The Shepherd's Hut

by Tim Winton

  I stopped going last November. A coupla times after that them truant dogs come looking for me. But pretty soon everyone in the district knew about Mum’s cancer. So they didn’t bother me much after that. Maybe the old man said something to the copper. Anyway I think the school was glad I was gone. I never did make it easy for the teachers. With me temper and whatnot. Me delinquent antics they called it.

  Jaxie Horsemeat, that’s the name they give me. Like it was dead funny. And I put a price on them words, made sure any cunt I heard calling me that paid for it dear. No discounts, no exceptions, no deposit, no return.

  And look, I’ve et horse meat. It’s not that bad. People in town they’re too soft to even eat roo nowadays. Pretty soon they’ll wind up vegetarians and then they’ll really have something to whinge about. Might as well go back to being monkeys.

  Just because your old man does something epic stupid doesn’t mean you gotta wear that all your life. Not my fault the Cap was a space case. Mum said it was the cards done him in. Then she blamed the computer and the online gambling. Like he had nothing to do with it himself. Made me sick. Any time I flogged a kid it wasn’t to defend the Captain. Fuck that. I was standing up for myself.

  But the teachers got jack of it. They got this funny-farmer up from Perth one time. I thought it’d be a bloke in a white coat but it’s a chick in a teeny dress and she wants to know do I like bashing kids’ heads in. I said yes because I knew she’d get excited. When she blushed it went all the way down the front of her. She was nice enough but she didn’t have a clue what it was like to have a whole town laughing at you. And anyway maybe I did just like busting kids’ faces in. Specially ones that gobbed off. I liked how quiet they got when they were flat on their backs sucking for air. She asked me was I lonely, did I have trouble at home. Jesus, what a genius. I told her I was all good, right as rain, and she musta believed me because she never come back. After that they just give me more detention. And a few times they suspended me, exclusion they call it, but the detention was better. It was worth catching the bus to sit out under the verandah all day and look at the flagpole and watch them aggro little peewees. Safer than staying home, I’ll give you the tip.

  Primary school wasn’t so bad, I had a mate then. Kenny Chen. His oldies had the Chinee next to the pub. He was little and four-eyed but smart. He had this sly sideways way of talking, like cracking a joke without a smile. Kenny was a bit sarcastic really. Kids said he thought he was better than everyone which was ridiculous. He was just this tiny riceburner, why would he think that?

  Way I saw it, people were a bit shit to Kenny Chen. So I started hanging round him, being friendly. Offering him a kick-to-kick at lunchtime and whatnot. If anybody give him disrespect I’d punch them out with extreme prejudice. Man, for a while there he was untouchable. It was like he got taller and more Australian every day. But then he went a bit weird. Even I thought he was getting cocky. He started making himself scarce at recess, hanging in the library. If I saw him in the street he wouldn’t see me back. I wondered if his oldies didn’t approve of me. Or if he thought I was gay. Asians, you know, they’re not cool with poofs. And there was a time at the oval when I tried to put me arm round him, friendly sorta thing, and he flinched away. Kind of ducked like I was gunna thump him. And that hurt me feelings a bit. So I kept me distance after that but I still looked out for him. I’m loyal, me, and not many people understand what that means. Once I’m in I’m all in. For good.

  Anyway the Chens left town one day without a word. Dunno why. I wish Kenny coulda stayed. By high school we coulda been Horsemeat and Dogmeat. We coulda reigned supreme, running amuck like two loser superheroes. Instead of just me by meself.

  When high school started I had to get the bus to Dally. It was like people knew me before I even showed up. Every numbnuts in the district wanted to have a go, even the Abos and fuck, they fight wild. I was never big but I was game. Thing is, there was nothing anyone could do to me that Wankbag hadn’t done ten times before, so I wasn’t scared of anybody. Any prick wanted a blue I’d give it to him hot and hard and I wasn’t waiting round till he was ready. There was this one kid hung shit on me for a week. Never to me face but I heard about it. Trent Bisley. Old man was some big grain agent. One day I got him in the throat as he come out the gym. Big as a man he was, whiskers on his face. Took him two days to get his voice back.

  But I wasn’t always like that. And I wasn’t what everyone thought. The thing with the teacher’s car come out all wrong. And the business with the crossbow, that never even happened. People love a story. I know I give the teachers hell, gobbing off the way I did but I didn’t do it from nastiness. That was mostly just for fun. And secretly I reckon some of them were into it, thought shit I said was funny. Once after the funeral they sent the truant dogs round after me again. It was like they missed me and wanted me back.

  But I’ll never be back. I don’t even know why, but it’s kind of a shame. Weird to be thinking of school, traipsing through the mulga like that. I guess because of them birds and how peaceful it was.

  The sun climbed up and settled hot and hard on me head. I pulled a tea towel out and tied it on like one of them jihadis and that helped a bit. I coulda done with a camel to go with it. And a drum of water big as a bone bin. Because by noon the jug was dry.

  But then I got truly lucky. Even if I didn’t know it yet.

  I dunno how far off the highway I was when I saw the track. Maybe ten kays, coulda been more. But I come up on it dead unexpected. I was bearing north again more or less, and there it was under me feet all of a sudden, not much of anything really, just a coupla ruts across me path but it was a bit of a shock. I stood there gawking left and right like I was waiting for a gap in the traffic but no car had come this way in a long time, that was for sure. The dirt was baked hard. No tyre marks at all.

