Only Killers and Thieves

by Paul Howarth

  Sullivan took another drink, belched, then he too turned in. Billy unrolled his swag, Tommy did the same, then he staggered to the tree line to piss. Facing the low branches, his piss drumming into the soil, he searched the darkness for signs of the troopers out there. He couldn’t see them. Probably facing the wrong way. Or else they were so expert at staying hidden in the bush that one could have been right in front of him and he wouldn’t have known. He squinted drunkenly. The rum had taken hold. Imagined that young one with his madman’s eyes staring back from the night. Or the oldfella with his hollowed-out face, or that one with the melted brow . . .

  Hurriedly Tommy buckled himself and came back into camp. All of them save Noone was asleep. He was still leaning against the tree trunk but now had a stump of firewood in his hands. He was whittling it with his bowie knife, picking off the shoots one by one. He watched Tommy climbing into his roll; Tommy turned his back on the fire. He lay there listening to the knife blade scraping the bark, then closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It didn’t seem real that he was here, in this camp, with these men, all that had gone before. Not four nights ago he was lying in his own bed, Billy alongside him, dreaming about Wallabys in the wet. They’d never go back there, he realized. So much had been lost. He would never think of that waterhole without remembering: every memory, not just Wallabys, every memory was tainted now. One way or another they all led to that day, to the house at sunset, to what was inside. There wasn’t anything else. Nowhere he could go to forget.

  * * *

  His own name woke him, a whisper in the night. He opened his eyes and lay listening. “Tommy, Tommy . . .” Noone called across the clearing, repeating his name like a chant. Tommy rolled over to face him. The fire now low and smoldering, little more than a dying glow, and beyond it the dark figure of Noone still leaning against the tree, whittling another branch, longer than the first, stroke after careful stroke.

  “Ask me about the lake,” he said.

  Tommy sat up slowly, clutched his bedroll to his chest. “What?”

  “The lake you saw today. Ask what it’s doing there.”

  Noone’s voice was slow and heavy, changed somehow, slurred like he’d been drinking all this time Tommy slept.

  “How’s he got a lake in the middle of a drought—wasn’t that what you said?”

  “It’s not my business. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “To which your brother replied . . . ?”

  Tommy hesitated before he answered: “That you don’t get a lake. You either have one or you don’t.”

  “Precisely. Do you agree with him?”

  “I don’t know. It looked strange, that’s all.”

  “So it should. Drought’s crippling the district, most of the colony, in fact, and yet here’s John Sullivan with an abundance of water and cows fatter than a whorehouse madam. Am I right?”

  “I shouldn’t have said nothing. Sorry.”

  “It was very astute of you.”

  They sat awhile in silence. The knife blade whispered against the wood. Smoke from the fire wound its way through the branches and into the night.

  “Are you able to keep a secret, Tommy?”

  “I think so.”

  “Come on now. Either I can trust you or I can’t.”

  “Alright, then.”

  Noone paused. He held up the branch and studied it. He had whittled it into a neatly tapered stake, roughly two feet long, with a hollowed-out section partway down. He set the stake and knife aside, then leaned into the fire glow. A redness crept over his chest and face, and the tip of his tongue wet his lips before he spoke.

  “He dams it. The river. He dams it, then drains it into reservoirs that feed only his land. Your family gets his runoff. You and everyone else downstream.”

  “But how can he . . . ?”

  “There’s a word for it. Peacocking. Have you heard of this phrase?”

  Scowling, Tommy shook his head.

  “It’s actually quite common. Scuttling surrounding land for the benefit of one’s own. Probably illegal, not that anybody cares.”

  “We did. Daddy cared. We were getting by on bran mash by the end.”

  “If I were a betting man, Tommy, I’d say your father was well aware.”

  “He would never have allowed it.”

  “You assume he had a say. He used to be John’s man, I believe. Quite a rise in fortunes over the years. There are always compromises to be made.”

  “But . . . everything hangs on that river. Everything.”

