Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  Chapter 2

  Tommy McBride

  Four hundred miles south of Bewley, near the border with New South Wales, dawn filtered through the dusty bunkhouse of a sheep station called Barren Downs. Men rising groggily from their swags and cot beds, groaning and hacking, pulling on their clothes and boots. The door opened, raw sunlight breaking the gloom, as one of them stepped outside and pissed loudly against the wall. The others called him a filthy bastard. He told them to go to hell. Low laughter, muted chattering, suddenly broken by a cry from across the room. It was the new boy, Tommy McBride, tossing in his bedroll, moaning in his dreams; someone yelled for him to shut the fuck up. Irritably they went on dressing, then filed out into the morning sun, the station overseer the last to leave. A tall, wiry Tasmanian by the name of Cal Burns, he stood rolling a cigarette in the aisle. Licked it, lit it, plucked a string of loose tobacco from his lip, watching Tommy sleep. The hell he was dreaming about, Burns didn’t know. Boy writhed like a whore in heat. And not for the first time, either. Burns shook his head. It had been a mistake ever setting him on. Him and his blackboy both.

  “Wakey-wakey, you crazy bastard. Rise and fucking shine.”

  Burns tapped the ash from his cigarette over Tommy’s face, nudged him with his boot cap, then outright kicked him in the gut. Tommy woke, gasping. Wrenched from the smoke-filled crater: ash swirling, boots suckered, the wounded crawling through the slurry, the dead piled into mounds. He’d heard a gunshot, felt the blood spatter on his face; now he jerked onto his elbow and looked up to find Noone laughing over him, those ghostly pale eyes, only the voice when he spoke didn’t belong to Noone at all: “I thought I already warned you to cut that mad shit out.”

  Burns crushed his cigarette, left the bunkhouse, boots clipping the wooden boards, and steadily Tommy realized where he was. He wiped his face, relief washing through him, cast off his tangled bedroll and began dressing. Blue-eyed, fair-haired and freckled, boyish for nineteen, but the years had put a thickness in his shoulders and arms. He pulled on his boots quickly, then hurried out of the barn.

  Last into breakfast, Tommy collected his oats, bread, and tea, and amid the bustle of the dining hall looked for somewhere to sit. There were no empty places. Nobody offered to make room. He knew how his dreams unsettled them; yes, they came less frequently these days, but in places like this once was often enough. Superstitious types, stockmen. As Tommy knew all too well. He managed to find a bench-end to perch on, kept his eyes down, ate his meal. He could feel the others watching him, his left hand particularly, its two missing fingers, holding his mug in an awkward, pinched grip.

  “Acting like none of you’s never had a bloody nightmare before.”

  Grumbling around him. Tommy ate his oats. At the head of the table Cal Burns stood and began doling out jobs for the day: yardwork, stockwork, repairs, errands to be run. One by one they received their instructions, gathered their breakfast things and left, until only Tommy, Burns, and a stockman called Alan Ames remained.

  “McBride,” Burns snapped, “you and your blackboy can finish that fencing. Most useless pair of bastards I ever hired. I want that paddock done by Sunday, understand?”

  The paddock was miles of fencing, impossible in that time. Tommy shrugged and nodded, and Burns spluttered, “Look at him nodding, dumb as a bloody mule.”

  Ames laughed. Tommy drained his tea. Picked up his mug and bowl.

  “And I don’t want no cockeyed fence line on account of that gammy hand.”

  “Hand’s fine,” Tommy said, standing, a quick glance at Burns. “So’s the fence.”

  “Bugger me, it speaks, Cal,” Ames said. “Thought he was crippled and mute.”

  At the servery Tommy pocketed a hunk of leftover bread, then when he came outside found that his bedroll and clothes had been scattered throughout the yard, payback for disturbing them all last night. Sniggering, the men watched him chase his things down and ball them into a bundle that he carried to the stables, where Beau’s big gray head was already hanging expectantly over the door of his stall.

  “Don’t,” Tommy warned him. “I’ve took enough shit this morning as it is.”

  The horse nickered doubtfully. Tommy petted him and briefly rested his brow on his neck, then saddled him, tied up the bundle, and led him back outside. A few of the men were still lingering; Tommy took off at a gallop, before they started up again.

