by Alex Miller
‘There’s something down there.’
‘Yeah,’ Moran replied, not distracted from his cigarette. He examined the finished product, nipping the stray bits of tobacco from the ends and fastidiously turning it around in his fingers, as if he might yet decide to discard it. ‘Yeah,’ he repeated, putting a match to the cigarette and drawing in the smoke. ‘I suppose we’d better go and have a look for these fucking yarramen.’ And he turned his pony and headed carefully down the ridge at an angle, following, it appeared, a precariously marked pad. Perhaps he’d been following it all along. A few minutes later Milky saw some desiccated balls of horse dung.
Descending the bluff was a hazardous business, especially being perched on Beau’s unsteady carcass, and Milky had no spare attention for the scenery until they came down, with a rattle of loose stones, onto the narrow flat which bordered the river. Here they encountered fresh horse dung and Moran got off to examine it.
Moran communicated no conclusions about this sign, and they rode on in silence for a mile or so until they came to a place where the river spread out over a shallow bed of loose stones. They crossed here. Coming out of the water on the other side they startled a calf, which had been planted by its mother under the shelter of some flood debris. The calf gave a panic-stricken bellow and raced off at full speed, its tail cocked in the air like a little banner. Moran cursed under his breath, listening to the snapping of twigs and crashing that marked the wild flight of the animal.
They did not follow the river, but cut up the side of a gully. About halfway up Moran turned off to the left and dismounted. He left his pony to graze on the small grassy shelf and made his way on foot. Milky followed. They soon came to a rocky parapet which was shaded by a thick-leaved hickory tree. Here Moran sat down. The parapet overlooked a steep slope which was sparsely timbered and beyond which was spread out a large clearing. The clearing was well grassed, with here and there a sturdy old red gum. On the far side of this parklike meadow a cow and a young heifer grazed together peacefully. A grazing animal could scarcely have found a more agreeable place, with water close by, shade and plentiful feed. Milky wondered why there were not more cattle there. Moran was still and alert. He did not speak or roll a smoke, but watched the cow and the heifer, never taking his eyes off them. The two beasts moved slowly around the perimeter of the clearing, feeding from one choice patch of grass to the next, but never venturing into the centre of the clearing. The sun was very nearly overhead now, and although the day was hot the air lacked the heaviness which was common on the plain. The flies were less intense in their probing and there were fewer of them. The hills were a good place to be.
They sat there in the shade of the hickory tree for maybe an hour, neither speaking nor moving. Then suddenly the cow lifted her head and turned, looking nervously towards the river. The heifer stopped feeding also and turned with her. Moran breathed out audibly. ‘Here they come,’ he said.
The cow took a few inquisitive steps forward, paused for a moment, her nose lifted to catch the breeze, then turned and trotted off into the timber, the heifer close at her heels. For maybe two minutes the meadow was still and empty. Then a chestnut mare moved out into the sunlight and, after looking around, dipped her head and began to feed. She was soon followed by another, then another, until there were about eighteen mares, some with foals at their sides. Moran remained motionless, watching the trees from where the horses had come. There was a sudden flurry of movement among the mares, a nervous crowding and tucking in of the hindquarters, and into the clearing trotted a blood-bay stallion, his head held high and his magnificent body rippling in the sunlight. He whistled once and cantered around the mob, administering a nip here and there and ducking his head at any mare that looked like standing her ground. Then he trotted off a few yards and examined his brood.
Moran suddenly slid down behind the parapet and motioned to Milky to do the same. Milky’s heart was thumping violently as he followed Moran down the bluff at a crouch, following carefully the precise movements of the older man. Without noise they made their way towards the river, then angled back into the hill, Moran stopping every now and then, his gaze never off the stallion for more than a second. Cautiously they moved from cover to cover, until they had reached the very edge of the timber and the mob of horses was no more than a hundred yards away. Here Moran lay down behind a slight rise and up against the trunk of a gum tree. The shelter was slight, but his field of fire was clear.
The stallion roved about restlessly, eyeing every bush and occasionally snorting and striking the ground. Clearly he was uneasy. Moran mumbled something inaudible and slowly slid back the bolt of his rifle, then pushed the shell home with a dry snick. The stallion stopped, stood stock-still, and stared right at them, searching for a telltale movement, as tense as a drawn bow. Milky felt that if he so much as blinked the stallion and all his mares would vanish.
At that moment a foal moved playfully across the stallion’s line of vision and he dipped his head and trotted stiffly towards it. Moran raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim. The foal wheeled from the path of the threatening stallion and Moran’s rifle followed it. Suddenly a tremendous crash roared and reverberated around the valley and the foal fell on its side like a log. The stallion reared and screamed a wild warning. There was confusion in the meadow as the mares crashed into each other in their panic. Then they were gone, thundering into the trees from where they had come, the stallion at the tail urging and striking the last few. Milky heard them crashing through the timber and then splashing across the river. In a moment all was silent again. A light pall of dust hung in the air. Milky raised himself on his elbow, intending to get up and go and look at the foal, which had not moved. Moran gripped his arm. ‘Stay down,’ he ordered. ‘They’ll be back.’
