Cloudstreet (33 page)

Yeah. And the water. Yairs. They go in the water. To the big country. Yeah.

Lester loses his breath. Fish leans back with his head against the end of the tub looking dreamy and gone. No, thinks Lester, that’s not what happens.

An people there for em, says Fish. There’s people there.

Oh, God.

Fish looks smiling upon him.

VI

Down Among Them, Killing

I
N
the barely dimpled surface of country, the wheat is its own map, neat and dogmatic in its boundaries. You can see the sun in it, the prodigal rain, the magic tons of superphosphate. From ground level, the wheat is the whole world, but in the air, or beyond air and sky, the wheatbelt is just that, a strap of land surrounded by the rest of the world. Beneath the clouds of crows it’s hard to find a feature, unless you see a gravel pit now and then, like this one here, with its stubborn island of stonefed trees which cast puddles of shadows about them like shoals. Where the man is still sleeping. Now you make out his vehicle, an old hoodless ute, already rippling with heat, and his dog which snaps at flies and rests its head on its paws. There’s dog hair on the old army blankets, some dried blood, and a smattering of roo ticks. The bends in the air beside him mean there is still some heat in the smokeless remains of the fire. Across the treefork a Lee-Enfield is slung, its scarred butt looking like old pub furniture. Now in the shadow you can see an arm, and a rough chin, a boy’s chin really. If you were me, you’d want to climb in under that blanket and spoon up by him, to take what time you could to smell him and hear his breath.

In the end it’s the flies that wake him. They cluster on the feed sacks in the back of the ute, sucking at the dark honey of thickened blood. The traffic sound of them gets him rolling on his side.

Gday, Bill, he says to the dog.

The dog stands and then sits back morosely. Bill is the saddest dog ever to find water, but he’s companionable in his glumness. The young man leans across to a blackened pot and hauls out a meat twined bone. He throws it to the dog who gazes from it to his master as if truly insulted.

What, you sick of roo?

The dog closes its eyes.

Well, give it back then, I’m hungry.

Bill gets up and retires beneath the shade of the ute. The young man throws back the blankets, gets up and fills a jam tin from the waterbag in the tree. He sets the tin on the fire and surrounds it with white tree limbs snapped across his knee. In his duffel bag he finds an old linty piece of damper and hunkers down by the fire, resisting the need to pee. His skin is raw with sunburn. He has the square, aged hands of his family, and his legs are so long that in a squat his knees have to be peeped over or looked between. With a pocket knife he scrapes dirt from beneath his fingernails. His unlaced boots rest beneath him like luggage.

Who’s gunna do the dishes after brekky, dog? he says as he spins the knife on the back of a skillet. The blade turns, flashing sunlight, and finishes pointing at his boot. Well, the knife never lies, he says with a laugh. I shoulda flamin known that.

This morning he’ll pull a few gilgies out of some farmer’s dam and boil them up for lunch, he’ll sight the gun in with the vice on the back of the ute, and he’ll have to start priming his own shells again. If he can find some shade in the afternoon he’ll drag out a penny dreadful western and read till he’s asleep. The dog will sit beside him in mournful attendance. Barely a thing will move all day in the wheat except the insects and the odd rambling snake.

Quick loaded up the ute when the sun was low on the land. With the mutt beside him on the seat, he drove to the rocky pool and parked in beside the smooth monolith furthest from the water. He laid his ammo along the roof of the cab, stood the rifle against the window and sat back with a smoke to wait. He fiddled with the cable that connected the spotlight to the battery. The dog sat inside, looking at him through the rear window. Quick was learning not to think much at these times, only to listen. Already he could hear them out in the wheat. The sky became the colour of billy tea as the sun disappeared. The motor ticked with cooling. Quick was glad tonight was Friday—he needed a bath something terrible.

When he heard them close he saw old Bill tense up and he got up and rested his elbows on the roof. He slipped a mag into the three-oh and worked a shell into the breech. He let them come on in to the sandy clearing, to the spot where the slopes fuzzed with grass close to the water. The pool was only the size of a double bed. With the faint sky behind them, the roos were easy to see. He counted six, a couple of big bucks among them. He held off, knowing that unless he’d been doing his job better than he thought, there’d be plenty more to come yet.

The pool was shoulder-to-shoulder with them when he switched on the spot. They went rigid and opened their eyes to him. Quick worked from left to right without haste. Shoot, load, aim, shoot. The roos stood there, unwillingly, but unable to tear themselves away. Their necks curved richly, their ears stood twitching. Haunches ticked with muscle and nerve. The sound of the Lee-Enfield was honest and uncomplicated, always leaving enough space in the air for the sound of the bolt clicking in a new shell, as the roos fell, snouts flicking up like backhanded drunks. When finally the survivors began to stagger away, Quick took fast shots, moving the spot with his elbow, until he was taking them down in their stride. And then his sighting eye gave out into a watery blur so that he had to rest. Around the pool the fallen animals lay like a new stone formation, the colour of granite. Some heaved with breath or blood. Even with the whine of sound shock in his ears, Quick could hear the scratching of paws in the sand. He loaded up again, left the light on, and went down among them, killing. He didn’t get too close, for fear of catching a hind leg in the nuts. He shot those still moving, only a few. Then he let them settle while he rolled a smoke, hunkered down by the water, his eyes closed against the spotlight. He took hard drags and spat now and then until his ears cleared. Well, there’s a quid or two, he thought.