  Arthur was mounted and waiting on the track by the native workers’ camp, the little village of tents and shelters in which they ate and slept: chewing on a long grass stalk, hair wild and unkempt, beard to his chest, and frail even at this distance, drowned by his baggy work clothes.

  “What time d’you call this?” he hollered, when Tommy came in range.

  “I was late waking.”

  “Oh yeah? How d’you manage that in a bunkhouse full of men?”

  Tommy drew up alongside him. “Give it a rest—you ready?”

  Arthur noticed the bundled clothes and bedroll. “Planning a trip?”

  “Just looking after what’s mine.”

  “Any reason?”

  “Nope.”

  Arthur eyed him carefully. “You sure about that, Tommy?”

  “I just told you, didn’t I?”

  Arthur turned away, blew out the grass stalk through the gap from his missing front tooth, then set off without another word. After a moment Tommy caught him up and the two of them rode in silence, west through swaying grassland, side by side together, as it had been these past five years. Ruefully Tommy glanced across at his old friend. He might still have had a brother out there, wherever Billy was these days, but in reality Arthur was the closest thing to family that Tommy had left. But the silences between them were getting longer, and louder; Tommy hid how things still affected him, lied about his dreams. He was ashamed, was the truth of it. No doubt Arthur could tell. The old man knew him better than probably anyone—yet look how he kept his distance, how far apart they rode.

  “You’ve not even asked where we’re headed,” Tommy called over, an attempt at a joke, since they’d done the same work three weeks straight.

  “Mate, it’s written all over your miserable face.”

  Their tools were where they’d left them, by the fence line, near the creek, scattered beside the final post they’d driven yesterday. Despite the many days they’d been at this, the paddock was still barely half done, a long seam of metal cutting through the grass heads where there should have been none. The thing gave Tommy shivers. Made him think of cheese wire. Of slicing something off.

  “Burns says he wants it finished by Sunday.”

  “Wants what finished by Sunday?”

  “The paddock.”

  Arthur laughed. “Bloke’s taking the piss.”

  “Well, that’s what he said this morning.”

  “He’s only fucking with you, Tommy.”

  Better, Tommy figured, to let Arthur believe that. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

  They got to work. Pacing out the next fence post, checking the alignment, marking the spot. Tommy softened the ground with the pickax while Arthur carried the post across. He stuck the point in the broken soil and asked if Tommy wanted to hit or hold first.

  “Either way.”

  “Just choose one.”

  “You choose.”

  “Fine.”

  Arthur dragged the sledgehammer over, a broad snake track carved in the dirt, took off his shirt and hung it over the nearest section of wire, his body scarred and bald and lean, waited for Tommy to do the same.

  “You ain’t wrapping up your hands?”

  “Get on with it,” Tommy said, kneeling with his head lowered and arms extended, as if in prayer to the post. He waved off a fly impatiently. Arthur set his feet apart.

  “Last chance. I won’t spare you.”

  “Get on with it, I said.”

  Arthur sighed, hefted the sledgehammer, swung, and a shudder ran through Tommy to his boots. The hollow crack caromed acro
ss the fields, birds scattering from the red gums, sheep lifting their heads. Arthur snatched a breath and wound up another swing and Tommy bit down hard and bore it, the post nudging through his stinging hands, into the hardened earth.

  Come midday they’d put in another nine fence posts and tacked between each three lengths of wire so taut they pinged. Both men now bare-skinned and glistening—quietly, Tommy had relented, wrapped his shirt around his hands. They called time on the morning and stood clicking out their backs and loosening their joints, squinting into a high hard sun. Tommy put on his shirt again, Arthur left his on the wire, and wearily they trudged across a bare earth clearing to the creek bank, sat down beneath their usual tree. Leaning against the trunk, they divvied up their food and ate in silence, then closed their eyes and dozed in the dappled sunlight, the birds chattering above them, the creek trickling by, neither noticing the pair of riders crossing the paddock behind.

  Two tramlines cut through the long grass toward the fence: Cal Burns and a young stationhand. Only Burns dismounted; the boy remained on his horse. Burns settled his hat, kicked a fence post, flicked the wire, scanned the field, noticed the shoulders protruding either side of the red gum. He walked closer, into the clearing, smiled, and said to the boy, “Watch this,” then drew his revolver, cocked it, and fired a warning shot high into the air.