They waited in silence, listening to the crashing of undergrowth. Suddenly a mare came galloping into the clearing with the stallion hard on her heels. She whinnied desperately and raced straight up to the fallen foal, which she nudged with her nose, but the stallion struck at her and bit her so that she had to fight him off. Still, she wouldn’t go far from the foal, and at last the stallion seemed to make up his mind and bolted away into the trees. The mare walked all around her dead foal, nudging it with her muzzle and pawing at the ground, all the time making a throaty coughing sound. Moran watched and Milky watched with him. Then the noise of the other horses grew louder and in a moment they streamed back into the clearing with the stallion hard at them. He swung them around in a big circle and headed them at a full gallop straight for where the mare was pawing at her foal, and he drove them over her and carried her along with them. As they streamed past Moran took aim at another foal. The second foal did a somersault and stood up for a moment, as if wondering what had happened, then fell on its side and kicked a couple of times.
Moran reloaded and said, ‘That big bastard’s doing our work for us, eh?’
Milky saw that his khaki shirt was wet with sweat.
‘Will they come back again?’
‘They can’t keep away,’ Moran replied, never taking his eyes off the clearing.
And sure enough, within a minute or so the two mares came flying back with the stallion after them. He went from one to the other, lashing and biting at them, but no sooner had he got one away from her foal than the other returned. He fought this losing battle for maybe three minutes before again heading off into the timber in search of his brood.
‘He’s a great horse, ain’t he?’ Moran said appreciatively. ‘I’ll bet he’s got a few colts bluffed around here.’
Milky swallowed the dryness in his throat. ‘Will you kill him?’
‘Good question, eh?’ Moran said, wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve.
And again they came back, wide-eyed and black with water from the river, flecked with sweat and staring wildly, bitten and driven by their tireless entire, who rounded them on the two mares and drove them ruthlessly with the mob.
Moran fired and rel
oaded and fired again. Another foal, about twenty yards from the first two, and this time a mare as well, scored into the ground as the blunt-nosed bullets struck them. Milky heard the distinct smack of the impact. The situation was now too difficult for the stallion, and when he brought the blind mob back a third time he failed to get the mares to follow through in the rush. Moran now fired one shot after another steadily, picking his target all the time and never missing.
Each time the rifle went off the mob swerved like a shoal of fish as the shocking sound washed over them and rolled on around the hills. And each time the gun roared one of them fell. Milky felt a touch on his arm. Moran was offering him the rifle. He took it and put the butt to his shoulder. Resting his arm along the bank he sighted through the open V on the tip of the barrel. Beyond the V was a confused and dust-driven view of flying legs and bodies. He could pick nothing definite out of the blurred melee and his arm was quivering so much that the barrel was unsteady. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The stock smacked him on the shoulder and nearly turned him over, and the acrid smell of burnt cordite made him cough. Moran took the rifle and said quietly, ‘Just behind the ear, eh?’ and he sighted off and shot another mare. The mares were crazed with excitement; some were shot and some just fell over, while others jumped them and kicked viciously at the air. There was a wild squealing and shrieking, and each time a mare made a break for the river the stallion drove her back.
The big horse finally got them all going around in a wide circle, and then he cut the lead and drove them once again into the trees. The air was filled with sunrays slanting through the dust and again the clearing was still. Five foals and nine mares were left on the ground. One of the mares lifted her head and looked to where the others had gone. She struggled to get up then fell back with a grunt and rested. Moran said, ‘Well you stopped her at any rate.’
Milky was unbelieving. ‘I didn’t shoot her.’
‘In the lung,’ Moran said dryly. ‘She won’t last.’
And they came back again, as if they would never understand, one mare lashing viciously at another, grunting and squealing and digging wildly at the corpses of their foals, impervious to the blows of the stallion, who was now covered with foam, his coat blackened and streaked with runnels of sweat. And Moran picked them off as if he had all day to do the job. When there were only four mares left the stallion suddenly wheeled around and stared at where the two men were hidden. Milky raised himself a little on his elbow to see better and Moran said, ‘You stupid cunt!’
The great horse came off his feet as if he was coming off a big spring, his lips stretched back off his teeth and his eyes white. The froth flew back onto his flanks and he raced towards them as if nothing would stop him ever. Moran stood up and aimed the rifle. He said quietly, ‘Come on then, boy, come on.’ When the wild horse was no more than forty feet away, he fired.
The stallion dived into the ground on his nose, spearing the grass and dust up in a shower, half his head shot away by the dum-dum. His one remaining eye was open and Milky felt it fixed on himself.
‘Fuck you!’ Moran said, for the other horses had cleared out, miraculously, as if a thread had snapped and released them. ‘I could have got the lot.’
Milky got shakily to his feet, mesmerised by the eye of the dead stallion, breathing the smell of dust and blood that filled the air. He watched Moran go over and kick the horse in the balls, where they bulged out blackly, wet and slippery and still hot.
‘Fuck you too!’ Milky said.
