

  “These two galoots. Let them clean and sew and see to the chooks. We’d be eating a nice fat possum if you let me go out. Or a kangaroo.”

  “There ain’t no roos,” Billy said. “Anyway, how would you get one back?”

  “Drag it if I had to, but I wouldn’t have rode so far.”

  “That was his idea,” Tommy told them. “I never wanted to go north.”

  “Only to keep clear of the mob,” Billy protested. “No other reason than that.”

  Father sat back in his chair, chewing, a faint smile on his lips. He moved with a cattleman’s stiffness, and like all cattlemen his eyes were narrowed in a near-permanent squint. He wore his beard short, his dark hair too, and the lines in his face looked chiseled from birth. Only a few years past forty, he had the weariness of a much older man. Like every day was a struggle. Which in truth it was.

  Father folded his arms and looked between his children. He was sitting
at the head of the table, framed by the last of the sunset in the open window behind. Enough daylight still that a candle could be saved, and no need for a fire just yet. There would be, soon enough, once the sun was fully down. The walls of the house were made of ill-fitting timber slabs and the roof was shingled in bark, and both let in draft and dust and rain, if ever rain fell. Only the original building had a floor: the main room and a bedroom off it, separated by a blue curtain door. Annexed out back was another bedroom, where all three children slept, and an open-air scullery had been tacked onto the northern side. The whole dwelling leaned like a drunk on his horse, steadfastly refusing to fall.

  “Your sister has a point,” Father said finally. “You had any sense you wouldn’t have been up that way at all. You’re as likely to find something in the yard.”

  “We did, though,” Billy said. “Maybe a dingo or emu, we wasn’t sure.”

  “Well, they do look about the same,” Father said. Mother and Mary laughed.

  “We couldn’t see it properly for the trees.”

  “Oh, aye? And which trees were those, then?”

  Billy fell quiet. Tommy lowered his eyes too. Father wiped his bread around his plate, leaned his elbow on the table, and tore off a corner with his teeth. He chewed lazily, waiting. Mary’s head jerked between her brothers like a bird hunting grubs.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere,” Billy snapped. “Just . . . trees.”

  “The blue gums up Sullivan’s way?” Father asked, but Billy only shrugged. Father turned to Tommy. “You’ll have to answer for him. Your brother doesn’t seem to know where he’s been.”

  Tommy felt Billy staring. “We thought there might be rabbits in the shade.”

  Father leaned both elbows on the table, hunched over his bowl. “Might be a golden bloody goose for all I care, you stay away from Sullivan’s place, understand? You’ve the whole country to hunt in—why in hell d’you go up there?”

  “’Cause they’re galoots, I already told you.”

  “Enough, Mary,” Mother said.

  “What’s your problem with him anyway?” Billy asked. “What’s he ever done to us?”

  Father sniffed and sat upright. He popped the last of his bread in his mouth and said, chewing, “There is no problem. Just do as you’re bloody told. Bloke like that could shoot you if he caught you hunting on his land.”

  “We weren’t on his land,” Billy said quickly.

  “Close enough. Don’t hunt in them trees again.”

  “They weren’t hunting, neither,” Mary said. “They were taking a nice long walk.”

  She laughed and Billy pushed her. Mary squealed and ducked away. Mother grabbed both of their arms and told them to settle and eventually they went back to their meal. Tommy paid no attention. He was staring into his bowl, watching the stew creep through the crumb of his bread, grain by grain by grain. He lifted the bread to his mouth but it collapsed into mush in his bowl. He glanced up and found Father watching him; Father rolled his tongue, shook his head, looked away.

  * * *

  He was woken by Billy kicking, fighting in his sleep. Tommy shoved him, rolled onto his back, and lay listening to the tick and yawl of the scrubs outside, and the catch in Billy’s throat when he breathed. The bed wasn’t wide enough to lie like this—his shoulder dug into Billy’s spine—but Tommy liked watching the stars through the gaps in the shingle roof. Sometimes there’d be a faller, and he would make a wish, but he never got to see one fall the whole way. The width of a crack and that was all. Like a match being struck in the sky.

  He shivered, reached for the blankets, felt his nightshirt clinging damp against his skin. Though the night was cool, he’d been sweating; might have been dreaming himself, maybe. When they’d first come to bed, Billy had accused him of dobbing to Father about them having been up in those trees. But Mary had been listening from her cot across the room, so they lay in sullen silence in the dark, until both fell asleep and they were at it again, arguing in their dreams.

  Tommy swung out his feet and stood, crossed the room to Mary’s cot. She was huddled in her blankets, her mouth hanging open, spittle running from the corner of her lips. He smiled and turned away, paced up and down, rubbing himself briskly, trying to get warm. He paused by the doorway curtain. A faint light framed its edge: the fire was burning still. He pulled back the curtain, went into the other room, and stopped just past the threshold. Though the fire was glowing, it was candlelight he had seen. Father was at the table, a bottle at his elbow, a glass in his hand, his pocket notebook open before him, the little red pencil resting in the fold.