  The crack sent Tommy scrambling. He dropped to the dirt, covered his head with both hands, eyes wide and full of fear, as Arthur swiveled and looked around the tree and told him, “It’s all right, mate, it’s all right. It’s only Burns.”

  They could already hear him howling. Arthur took hold of Tommy’s arm, hauled him to his feet, and led him out into the field, Tommy unsteady from the shock still, trembling, fixing Burns with a hateful glare. The overseer could not stop laughing, egging on the stationhand.

  “Look at the bloody state of him! You’re wetter than a waterhole, McBride!”

  “Don’t do nothing stupid now,” Arthur whispered as they neared, shuffling into the clearing, presenting themselves in front of Burns.

  “And what, are you two courting now—let go of his arm.”

  Arthur did so. Tommy swayed a little then straightened. His face was flushed, his jaw set, eyes boring into Burns. The overseer noticed and his own expression changed.

  “I was only pulling your pizzle, boy. Take a bloody joke.”

  “Nothing funny about it,” Tommy said. “The hell’s your problem?”

  “Sleeping on the job’s my problem. Lucky I don’t have you both flogged.”

  “Lunchtime, boss,” Arthur said.

  Burns sneered at him. “You watch your mouth, nigger. And put a fucking shirt on, you ain’t in the tribe no more.”

  Arthur hesitated, glanced at Tommy, then slipped past Burns to the fence line, where his shirt still hung on the wire. Burns stepped close to Tommy, almost nose to nose, a smell of tobacco and tooth rot when he spoke: “Eyes on you like dinner plates—you got something more to say to me, McBride?”

  The muscle on Tommy’s jawline creased. Holding it all in. He’d known so many men like this over the years, most overseers were the same. The first had been the absolute worst of them—he could still taste Raymond Locke’s filthy fingers digging in his mouth, trying to pinch his tongue. Locke got what was coming in the end, though. The sounds he’d made while Noone tortured him, the unearthly way he’d screamed . . .

  Burns was still waiting. “No, nothing,” Tommy said. They needed the money, him and Arthur, the food, the lodgings, the work. This was the first steady living they’d made in months.

  “So what’s with the face?”

  “There was no call to shoot at us. We were only having lunch.”

  “I shot in the bloody air! Hell, if I’d shot at you you’d have known about it. Don’t be so soft.” Burns scowled at him. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? There something not right in your head?”

  He tapped the revolver against Tommy’s forehead. Tommy only blinked. Glancing at Arthur, pulling his shirt on, he said, “Best be getting on, boss,” through gritted teeth. “Lots more posts need putting in.”

  “I asked you a question. What’s your problem? What’s with them dreams?”

  “Like I said, we’d best be getting on.”

  Burns’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve always been a cocky cunt, haven’t you, McBride. Thinking you’re better than the rest of us. Acting like your shit don’t stink.”

  Tommy went to move past him. Burns put a hand on his chest, his revolver hand, the gun metal warm through Tommy’s shirt. A darkness was slowly consuming the overseer; it was right there in his stare. Smirking, he slopped his tongue around his mouth, stepped back, and raised the revolver, four distinct clicks of the hammer ratcheting through its gates.

  “How about this? Not so cocky now, eh?”

  Tommy could hardly hear him. All a blur behind the muzzle: he’d been thrust back five years, into the foothills of the Bewley ranges, far away in the north, watching Noone corral a group of natives and a pack of wild dogs, demanding that they lay down their spears; then, when they didn’t obey him, leveling his gilded silver pistol at one man’s forehead, just as Burns did to Tommy now, and casually blowing open his face.

  Tommy lunged, knocking aside the revolver and shoving Burns so hard he fell. Incredible, how little weight there was to him, how easily he went down. No control when he landed. Limp as a sack of grain. Body first, then his head, whipping backward and smacking off the sunbaked earth with such force that it bounced like a ball.

