by Paul Howarth
The knife embedded fully into the native’s neck. Tommy drew it out and through the thick spew of blood swung again. The man toppled. Clutching his neck with both hands, his life bleeding out in between. Tommy scrambled to his knees, gasping for breath and watching him expire. He tossed the knife away. Wiped clean his face and spat and inspected his hand and cried out. The last two fingers were barely attached. They hung like wrung chicken necks. Tommy looked about despairingly. Utterly alone in the melee. The Kurrong were thinning but some still ran, and the horses ran loose, and berserk dogs howled. Lone survivors scrambled up the banks of the crater and were chased or picked off from afar. A baby screamed somewhere. Tommy looked down at the man convulsing in the mud before him, drowning in his own blood. His wide eyes stared. Tommy spat at him. He kicked him in the side. The convulsions slowed, deathly tremors and no more. Tommy kicked the man again. He drew his revolver and leveled it at the man’s forehead, saw him faintly nodding, and fired. The head jerked with the shot, then rolled to one side. Blood dribbled from the hole. Tommy turned and began walking, feet sucking in the bog, stepping over bodies as he went.
He ate none of the food that was offered and sat apart from the rest of the group, cradling his wounded left hand. Both fingers hung by their tendons, a pulsing husk of blood and bone. He wasn’t the only one hurt. Rabbit had a gash in the side of his head and Mallee had been skewered in his side. He wadded the hole nonchalantly, packing it with grass and leaves; Locke retied his wounded arm in its sling. Tommy couldn’t look at them. He watched the sun rising round and golden in the east, distant birds flying across it, diving and climbing again. After the chill of the night, animals would be lazing in the warmth, and in towns and on stations were men and women who were not him and did not know him and gave no thought to him or his fingers or anything else he had done. Most likely greeting the day with a smile.
Tommy picked up a stone and threw it. “Fuck ’em,” he said.
He tramped through the dead and the dying, revolver raised, taking aim but never firing, his face expressionless now, bereft. A woman wandered by, her head already stoved, stroking the air with her hands. An old man hid in a tangle of emu bushes, whimpering through his fingers. Another man. And another. Barely noticeable who they were. A blur of bodies and of people running, wailing, crawling, and Tommy turning with the revolver extended as if trying to divine something there. “Tommy!” someone shouted. “No dissenters now, you hear?” It was Noone. He had an infant with him, dangling it by the leg. Tommy watched him, horrified. Noone began laughing. He tossed the child high into the air. It cartwheeled limb over limb, crunched when it hit the ground, and lay still. Noone glared at Tommy. He motioned toward him with one hand. Your turn, the hand said. So Tommy spun and found the nearest Kurrong lying facedown on the ground and emptied his revolver into her back, then looked again at Noone. He had his head tilted and was frowning, reckoning whether she was enough, while from across the killing field Billy raised a fist and called “Yes, Tommy!” and gave a triumphant cheer.
Now Billy came to sit beside him on the grassy bank, lowered himself wearily down. He saw Tommy’s injured hand and drew in air through his teeth.
“Fuck, look at that. Might be Pope can save them, but I don’t know how.”
Tommy hid the wounded hand in his lap, covered it with his good.
Billy said, “You get him? The cunt that did it?”
Tommy didn’t answer, turned away.
“They were game buggers, though,” Billy said breathlessly. “Put up more of a fight than I thought. Reckon I got about a dozen myself—saw you do that gin stone cold at the end. Proud of you, little brother. Knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
Tommy swung his good fist and connected flush with Billy’s eye. His nose gave and shifted with the blow. Billy fell sideways, then touched his nose softly and lunged. He wrestled Tommy into the mud. Blows rained down. Tommy fought back but pain ripped from his hand and through him, and all he could do was turtle up and cry for Billy to stop. It was a while before he did. Before voices broke in and Sullivan was there, hauling Billy away. Tommy clambered to his feet, pressed his hand into his armpit, doubled over with the pain. He screamed. One of the fingers had come all the way loose and lay like a discarded trophy in the mud.