  “We never actually met, your father and I. Didn’t seem necessary when I was already working Broken Ridge, the two are one and the same. A spirited fellow, though, John says. Are you much like him, I wonder? How old did you say you are now?”

  “Fifteen soon. I’m not sure what today is.”

  “Twentieth.”

  “Two days, then. Two days I’m fifteen.”

  Noone spread his arms. “We shall celebrate. At fifteen you’re almost a man.”

  “Why did you just tell me that? About the lake?”

  “Seems to me you deserved to know. You noticed, at least, which is more than your brother did. And I rather like you. I think perhaps we can be friends.”

  Tommy looked away, blinking. Clutched tight his bedroll.

  “I see Rabbit’s also taken with you. The young trooper over there. A strange boy, very lonely, I think he might be retarded in some way. Apparently we killed his family and most of his tribe—we being whites, not me personally, you understand. Now it seems he craves our approval, which is a very fine trait in a recruit. Makes him obedient, loyal, but he’s a dangerous young man. I wouldn’t suggest you choose him for a friend out here.”

  “I ain’t looking to make friends,” Tommy said.

  “Good. That’s good. You were born with a suspicious mind. But no man is an island: you are never entirely alone. You still have your brother, but who else? John? I don’t think so, Tommy. John is not your friend. Taking your family’s water like that, not very neighborly of him, wouldn’t you say?” He wagged his finger back and forth, tutting in time with each pass. “The Bible tells us to love thy neighbor—do you read the Bible, Tommy? Do you follow the word of the Lord?”

  “No. I don’t reckon he even exists.”

  Noone’s gray eyes flared. “A boy of many talents. Bravo, Tommy. Bravo.”

  Tommy felt himself flushing, tried to hide a rising smile.

  “You don’t read the Bible neither?” he asked.

  “On the contrary,” Noone said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a tattered old book bound in a soft leather cover. He rifled the pages so Tommy could see. Half of them were missing, a stub of ragged paper torn along the spine.

  “In fact, I read a page of this nonsense daily, gives me a bloody good laugh while I take my morning shit, then it does a fine job of wiping clean my hole.” Laughing, he raised his arms skyward. “Halle-bloody-lujah! Praise be to the Lord!”

  His laughter died out and he lowered his arms and Tommy waited but Noone didn’t speak again. Tommy lay down slowly, pulled his bedroll to his chin. He was facing the fire this time, facing Noone. Through the quiver of the charcoal he saw him reach for the two pieces of wood he had trimmed, and fit one against the other to make a cross, which he then began binding with string.

  Tommy soon fell asleep. Dreams of Father and of a lake—the first time he had dreamed of Father since. He was standing by the lake, looking out over its surface while from a distance Tommy called his name. Father didn’t turn. Tommy shouted louder but still he didn’t respond, unreachable at the water’s edge, lost, and Tommy shouting, shouting . . . until he woke panicked into daylight to find that the shouting belonged to Locke. He was raising hell in the camp, cursing and fighting with his bedroll. The cross that Noone had made last night was embedded in the ground, just above Locke’s head. His name had been carved upon it. His death foretold.

  17

  Midmorning they cleared the station
boundary. There were no markings, no fence posts, but as they passed between a pair of bulbous bottle trees Sullivan drew a line with his finger across the ground.

  “Here’s about where it ends, so the title says. I ain’t finished with it yet, though. You see them ranges yonder? Up to there’s my claim.”

  He spoke for Billy’s benefit. All morning the two of them had ridden side by side, Tommy trailing just behind. He could hardly stand to listen to them talk, but there was nowhere else for him to be. Noone and the troopers were leading them now, the old man at the front of the line, while Locke skulked alone at the rear. He hadn’t said a word since waking that morning, when he’d tossed Noone’s crucifix onto the newly kindled fire and sat shivering with his tin cup cradled in his hands, moodily sipping bush tea.

