Where the Line Breaks

by Michael Burrows

  He hates Nugget a little bit.

  ‘What’re you so chipper about?’ he snarls.

  ‘Word is the Turks are about to surrender.’

  ‘And you believe it?’

  ‘I’m an optimist, Al, you know that.’

  He pulls the full bucket up to the rim of the well, and hauls it onto the stones. Nugget dips a leathery hand into the cool water and runs it through the bristles of his hair, then flicks the last few drops at Alan. ‘Smile, you sullen bastard.’

  Alan grunts. It’s easy to smile when you don’t have to think. When the health and wellbeing of an entire regiment doesn’t weigh on you with every step. When there aren’t people relying on you, or looking up to you. Judging you. Easier to smile when you don’t have a child and a woman taking everything from you, secrets eating away at the hard muscle of your shoulders, a home that doesn’t feel like home anymore. Easy to smile when you are brave.

  Nugget scoops his open palms into the bucket, and raises the water to his chapped lips. Alan slaps his hands away before he can drink, the water spilling on the hot stones.

  ‘Smell it first, Nug.’

  Nugget smells his hands, and gags. The water that drips down through the dust from his forehead is tinged a reddish-brown.

  In the darkness of the well, they can’t tell what is floating in the water, but they can smell it. The retreating Turks have ensured noone else can use this one. The horses will have to wait for a drink.

  ‘I’m a realist,’ Alan says, as they remount.

  Har Megiddo, they call it, the flat plains outside Damascus where it was written that the final battle for the souls of mankind would take place. The Turks had vowed to make one last stand here, but the pace of the Light Horse outstripped their slow infantry, and only two days ago they’d captured another thousand dishevelled prisoners. Not bad blokes, mind, those Jackos. Fighting for the wrong side. Born in the wrong place.

  Alan gave all his cigarettes away at the first village they passed through in a foolish bout of charity, and they haven’t seen another delivery for weeks. Some of the men have taken to chewing tobacco like the locals, walking around camp dribbling great streams of black spit from between their teeth. He would line these troopers up before a firing squad and wipe them off the face of the earth, given the chance. The little puddles of black bubbling spit repulse him.

  It all annoys him now. Men laughing. The crackle of the fire in the evening, the smell of billy tea in the early hours. He is sick of the eternal jokes. The constant bickering. The weight of the pistol on his hip aggravates him, he wants to throw it behind him in the sand. He wants to rip off his uniform and feel regular clothes against his skin. The stench of the horses makes his stomach roil. He’s gone through four horses in the past month, riding them until they break, tripping them in the hidden potholes of the desert, walking back to camp with the bridle and saddle. He hasn’t bothered to name this one. A strong back and good pace off the line, the ability to outrun a Turkish charge – that’s all he asks.

  The brass have no idea what they are doing, changing plans midway through a march. Johnny Turk disappears into the landscape as they approach.

  The dark red wound on his leg is festering, it rubs against the leather of the saddle and never heals. His coughing is constant. Each morning he spits dark sandy gunk from the back of his throat into the sand.

  There are few pleasures keeping him going. There were the five seconds of bliss the first cigarette brought each morning, but he has lost those along with the cigarettes. The swig of a bottle, when he can get it, eases the long afternoons into night. And there are the sunsets that bathe the marching column in a red haze, like the Illawarra tree back at university bursting into fiery blooms each summer, his forgotten memories of home.

  Another village, another day. Another dusty street, another faceless enemy. Just him and Nugget, out ahead of the main body of the troop, as usual. He glances around at the brown earth of the houses, distrust in the dark clay, baked hard in the sun. Like pots in a kiln. Hiding things. He dismounts, and lets his reins drop, knowing his horse won’t stray far.

  Nugget dismounts behind him and leads both their horses over to a trough of brackish water. He checks it before letting them drink. He’s whistling, the same Irish jig he’s been whistling day in and day out since his mother popped him out.

  ‘Don’t you know any other songs?’ Alan says, pacing over to the closest doorway and peering into the gloom.

  ‘Sure I do,’ Nugget says, and keeps whistling the same tune.

  Alan imagines eyes in the darkness, watching his movements. Somewhere down the road the shrill cry of metal on stone, a knife being sharpened on a whetstone. The horses drink noisily.