“You fucking bastard!” he shouted. “You fucking cunt!”
Billy had his nose pinched and head back. “The hell d’you hit me for, then?”
“Look at ’em,” Sullivan announced, grinning. “Little buggers got such a taste for it they’re fighting their-bloody-selves.”
Tommy sat down on the bank beside Pope and the old man considered his wounded hand, then looked at Tommy gravely and shook his head. Tommy only stared. Silently, Pope met the stare. His face was sallow and filthy and scarred. A face that carried the sadness of all his years. How many massacres had the old man seen? How many had he taken part in? How many had he survived?
With a strip of fabric Pope tied the stub and injured finger together at the base, then he pointed north out of the crater and said, “Camp.” He thumped his hand flat into the opposite palm, edge first, mimicking a blade. Tommy’s eyes flared, but Pope shrugged and told him, “Two finger now or hand after—you choose.”
The horses were gathered and the last of the dogs chased off and the five women forced into neck chains. The pyre hummed with flies. The bodies were knotted and twisted so tightly together they seemed melted into one; only the infants were visible whole. Dozens of eyes staring out. Hands and feet poking through. Rabbit and Jarrah lit the bonfire and the gunpowder fizzled and cracked. The flames burned high and quick, then fell as they steadily took. Thick smoke rose. The two troopers rejoined the group, and Noone stood before them and congratulated them all on their work. He spoke of the service they had provided, to the colony, the Crown, the memory of Mr. and Mrs. McBride. In his search of the camp he’d found evidence of the outrage, he said, and heads nodded solemnly like this was true. Tommy cringed. Sickening to hear his name, the lie it now held, and would forever hold. The group disbanded. As they trudged up the slope with the horses, Rabbit paused and called down to the smoldering pyre: “One-two-three in name of Queen surrender,” and thick laughter rang out from the men. They walked out of the crater and onto the plain, where they mounted their horses and made for their camp in the rocks, the women chained behind, shuffling through the dirt.
Kala was in the clearing, a hundred yards from camp. Her wrists were still bound to her ankles but she had managed to roll all that way. When she heard the horses coming she raised her head and turned another frantic few rolls. Noone himself went to fetch her. He slung her like a grain sack onto the saddle of his horse and walked her back to the rocks. The group dismounted and saw to their kit, then went into camp and sat down. Noone gave them an hour to rest. Locke and Sullivan slept. Billy smoked a cigarette and stared madly about, his leg jigging up and down and his eyes never still. There was a frisson of excitement in how the troopers talked, but their chatter soon faded and only the women could be heard. They were seated in a circle in the middle of camp, the chains still looped around their necks. Sobbing together quietly. A low and mournful wail. When the time came to leave, they were strung out behind the horses and led east toward the ranges and the settled colony beyond, while behind them in the distance a thick, dark column of smoke rose from the crater that had once been their home, visible for many miles around, if only there were eyes to see it.
30
The washroom was on the ground floor at the back of the house and had been painted all white. Floor, ceiling, walls. Two paintings hung in gold frames: a seascape, and a man catching fish. The copper bathtub was near the window, half-filled, the clean water shimmering with a golden tint, and beside it lay a rug with a swirling pattern and a pile that was meadow-thick. A trio of candles burned. They were grouped on an ornate wooden pedestal table and sent a flickering shadow light across the room. Dusk fell outside. Purple clouds dotted the sky. The sunset was jigsawed b
y a lace curtain, irregular fragments visible through the weave, and the window was misted on the inside. Steam rose from the bathwater, settled on the panes, dribbled, and collected on the sills.
Tommy stared into the water and shivered. The rug pile bristled between his toes. He was naked. His bloodied clothes lay like entrails by the door. His gaunt body bore bruises, grazes, and cuts, and was darkly sunburned on the arms and neck. The burned skin flaked; the remainder was apple white. On his left hand he wore a fresh white dressing that Weeks had just applied. The vet had peeled open the sodden rags and winced when he’d seen Tommy’s wounds. Two stubs, the last and the ring fingers, blistered and swollen and raw—after the amputation, Pope had cauterized the ends with a heated bowie blade. While he worked, Tommy asked Weeks for more detail about Mary’s passing; Weeks shook his head and spoke with his eyes down.