Moran turned around and they looked at each other. ‘Let’s take a look at your mare then,’ the older man said, and he smiled bleakly. ‘You’ll do all right.’ He turned and walked over to the wounded mare. Milky followed him and they stood and looked down at her. Her eyes were open and she stared at them and snorted blood out through her nose and mouth. Moran took out his knife and he bent down and sliced her skin from rump to neck. She stiffened and blew out a mass of clotted blood.
‘Kill her!’ Milky said.
‘Fuck her! Kill her yourself,’ Moran replied.
‘Give me the gun!’
‘Use a rock.’
‘Give me the gun, you bastard!’
Moran walked away, saying over his shoulder, ‘She’s yours, boy. You had the gun.’
Milky looked around and found a rock. He lifted it up and smashed it down on the mare’s head, but she only grunted and stiffened again, and the rock just took off some hair and skin. Milky looked towards where Moran was bent over a foal, cutting open the hide and pouring in the pink strychnine powder that would kill the dingoes when they came later for a feast. ‘Please give me the gun, Mr Kelly!’ But Moran ignored him and went on working his way around the carcasses. Milky looked down and the mare looked up at him. She had a minute or two to live and she would watch him.
1976
The two-man quarters at Goathlands Station
Destiny’s Child
I didn’t become a writer until I was into my late twenties and had run out of other options. The truth is I became a writer because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Most writers I know, on the other hand, seem to have been predestined from an early age to become writers. To illustrate their predestination they recount an incident from their childhood. How, say, when they were six, or even three, they found a book like Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme under Mum’s bed and taught themselves to read it in French in a week. Or maybe it was Sterne’s Tristram Shandy they found. Some great work of literature, anyhow, that even most adults find a bit hard going these days. It’s the destiny story. You know, the only girl whose foot will fit the glass slipper? It’s not her fault. It’s just the way things are. Or the only boy who can pull the sword from the stone? In the fairytales the handsome woodcutter’s boy or the beautiful serving girl is found in the end, of course, to be of noble birth. No amount of modesty will hide this. So it is with most writers. Their gift was written in the stars and there were omens in their youth foretelling the great works of their maturity. Writers’ festival committees love these stories and encourage us to tell them. Every true writer must have one.
Whenever I was asked about this business at writers’ festivals I used to say I didn’t have one of these destiny stories. I pretended I was above that kind of thing and claimed such mythmaking didn’t interest me. But secretly the lack of such a story worried me. It made me wonder if I was really and truly a writer or just an ordinary bloke who’d only decided to write because he couldn’t get a decent job doing something else. This, I suspected privately, was the dreadful truth. But who wanted to know it? My publishers and their publicity people turned away with pained expressions and refused to listen whenever I tried to tell them. Then one day I remembered Billy Bunter and the roller skates.
I was nine and it was a couple of years after the war. My father had been wounded and was out of work and we were poor. Everyone in London was poor. But I insisted that I must have a pair of the latest self-guiding ball-bearing roller skates for Christmas. These skates were the equivalent of a snowboard or a mountain bike now and were very expensive. I had a brother and two sisters and they wanted Christmas presents too. So my parents really had no hope of raising the cash to buy these skates. But still I insisted. Getting those skates had the intensity for me of a religious vocation. There was nothing else in my life. I moaned for them. I was Bernini’s Saint Teresa. I would pine away to nothing if I did not get them. I took on the appearance of a doomed child with a wasting disease. There was no question; poverty or not, I must have the skates.
On Christmas morning there was a shoebox-shaped present waiting for me under the tree. Everyone was gathered around, silent and expectant, waiting for me to open it. I opened the box and there were the skates. Brand-new. Shining through the wrapping. Untouched by earthly hands. I put them on and skated away. I knew it was right for me to have those skates. I did not ask how it had been managed. It had been written in the stars. My family had been merely the poor instrument
s of a higher power. There was a messianic element to my possession of the skates. With the skates on I grew strong and bold.
For a month I skated.
All day and half into the nights I skated. I lived in a sweating exhaustion of skating mania. The lone figure of a boy flying along the footpaths of the neighbourhood and beyond. I went further and further. I left the familiar narrow streets of the council estate behind and penetrated deep into enemy territory, self-guiding along unfamiliar streets of red-brick Victorian mansions under the spreading boughs of mighty chestnut trees. On my speeding skates I dwelled in my land of perfect desire. My fantasy had become my reality. I went home only to eat and then immediately went out again, skating. I could not be stopped.
Until one day I was skimming along a peaceful boulevard in the beautiful riverside suburb of Richmond, miles and miles away from home, when I saw in the distance a boy walking towards me. As I got closer to him I saw that he was carrying something and was wearing the yellow and black private school scarf of the enemy. There was no one else about. The street was deserted and quiet. When he saw me speeding towards him the boy knew at once that he was doomed, that one of the terrible bully boys from the rat flats had caught him alone in the open. He stood still, a rabbit in the headlights, clutching a book to his chest.
I pulled up a few inches from him and said, ‘What have you got?’
He thrust the book at me, no doubt hoping the barbarian would be appeased with this tribute and would spare his life.