  Father looked up slowly. The light from the tallow candle flickered on his face. One half in darkness, the other in flame. He peered at Tommy a long time.

  “What is it, son?”

  “Billy’s kicking about.”

  “So kick him back.”

  “I did.” Tommy’s eyes went to the hearth and again he shivered. “Thought I might use the fire awhile.”

  “You sick or anything?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Father gestured grandly toward the fireplace. Tommy came around the table and stood with his back to the embers, waiting for the warmth, avoiding Father’s stare. Father poured himself a drink and sipped it, offered the glass to Tommy; Tommy shook his head.

  “Help if you’ve a fever.”

  “I’m not sick, I said.”

  Father nodded slowly, lips pursed, head rocking up and down. The fire spat and hissed. “You know,” he said, “it felt earlier there was something you and Billy might be keeping to yourselves.”

  “Only that we were up in them trees. We knew it wasn’t allowed.”

  “Nothing else happened?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. You two have been off all night.”

  Tommy shook his head. A quick little burst side to side. Father sniffed and drank again, hesitated, then drained the glass. “Ah, it’s not your fault. This ain’t no place to live, raise a family. I shouldn’t have to warn my own children off the bloody neighbor’s land.”

  “Weren’t you friends once? You and Sullivan?”

  Father drew himself tall, scraped his palms over the tabletop.

  “Working for a bloke doesn’t make him your mate, Tommy. The opposite, in fact. That was a long time ago anyway, lots of things have changed.”

  Tommy was about to respond when Father leaned on his elbow and pointed at him, continued, “A man shouldn’t answer to anyone. He makes his own way in the world. You understand what I’m telling you? Being a wage slave ain’t much better than being a blackfella, you’re both some other bugger’s boy. What you want is your freedom. Don’t give it away, Tommy. Not for any price.”

  He wagged his finger, then dropped it, rapped his knuckles twice on the wood. He closed the little notebook, laying one hand on top while the other poured a drink. Thoughtfully he sipped it. Staring into the candle flame.

  “How bad is it?” Tommy asked quietly.

  “There’s a drought. The cattle’s starving. How bad d’you reckon it is?”

  “Will we be alright, though?”

  Father looked up then. His eyes softened and his mouth pulled tight in a grimace, and he breathed out heavily through his nose. “Aye, we’ll be alright.”

  “But they’re starving, you just said.”

  Father reached for Tommy’s arm, pulled him close, then cupped the back of his neck and dragged him down until the two of them were butting heads. Tommy could smell the rum. He squatted awkwardly in the embrace, as Father brought his other hand around and slapped him on the cheek.

  “You know I love you, Tommy. That I’ll look after you, all of you, keep you safe. You make a decision you think is for the best and it’s too late when you realize it’s not. I’m bloody trying, though, eh. Doing the best I can. All I need from you and your brother is to help with the work and do what you’re told, and we’ll get ou
rselves out of this mess. Reckon you can do that for me? Can you do that, son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good lad,” Father said, patting his cheek again. “Proud of you. Good lad.”

  He released him. Tommy retreated to the fire. Father saw off his drink and pushed himself to his feet. The chair scraped on the boards. He picked up his notebook and wedged it into his shirt-breast pocket, then moved unsteadily around the table, holding the chair backs as he went. The candle flame wavered in the disturbed air. The wick was almost drowned. Father lunged across the open space to his bedroom, paused at the curtain, and said, “Busy day tomorrow. Don’t be late turning in.”

  “I’ll just wait till I’m dry.”

  He looked at Tommy queerly. “Dry?”

  “It’s sweat,” he said, smiling. “It’s only sweat, that’s all.”

  Father returned the smile, pulled open the curtain, and went into the bedroom. Tommy heard him staggering about, taking off his clothes, then the creak of the bed and low voices exchanging a few words. After a moment there was silence, nothing but the crackle of the bush outside, that constant rustling, and the faraway howls of dingos hunting in the night. Father began snoring and the silence in the house was broken, and Tommy was grateful that it was. Grateful for the distraction, for his family, for the warmth of the fire on his back.

  3

  After breakfast Tommy and Billy pulled on their boots and came out onto the verandah and found Arthur standing alone with the horses and dogs in the yard. The sun was not long up, the morning still cool, the sky fresh and clean and new. Tommy raised a hand against the glare as he came down the steps, and the old blackfella laughed his rattling laugh and called:

  “Ah, look at ’em! Like two baby possums just crawled out the nest!”

  Tommy had known Arthur all his life. He’d come with Father from Broken Ridge when Father first took on the selection, and these days was part of the family just about: other stockmen came and went but Arthur had always been there. When Tommy was a boy he’d seemed truly ancient, but after all these years he’d hardly aged. He wouldn’t say how old he was, claimed not to know himself. Other times he’d twirl a hand in the air like he was conjuring, then make some outlandish claim. He was a hundred, a thousand, as old as the trees; or he was still only seventeen, or twenty-one, immune to the passage of time.