  All was still for a moment. Cal Burns didn’t move. His eyes rolled so only the whites were visible and his legs began to twitch to the toes. His arms lay flaccid, his hands upturned—Tommy looked on in despair. Why had he pointed the revolver? Why had he even fallen? Why not just stumble? Why not catch himself when he hit the ground? Vaguely he was aware of movement in the paddock—Arthur running from the fence line, the young stationhand turning his horse and bolting across the fields—but now blood had begun to seep from Burns’s nostril and trickle down his cheek, and although Arthur arrived, yelling “Fuck, Tommy!” and fumbling for a pulse in the overseer’s neck, Tommy knew just by the look of him, and from the dozens, the hundreds, of corpses he’d seen in his short life, that he wasn’t waking up. He turned away, horrified. Chalk another on his tally. Burns was as good as dead.

  Chapter 3

  Billy McBride

  In a clearing around the back of his family’s old farmhouse, Billy stood twisting his hat in his hands, staring at two bare-earth graves overgrown with weeds and buffel grass, indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub, as if the bush had swallowed them totally; only the crooked white crosses remained.

  “Paddocks are up, anyhow. Drought’s broke. I got rid of that dam.”

  He stared off into the distance, the breeze ruffling his hair and those few parts of his clothing not stuck down with sweat; behind him the rusted windmill creaked but didn’t turn. It was years since he’d been down here, since that day he and Tommy had dug these holes and dropped their parents in. He should have visited more often, kept the plots clear, maybe put a fence around and got them proper headstones, or plaques with both their names.

  “So I’ll be heading out to Lawton soon, I reckon. Start up with a new mob.”

  There had been that one other time, he remembered, not long after Tommy had left, when Billy had grown tired of Katherine’s pity and ridden down, intending to simply carry on with his life. Sixteen years old, newly orphaned, sitting alone at the table, lying awake in his bed, the ghosts of all he had witnessed here swirling through the night. He made it to dawn but only barely. Returned to Broken Ridge the very next day. Told Katherine to stop mothering him, there was only a couple of years between them, they were almost the same damn age. He didn’t need protecting, by her or anyone—he would work for fair pay and lodgings, the same as any man, and for the last five years had done just that, waiting for Glendale’s paddocks to recover, for the drought to p
roperly break, for the drip drip drip of his courage to finally reach the brim.

  “Well, thought I’d let you know anyhow. Plenty more work still to do.”

  He turned and walked beneath the windmill, past the well and the rotten log pile, around to where Buck was tethered to the front verandah rail. Billy untied him and glanced up at the house. A run-down wooden slab hut with a patchwork shingle roof; behind him a smattering of ruined outbuildings around the dust-blown yard. Mother had swept that verandah every day of her life, now dead leaves littered the deck and tumbleweed caught in the rails. The front door had blown open. It knocked against the inside wall. Billy exhaled shakily and mounted the front steps. There were so many memories. Darkness yawned within. Between the bench and doorframe was a bloodstain on the decking, and there were two others just like it inside. Billy wouldn’t look at them. Wouldn’t set foot inside the house. Boots nudging the threshold, he leaned in and pulled the door closed and hurried back to his horse.

  Over the following weeks he withdrew from the life he’d made at Broken Ridge and began building a new one alone at Glendale. He took all Katherine had offered, ferrying feed sacks and hay bales and other supplies in the dray, and on the last day packed up his hut and said his farewells to the men, glancing at the distant homestead, imagining her up there, watching from a window or standing at the verandah rail. He’d not seen her since their argument, wasn’t sure where the two of them stood. That fiancé was still sniffing around, apparently, and if she’d wanted to, Katherine could always have sent for Billy, or come down. It was all too complicated. Their fucking had once been enough for both of them, now she talked about him breaking her heart. He didn’t know what else she expected. He’d always been clear about his intention of turning Glendale around.

  In the empty bunkhouse he ripped down the curtain that had once separated black stockmen from white, and found Arthur’s old belongings still littered around his bed. His ornaments and trinkets, a Bible, of all things—Billy took them out back and skimmed them like stones into the scrub. With his mother’s old broom he swept the floor and caught the cobwebs, dust pluming in the window light and roiling in waves through the open double doors. He made up a bed at the white end of the barn and hammered nails into the coping to hang his clothes, dragged over Arthur’s bookcase and filled it with trinkets of his own.