  He pulls out his own canteen and drinks, the cool water dripping down his chin. He is made of straw, dried in the sun, ready to snap and twist and shear off at the slightest gust. His shirt is worn thin enough to see through, his boots encase his feet in a sauna of sweat and pebbles.

  ‘Reckon they passed through here?’ Nugget says.

  No sign of life in the street. No noises. The place is a ghost town. Birds circle above, waiting to pick their corpses clean.

  ‘Follow me,’ he says, ducking into the doorway.

  ‘The rest of ’em will be here in half a –’ Nugget’s words fade behind him as he creeps further into the room. His feet are walking on the soft plushness of carpet, and he can make out bundles of fabric in the corner of the room, sleeping mats, potential hiding places. There is a wooden door at the back of the room, and he hears Rose’s familiar laughter, the loud, unashamed howl. His revolver is shaking in his hand and he doesn’t remember pulling it out.

  Alan pushes through the door, and surprises two women, laughing as they cook. The thick smell of spices, meat and vegetables – proper cooking – floors him. His mouth fills with saliva. The women stop what they are doing at the sight of him, and uncertainty clouds his mind.

  Behind his back, the door swings open and Nugget bowls him over.

  ‘G’day, ladies,’ he says.

  The women don’t move. Nugget reaches across and lowers Alan’s hand, pointing the barrel of the revolver away from them. For a second he’s not sure where he is – one of the women has Nancy’s black hair, gleaming in the dusk. He can’t speak.

  Nugget speaks for him. ‘Sorry to barge in like this.’ He places his hand on Alan’s shoulder, and pulls him back toward the door. There’s a window at the back of the room, and through it the sun is setting, dropping over the rim of the earth, dissolving into an endless dark night. Nancy doesn’t love him. Never did. Though he’s not sure he loved her. He’s not sure he’s ever loved. All the certainties in his life have left him with the cigarettes, with the sun, with Rose and his brothers and the dead.

  ‘Anything else, Al?’ Nugget is saying.

  He’s back in the room. The women stare at him. Nugget turns his body, and holds him by his shoulders, his face large in the shadows. ‘You ok?’

  He nods, unsure what it is he is agreeing to – Nugget tips his hat to the women and opens the door to usher him out. On a shelf behind the women there’s a dusty brown bottle of liquid. Whiskey? Arak? He walks forward. The women jabber at him in their Arabic, clawing at his shirt, but he pushes through them. He can’t read the bottle, but he unstoppers the cork and it smells alcoholic, so he walks back to the door. Nugget cocks his head.

  ‘I’m taking this.’

  Nugget doesn’t reply, for once.

  The women prattle on; he walks out the door and leaves Nugget to deal with them. He shoves the bottle deep into his pack.

  Nugget emerges from the doorway, tucking a small wad of notes back into his trousers.

  ‘The fuck was that about?’ he asks Alan.

  ‘You can do the questioning, I do the requisitioning.’

  ‘Right,’ Nugget mounts his horse, ‘but there’s no need to be a bastard about it.’

  Alan doesn’t respond. He is a product of his environm
ent – he wanted the bottle, so he took it. He deserves a little compensation. And once again, Nugget broadcasts his inadequacies to the world.

  ‘They don’t deserve our pity, Nugget.’

  ‘They don’t deserve our hatred, either.’

  He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he rides ahead, pushing his horse faster down the narrow streets. As they reach the outskirts of town, Nugget rides up on his right side.

  ‘What are you doing, Al?’

  He doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know the answer.

  Nugget starts to whistle.

  His pencil lies snapped in half at the bottom of his pack. The last one. He fishes the snubby end out and tries to write, but feels stupid, his fingers huge. Maybe one of the other boys will have a spare. He turns around to ask Red, but it’s Nugget’s bedroll on the other side of the tent. Red is back home relearning the alphabet.

  He must have dozed off in the heat of the afternoon. He finished the bottle of arak he requisitioned from the house and then woke up dry-mouthed on his bedroll. He’s halfway to Damascus, on the opposite side of the world to Red and his family. He was trying to write a letter home to Ma. Dad is coughing up long red streaks in his hanky. Rose told him as much in her last letter. She’s been helping Ma with the nursing. Almost moved herself in. They don’t need him.