  The frontier crossing turned Tommy’s gut, their passing from settled land to wild. All his life he’d feared it, the uncharted west, looming like a shadow on the edge of their world. The center was filled with legends such as men like Burke and Wills, who had tried to cross the country and died along the way, or the everyday tales of vanished drovers and mysterious lost cattle mobs many thousand strong, swagmen blinded by sandy blight or sent mad by the bush. Sometimes they came to the house, asking for food or work, muttering darkly about the places they’d been, and Mother would take pity on them and allow them a meal and a night in the bunkhouse, then Father would chase them off come the dawn. Even in Bewley they weren’t welcome; Tommy had seen them raving in the street, staggering about like drunks. And yet always they went back there, into the nothingness that broke them, bewitched by it, entranced. That very same nothingness into which Tommy now rode. The empty swath of country on the surveyor’s map. The place where the lines ran out.

  And there really was nothing. The landscape stretched endlessly before them, a flat and uniform tundra of sunburned grasslands, broken scrub, the tufted tops of trees or the skeletal outlines of their remains, blackened by bushfire, withered by drought. The ranges squatting low on the horizon, shapeless and obscure: a day and a half riding and still they were no nearer. It would be days more before they got there, and nothing in between. No towns, no settlements: nothing between here and Perth, thousands of miles away on the western coast; nothing except wild bushland and the lonely wooden shack that served as a telegraph station in a place called Alice Springs. And pity the poor bastard who found himself posted there.

  They rode on. Nine liquid shadows slipping over the rubbled ground. The soil different out here, desert soil, pebbled and sandy and corrugated by the wind, firebrand red. The heat incessant, engulfing them, choking them—sweat streamed down Tommy’s face and neck and suckered his clothing and boots to his skin. He took a long drink, rattled his flask, and guessed at only an inch or so left. He tightened the stopper and stowed the flask in his saddlebag, pushed it low, hoping to keep the water cool, and as he did so felt the rustle of paper down there. A packet of some kind—he fished it out and opened it and found a handful of Mrs. Sullivan’s lemon lollies inside. He ached just to look at them. A little moan escaped. She must have smuggled the packet into his bag herself. Tommy swelled at the thought of her doing that. He wasn’t far from tears.

  He checked along the line in front of him, then over his shoulder at Locke. No one was paying him any mind. He pried a lolly from the clump, popped it in his mouth. Sticky and dry at first, but as he worked it the sweet lemon flavor began dribbling into his parched throat and he closed his eyes in bliss. He hid the packet in his saddlebag, and for the briefest moment he was not in that desert convoy anymore, his world reduced to tongue and tooth and lolly and throat, feeling every movement, savoring every taste, mourning the speed with which it shrank and then evaporated and somehow left him even thirstier still.

  When Billy and Sullivan finally parted, Sullivan riding on ahead to talk to Noone, passing the troopers without acknowledgment, oblivious to their glares, Billy fell back to join Tommy and said casually, not looking across, “Hot, ain’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wind’s picking up n’all.”

  “Yup,” Tommy said.

  Now Billy looked at him. “What’s got into you?”

  “You need me to tell you?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Alright,” Tommy said. “What was all that about?”

  “All what?”

  “You and him. You’d think you two were the ones that’s kin.”

  Billy blew out dismissively. “We was only talking. Don’t be such a girl.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “This—what else?”

  “What about it exactly?”

  “Nothing exactly.”

  “He tell you about that lake of his, did he?”

  “Not you and that bloody lake again.”

  “He dams it, you know. Keeps most of the water for himself. That’s how come our creek gets so low in the dry. Peacocking, they call it. Even got its own word.”

  Billy scowled at him. “Where’d you get all this from?”

  “Noone. Last night. Reckoned Daddy would have known about it too.”

  “Well, there you go. There ain’t no way.”

  “He seemed sure enough.”

  “That bloke’s crazier than a bag of snakes, Tommy. You seen him last night with Locke. Lucky he didn’t get his head shot off.”

  “Locke would never have dared.”

  “Well, you can’t trust him anyway. John’s already said. He likes causing trouble, that’s all. Does it for fun.”

  “Says Sullivan.”