“Your sister’s been in the ground ten days just about. There ain’t nothing can change that and talking won’t help. Best make your peace with it, I’d say.”
Tommy reached a foot tentatively over the rim of the bath and felt the water scald his skin. He held it there a moment, the water rippling in concentric rings. His foot prickled and steadily numbed, then he climbed fully into the tub and stood in the water to his knees. It burned him. He fought the instinct to get out. His feet and ankles looked red beneath the surface, but that might have been the reflection of the tub. A scum formed on the water. It clouded and thickened and swirled, and floating in there were twigs and burrs and other nameless things. Tommy sat down. He gasped as the heat caught his midriff and groin. The water washed against the sides of the tub. Steam clouded his face. Sweat broke on his cheeks and brow. He scooped up the water one-handed, tipped it over his hair, splashed his face, then sat there very still. The water ebbed gently. He closed his eyes and breathed the steam.
Mrs. Sullivan had told them about Mary the very second they rode in, like she’d been waiting on the verandah all that time. She ran down the steps to meet the horses, her eyes fixed on Tommy and Billy, barely a glance for her husband or the other men. None of the blacks were with them, neither the troopers nor the women they held. On the way in they’d found a blue-gum clearing that was suitable for camp; Sullivan had promised grog and tucker would be brought, then the whites had gone on alone.
Tommy watched her coming. Thought at first it might have been good news. She had her skirts bunched in her hand and her hair flew as she ran, and the house behind her was so grand and majestic that Tommy struggled to keep his emotions down. Everything perfect here, everything clean: as if he’d wandered from a nightmare into a rich and vivid dream.
“What is it?” Sullivan shouted, dismounting. He walked out to meet her but she ran past him to Billy, standing beside his horse. She went to embrace him, saw the state he was in, and instead touched him lightly on the arm. She waved Tommy closer. Her eyes went to his hand. She slung Sullivan a hateful glare. He tried to speak again but she silenced him, then told the two brothers, tears in her eyes, “She was just too young to fight it. Weeks did what he could, but Shanklin never came . . . he never came.”
Tommy looked up at the house, at the window of Mary’s bedroom, the room where he’d pictured her lying ever since they left; the room where she’d died on her own. They should have been with her. They should have been at her side. He should have known when he left her what would happen while they were gone. He didn’t even say a proper good-bye. If they’d been here they could have helped her, or tried to help her, or at least could have held her hand, instead of which . . . instead of which . . . what were they doing, he wondered, the day their sister died?
Tommy was pulled out of himself by Sullivan spitting on the ground.
“Ah, shit,” the squatter said, wiping his lips. “Well, least we got the cunts.”
There was soap and a flannel on a stool by the bath; Tommy reached for them and tried to rub up a lather but couldn’t manage it one-handed, so applied the soap directly to his skin. It glided soft and smooth and smelled of blossom in the spring. A foam settled on the water. It washed like surf against his body and over his knees. He took hold of the flannel and scrubbed himself down. Gently at first but then harder and harder, until he was tearing at his skin, pulling hairs, breaking scabs, making sure it hurt. He cried out and tossed the flannel into the bath and sat there heaving, the breath surging out of him, body shaking, fighting back tears.
Slowly he calmed. Wiped his face, exhaled, leaned back, and stared through the pattern of window lace. She was out there somewhere, Mary, buried in the little graveyard on the hill. It hadn’t seemed right at first, but now Tommy quite liked the idea of his sister’s body in a rich man’s soil. In years to come folks would see her name and assume she was grander than she was: she’d be a princess forever up here. Plus, it had really pissed off Sullivan, a McBride lying in his private family plot.