  Tomorrow they leave for the next city, the next parched brown toy town, the next day of saddle sores and chapped lips. He tries not to think about it. Flies buzz around his wet eyes. He’s stopped caring enough to wave them off. He’s hanging on by a thin thread.

  His water canteen lies on his bedroll like a drowsy girlfriend. Fucking Nancy, taking him for a fool. Or Rose, perhaps, in a different world. Lost in the tumbled dunes of sweat-stained material. Waiting for another man to return home. Someone he will never be. He’s given up writing to both of them. Their letters arrive and he can’t muster the energy to read them. He throws them in the bottom of his pack, and hopes they’ll vanish. They peer out at him, accusing, each time he opens it.

  Nugget will be back soon. Bounding in and making noise, forcing conversation for too long, pushing him too far. He’ll snap, and Nugget will joke about needing his beauty sleep. They’ll sleep for three hours before waking for another patrol. So it goes.

  Should be time for a quick cigarette before the patrol returns.

  Nugget’s half of the tent is a mess of uniform parts and papers, tawdry postcards and souvenirs for his family. He’s sure there is half a pack around somewhere, Nugget is good for one or two. As long as he doesn’t sneak too many, Nugget doesn’t need to know.

  The letter is tucked into the back of Nugget’s bedroll. He notices when it slips out and flutters to the floor. It’s the same heavy white envelope she always uses, the same scrawled, rushed hand. For half a moment he wonders why Nancy is writing to Nugget, but then he notices the letter is addressed to him. It’s one of the ones he threw into his pack unopened – he never would have noticed it was missing.

  It is open. Nancy writes about Harriet, about the tantrums she throws when put to bed. She asks after the next paycheck, says she needs it to pay for Harriet’s clothes. She says her father might have a job for him when the war finishes.

  Nugget knows and hasn’t mentioned it. Hasn’t told anyone. He contemplates confronting the Irishman about it, but knows he doesn’t have the heart. As late as Lemnos he thought he might be one of those men who discovered in themselves a certain fortitude in times of great need. He imagined that he might be special, but all these years later he’s resigned to the fact that nothing special is headed his way.

  He should confront Nugget about the letter, but he stays silent, like his father before him, like the war has taught him. He replaces the letter in Nugget’s bedroll, and then lies down on his own. He stares at the canvas ceiling. When Nugget crashes his way back inside, he pretends to be asleep. Silent in the corner.

  This village is larger than the last. Clay pottery houses. Long reams of black material flying from clotheslines. In the centre square there’s a well, an abandoned market, an eerie silence. He wipes the thick layer of dust from below his eyes, wets his lips, glances around the deserted street.

  ‘Where’re the natives?’ Nugget asks.

  ‘Something’s up.’ He dismounts, ties his horse to a nearby post. Nugget slides from his horse, stretches his legs and peers into the dark doorway next to him.

  ‘Shady fuckers.’ Nugget smiles his lopsided Irishman grin.

  Alan pulls back his cheeks and stretches his lips wide, the tight dry skin at the side of his mouth cracking and splitting. He’s falling apart, covered in sores, aching all over, wound tight like a child’s toy. He’s forgotten how to smile. He pulls his revolver from his holster and checks the chamber.

  ‘What’s that for, big fella? Fancying yourself another requisitioning, eh?’ Nugget pours water from his canteen through his hair and down his face. The dust turns to clay, painting dark streaks down his cheeks. In a street close by something bleats, a part-human cry, cut short. The backs of Alan’s legs are carved wood after many hours in the saddle. He hasn’t relaxed in years.

  A gunshot nearby. The large compound at the end of the road. They race towards it. He cocks his revolver, and Nugget attaches the bayonet to his rifle.

  It’s some sort of meeting hall, large and empty. They can hear Arab gobbledegook somewhere near the back. They reach a long corridor, and the noise is all around them. Nugget heads left. He takes right. His palm, holding the pistol, is slick with sweat.