  “Yeah, says him.” Both were quiet a moment, then Billy said, “Tell you what, though, wouldn’t mind them finding us a lake out here sometime soon.”

  Tommy snorted a quick laugh. “Bloody oath.”

  “You got much left?”

  “Hardly any. You?”

  “Same. I’ve not seen them blacks take theirs out once.”

  “They don’t eat neither, it’s not normal.”

  “Nothing about them’s normal, Tommy. They give me the jips, every one.”

  “Noone said that young one had his family killed by whites.”

  Billy looked at him doubtfully, then sniffed and said, “Probably deserved it.”

  “You reckon so?”

  “Aye, I do. No one gets killed without a reason. Even blacks.”

  They both fell silent. Tommy said, “Camels don’t need much water.”

  “Camels? What you talking about camels for?”

  “It’s true. A camel goes weeks without drinking. They’re made for all this. Maybe some natives are built the same.”

  Billy broke into a laugh. He shook his head. “A black and a camel ain’t nothing alike.”

  “I’m not saying they’re alike, just that there might be a reason why—”

  “They don’t even have bloody humps!”

  Billy was laughing fully now. The bearded trooper looked at them, and Billy bit his tongue until he’d turned back around, then muffled his laughter with a hand. “Camels, Tommy!” he whispered, and Tommy briefly smiled. Smiling more at the fact that they were laughing together than anything either had said.

  That night they camped in open scrub, beneath a pair of coolibahs, the troopers alternating watch while the others ate and slept. Another low fire, another meal of dry stores, everyone wary, watching the open plains, not much talking and no trouble this time between Locke and Noone. Tommy didn’t like looking out there. He could see only so far and then nothing, total darkness, a shadowland filled with his fears. He imagined wild blacks circling, dogs prowling, snakes sliding into camp. When he lay down to sleep he kept hearing them, their footsteps and low moans, and though he knew it was only the troopers patrolling, that knowledge did not make him feel any more safe.

  * * *

  In the afternoon of the following day they came across a dwelling house, sitting lonely and incongruous on the empty plain. Noone halted the group a half mile clear. They gathered in a line and wa
tched the house, tiny at that distance, quiet and still. The posse waited. Hot wind ruffled their clothing and whipped dust across the ground; the horses shook off the flies. Noone extended a brass spyglass and studied the little house, and Tommy watched him while he did. The idea seemed faintly magical. Bringing the distance closer, moving yourself near.

  Noone lowered the scope and contracted it again. They walked the horses on, toward the house, the line fragmenting as they went, Noone and the troopers in front, the other four whites behind. The young trooper grinned at Tommy excitedly, nodding and pointing and bouncing in his saddle.

  “Look at him,” Sullivan muttered. “Little bastard’s keener than a bitch in heat.”

  They halted again a hundred yards short. All eyes on the ruined house. Its walls were still standing but the roof was part-caved, a hole in the shingles on the right side. There was one uncovered window and the door was open, no front yard to speak of, uncleared scrub right up to the walls.

  Noone raised his chin. “Jarrah,” he said. “Take a look.”

  The trooper with the eye scar dismounted. He handed off his reins, checked his rifle, set out walking through the scrub. No hesitation, no pause. He carried the rifle by its forestock and walked casually to the house, as if he already knew it was safe. Tommy didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust the silence, the darkness inside. He watched Jarrah breathlessly, followed his every step, like he too was approaching that open door . . . and Father lying slumped beside it, three holes in him, and Mother behind the curtain, missing half her head.

  Tommy turned away, couldn’t watch. He took out his flask and drank, kept his eyes on Noone instead. He looked almost bored. Hands folded in his lap, fingers drumming; he took a long breath and sighed. Tommy glanced back at Jarrah. He was creeping along the front wall. He ducked his head through the window, then went to the door, and Noone ordered him inside with another jut of his chin. Jarrah slipped in through the gap. Tommy stared at the darkened doorway, expecting a gunshot, a cry, lost in the trauma of what might be in there, and didn’t see the trooper emerge from around the back of the house.