With a machete he took the tails and threw them into the tarp on the back of the ute. It took the better part of an hour to do this and to drag the carcases into a heap away from the water. Old Wentworth, the cocky, could do what he liked with them.

He wondered for a while about going on to a dam and setting up there, because it was early yet, but he felt sluggish and lazy, and after all it was Friday night and he’d had a gutful.

He finished up his smoke. Now he could hear them all out in the wheat again, trampling, eating, swishing through. Lord, they were eating up the country! People told him that further south, and right across to Sydney it was the rabbits they were knee deep in, and emus too. It was like the Egyptian flamin plagues. They’d started dynamiting them, laying baits. Some blokes, even one over by Bruce Rock, were making double money by selling the meat for petfood. But you needed to have partners for that, and Quick was glad to be alone. He got skins most places, but some cockies, like Wentworth, paid enough on private bounty, roo for roo, that it was only necessary to take tails. He took shire bounty on foxes most green months and did all kinds of skins some time or another, but this time of year he was just culling.

He listened to the sound of a bird nearby, a sort of gasping noise at the edge of the wheat. He’d never heard it before in all the time he’d been living out like this, five nights a week. Bill was standing firm all of a sudden, and whining under his breath. Quick held the dog’s head and felt the damp, loose flesh beneath his jaw. The bird noise was a little cough out there now. He took up the rifle and cocked it.

It’s orright, boy. Looks like I missed one, that’s all. Poor bugger’s out there chokin.

It was a good fifty yards out across the roo-battered fence to the edge of the crop. Out of the spotlight now, Quick could only follow the outlines and contours of things, but he could see plain enough where the wheat was moving. A long way out, on the faintest rise, he could see the heads of other roos grazing in the quiet. Once he saw the wheat moving, he strode out beyond the spot and took the safety catch back.

He felt the hind legs in his chest before he even saw the darkness of it rearing, paws out, and within a second all he could see was the Southern Cross up there, clear as a road sign above the tight blonde heads of wheat. There was the cracking echo of the three-oh as it fell to the ground beside him—or was it the crack of his head on a stone?—and in the quiet aftewards there was the slow, strangling sound of the animal only an arm’s length away. The whining of the dog above. The sound of blood marching across him, establishing a beachhead on his chest.

After a while, the kangaroo died and gave out a stinking evacuative snort. Bill turned circles. Time proceeded. The light from the spotty on the ute began to fade as the battery juiced out. Quick watched the Southern Cross melt into the great maw of darkness.

Light comes across the sky, a great St Elmo’s fire of a thing, turning and twisting till it fishtails towards the earth and is gone.

Quick feels the blood setting like Aquadhere in his nose. He wonders where the light went. If he can’t walk he’ll die out here. That’s a dead ute, now. In a moment he’ll have to try. No use putting it off. Bound to be able to walk.

Out of the slumber of giants he comes, and there in the waking world with the Southern Cross hanging over him is his brother Fish rowing a box across the top of the wheat.

Quick pushes the sound against his teeth. Fish?

HARVEY ORANGES
says the box. The oars are tomato stakes. Fish’s body is silver with flight.

Fish?

Carn.

Quick stares. The box comes to a halt a few feet out from him and Fish is leaning out, causing it to rock precariously. It’s floating up there. I’m under it, thinks Quick, I’m under water, under something. God Almighty, I’m gonna drown.

Carn, says Fish. He lowers his hand.

Quick lies still. That’s not his brother that’s a man. That’s a man’s arm.

Carn, Quick. Let’s go fishin.

Fish?

Yeah?

Am I orright?

Fish widens his eyes a moment, then closes them to let out a long crackling laugh. Quick squints at the sound of it, cowering. When the laugh is all emptied out, Fish rests his chin on the gunwale of the fruit box, looks down dreamily.

Carn, Quick.

Quick looks up, uncertain.

Carn, Quick.

I can’t.

The dog is whining, turning circles.

Quick?

I can’t, I
can’t
!

Ya love me?

Yes! Yeah, Fish. Quick struggles to keep the panicky weeping out of his throat. But, I just can’t move.

Fish is looking at the dog now. Bill looks back, agitated.

Where you goin, Fish?

Fish leans down, slouching the box over till you’d expect the sound of water or night sky sloshing into it and arms the dog up into the box. Quick feels a bead of saliva fall on his brow.

You goin home, Fish?

The Big Country.

The box rights itself again and Bill barks in excitement as it pulls away a little. Fish holds the dog between his knees. He’s too damn big for a fruit box. He looks bloody stupid, that’s what, a man rowing a crate. Across the wheat. Across the still waters of the sunburnt crop wherein lies Quick Lamb breathing without help, with the Southern Cross hanging above, rippling now, badly seen, beyond the surface.