  He kicks through a door and emerges into a long room, dappled in sunlight, the walls hung with faded carpets. Eyes turn to meet him: two women, three bearded natives, two tiny children on his right, and at the back of the room, silhouetted in the window, a Turk holding a pistol, shouting. He fires before he has taken the time to aim, and the woman closest to him drops, screaming, to the floor. His second bullet catches the Turk, who slumps backward against the wall. His third bullet kills one of the bearded men – another Abdul in disguise. They’re all the enemy. Another bearded man turns, yelling at him in his guttural tongue, fear in his eyes, and it is too easy to pull the trigger to shut him up. The bullet slams into his face and pulverises the soft flesh. The second woman is screaming. Alan fires two bullets into her. The screaming stops. The last man raises his hands. Alan drops him with a bullet in the stomach. Each bullet rings through the room, a kookaburra laugh echoing in the bush. The children are screaming on his right. The revolver is heavy, pulling his arm down. He struggles to pull the trigger. Clicks from the barrel. He keeps pulling the trigger as the room falls silent, as the voice in his head tells him he is safe. He has forgotten to breathe. The air tastes liquid, thick and clean when he swallows.

  He looks down at the two children, who have stopped crying, glancing up at him like he is the terrible monster from his childhood stories.

  ‘What?!’ he screams, but the children gawp. He reloads his revolver and looms over their tiny bodies. He cocks the hammer.

  Someone barrels into him, knocking him into the carpeted wall. He fires the pistol, two shots, quickly, but his assailant is holding his gun hand away, pointing it into the ceiling. A meaty hand wraps around his neck and knocks his head back twice against the wall. The revolver falls from his fingers and clatters to the floor.

  ‘It’s me, Al.’ Nugget’s eyes are in his face, his breath sticky and hot.

  Alan breathes steadily, his gaze clears, his heartbeat settles. He’s surprised to find himself in the same room, the same dusty street out the window, Nugget’s hand around his neck, his toes grazing the ground.

  ‘I’m fine, Nug.’ He’s not fine. He can’t do it anymore. ‘Sorry.’

  Nugget lowers him back to the floor, bends down and picks up the revolver, hands it back to Alan handle first. The children are huddled by the wall.

  ‘Fuckinell.’ Nugget whistles out. Alan’s hands are shaking from the adrenalin. There was a boy on Gallipoli who couldn’t
stop laughing while they waited in the dawn light for the order to charge. One of the other men hit him hard in the jaw, and the boy had gone down, and Alan had looked away. For the good of the regiment, he remembers, and starts to giggle.

  Nugget looks at him. Little judgmental bastard – look then, what does he care. All Alan wants to do is sleep for a hundred years with the mozzies buzzing past his ears and the screen door knocking back and forth, his parents sitting out on the veranda talking in low voices, his brothers snoring in the next room. Fuck Nugget. Fuck the Jackos. Fuck ’em all.

  ‘Get the bloody kids out of here,’ Nugget says, and Alan nods automatically. He kneels in front of the children, a boy and a girl, and flashes a split-lip smile. The girl starts to cry. Alan scoops her up in his left arm, the young boy in his right. The boy twitches in his arms, his feet kicking, but Alan pulls him in tighter.

  Back out the door, through the corridors, into the street. He puts them down by the horses.

  ‘Go! Get out of here!’ he yells as he runs back inside.

  Nugget is kneeling over one of the women, holding her hand in his, murmuring low under his breath. Alan can’t hear what he’s saying. Nugget crosses himself. Alan does the same, though he’s never believed in a God. Not now, especially. God is the gaping red bullet wound in the brown hair of the second woman, lying on the floor before him.

  The Turk is dead. Alan nudges the body with his foot to make sure. He looks stupidly young. Younger than Alan. His cheeks are shiny and smooth. The bullet hole is a too-tiny puncture by his left temple.

  ‘You see anyone else out there?’ Nugget looks over at him, the bayonet over his shoulder glinting.

  Alan shrugs.

  ‘Did you check?’ They both glance over at the second door as it clatters open and a second Turkish soldier runs at them, a wicked curved blade in his hand. Nugget doesn’t have time to react, rising to his feet as the Jacko falls into him. They roll across the carpet, the blade flashing. It’s like they’re moving underwater, the slow toss of arms and legs, the heaviness of the room around them. The Jacko emerges on top, the knife facing down, his wrists held in Nugget’s arms. The blade lowers inch by inch toward Nugget’s chest. Nugget who knows everything. Nugget, his one friend.