“I didn’t know what else to do, John. She was rotting in the heat.”
They were whispering between themselves but standing close enough for Tommy to hear, his boot caps nudging the graveside, Billy beside him but apart. The grave was a strip of loose earth still, a cross at the head and a sprig of wattle leaf on top of the mound, the bright yellow flowers browning in the sun.
“Should be at their place, any of the blokes could have taken her down.”
“It didn’t seem proper without her brothers. I did what I thought best—where’s the harm?”
“You can see it from the bloody house!”
“She died here so she’s buried here; I don’t think it’s so bad.”
“She doesn’t belong here, Katherine. She’ll need digging up and that’s the end of it.”
Tommy spun and glared at him red-eyed. “Don’t you fucking touch her.”
“Ah, shut your trap, boy. I’ll do what I bloody well want.”
Now he pushed himself awkwardly to his feet, hand and elbow on the rim of the bath. Water surged off him, and he stood there naked and dripping, searching for a view of the burial site through the window but there was none. Wrong side of the house, maybe. Billy had been for moving her down to Glendale—anything Sullivan wanted, anything at all. Claimed he’d rather she was buried with her own. Tommy wouldn’t allow it. Told them it would be a bad burial second time around, and did they want that on their consciences along with everything else? That had quietened them. The threat of being cursed. Mrs. Sullivan suggested they think on it more, no need for a decision yet, and tenderly she’d steered the boys from the graveside, her skirts whispering through the long grass as she led them down the hill.
“I’ve asked for hot bathwater,” she said. “Wash all this trouble away. How about we let Billy have the first one, then we’ll boil another fresh for you, Tommy. While you’re waiting, Mr. Weeks can take a good look at that hand.”
He stepped out of the bath onto the rug and rubbed himself dry with a towel. At home they used fabric offcuts or air-dried in the sun, but the towel was soft and thick as down. He pissed into the chamber pot and the piss stung coming out, a yellow so deep it was verging on brown, same color as the wattle on Mary’s grave just about. He finished and stood looking around the room. There was a robe hanging on the door, intended for him, he supposed. He blew out the candles, watched the smoke curl, then went back to the bathtub and leaned over the rim. It had a plug in the bottom, the first of that kind he’d ever seen, rigged to empty the water directly outside, no tipping the bathtub off the verandah here.
He reached into the murk, the water warm and thick, pushing his arm deeper, through whatever floated there, felt around for the stopper, and yanked it from the hole. The water rushed in the pipe. Sounds of downpour, of flood; Tommy watched the walls anxiously as if expecting a breach. As the bath drained it left a shitty sluice of residue on the sides of the tub; Tommy grimaced and knelt and tried to wipe it off but he couldn’t, not without fresh water to rinse. So he leaned on the rim and watched the level fall, until the hole belched the last of it and all that rema
ined was a mess of dirt and blood and other unknowable things . . . and in the mess were people running, dark little shapes scurrying everywhere like ants, and falling, falling to the ground, as others moved among them, cutting them down, and right there in the bathtub, revolver in his hand, was a tiny ant-like Tommy, firing and firing and firing again.
He lurched upward and reeled across the room, smacking into the door and tangling himself in the robe. He snatched it off the hook and wrapped it around his body and flung open the door. Waiting in the hallway was Jenny, the housemaid, a pile of folded clothes in her hands.
“I brought you these. For while yours are being washed.”
Tommy took the clothes from her as he hurried past.
“Burn them,” he called, running for the stairs.
31
In his borrowed shirt and trousers he stood outside the drawing room, listening through the door. Sullivan was talking, the end of some tale, and when he paused in the telling, laughter rang out. Tommy swallowed. He looked along the hall. The front door was right there. Beyond it the steps, the track, and he could be gone. Collect Beau from the stables, ride off into the night. The horse wouldn’t thank him for it, but no one else would complain. Sullivan would be glad to be rid of him and Billy . . . well, the last time he and Billy had properly talked was the night Noone caught them arguing in the rain.