  I had to sit a minute to get me head straight. The state I was in. I was dry as a camel’s cookie and starting to feel pretty ordinary. I didn’t get some water today, tomorrow at a pinch, I was rooted entirely and forever.

  So here was this choice to make. West would take me to the highway, I still knew that much. Meant putting up the white flag and I couldn’t do it. But I told meself, you’re no use dead are you? East was the ruts headed inland and I thought, well someone’s made this track because something’s out there. Or they hope something’s there. Maybe something used to be there once and it isn’t anymore. People only come out here for a reason. To cut sandalwood or prospect for gold. I used to come up this way shooting goats with Wankbag. Not here exactly but north of here. And I knew people set up where water was close by or they brought it in with them. There might be a tank or a mill trough or even a miner’s water truck parked down there somewhere. It was long odds but not impossible.

  Thing is, I’m not the surrendering type. Which might just mean I’m stupid like kids at school said. Or stiffnecked like the principal told me. Anyway I’m looking up and down that track. It was the highway or the wildywoods. That was the decision. Between something that’s real and something you hope is real. The water you know is actually chugging up and down that road in trucks and old people’s caravans and the drink you hope to fuck will be out there at the end of these ruts. I was banking everything on this call and maybe I wasn’t fully right in the head by then but I went east. Roll the dice, that’s me.

  The ground that way was no different. Only it got more stony either side of the track. Reminded me of country we used to camp in. To go prospecting and plug a few goats. We had a big old F-truck back then and a metal detector and Mum used to come out too. Up by Lake Balthazar. Those weekends they were mad for gold. Took turns with that gizmo all day and even made me one of my own out of fencewire so I could follow them round. I was still pretty little then. On the last day we’d shoot a nanny and dress it out and ice it up in the big chest on the back of the truck and take it home. Mum said you could taste the saltbush in the meat. Most times we camped under salmon gums at the top of the lak
e, Mum up on the flatbed of the effy and me and him in swags on the dirt. On a big moon it looked like that lake was full of water instead of dry salt. It looked like a different country that thing, a whole nother continent. Went as far as you could see, this empty white space. Like something you could step into and get swallowed up and never find your way back. We never went out there. The gold was deep in the bush and the hunting was only good up on the ridges. We just drove down for a look now and then because it was so freaky. We always set up in nice clearings with dark red dirt and plenty of fallen wood. And we always had a good fire. Grilled T-bones from the shop and made jaffles in the mornings. Mum used to look for emu eggs. She’d take them home and blow them and etch them up, Abo-style, and a coupla times tourists saw them in the shop and bought them.

  It was happy days out there when it was the three of us. Best times I can remember. Then Mum stopped going with us. She said she didn’t like the shooting. And I spose that’s fair enough because when I got older and learnt to use a rifle properly we did more hunting than fossicking for gold. And there was that weekend she got sunburnt so bad the skin come off her shoulders like wet paper. After that it was just me and the Cap. In the end we didn’t bother with the metal detector at all. Them days he had a .222 Remington. That was a centre-fire outfit with a decent scope. We bowled a few roos over with it but mostly it was goats we hunted.

  I figured three more days hiking, maybe four, I could be up in that country. Hide out for a while. Till everything cooled off. News gets old pretty quick. Maybe in a few weeks the highway’d be safe again. That was my thinking. I didn’t start out with a plan like that, I just took off blind. But ever since I left the highway the idea’d been creeping up on me. Like, who in the wide world was gunna think I’d hole up along Balthazar? Only ones mighta guessed it were dead.

  The last time we went on one of them shooting weekends another bloke come along. Dude called Bill Cox. He had a boxy old Land Rover and a .303 and a Mauser sounded like a bloody elephant gun. He reckoned him and Wankbag was in the army together but I’m not so sure. Neither one of them looked like any kind of soldier to me, they was both fat and beardy, more like bikies than soldiers. The two of them got pissed by the fire soon as we got there. They talked shit till it got dark and then they slept late and did the same all next day. The only shooting they did was blasting cans and bottles and they didn’t even get off their arses to do that. I really wanted to go off on me own to knock over a goat or two but I wasn’t game, not with those two blasting off all that big-calibre ammo left and right. So it was a hell boring weekend. I sat in the effy all day reading the same three comics over and over and wishing the time would go faster. We never popped a single goat the whole time, and I couldn’t get home quick enough. When I asked Mum later about the soldier stuff she said they was both overseas together but that’s all I could get out of her.

  I never did take to Bill Cox. Next time I saw him he was pulled up outside the house with a trailer full of chiller boxes. I saw the Mauser and the three-o when the passenger door opened. Wankbag come out the shed with a chainsaw and a swag and chucked them in the back and give me a look. And then they were gone. Dense pricks.

  I dunno whose bright idea it was but it was dark days for the shop. I figure no supplier was even answering his calls anymore. So off he goes on a jaunt to the station country with Bill Cox and a chainsaw. Comes home with half a tonne of steak. Yeah, that was always gunna work. I never knew if it was brumbies or drovers’ nags they sawed up but I don’t reckon it woulda made much difference to the Meat and Livestock people. Anyway it didn’t take long for that little scam to go guts up. I dunno how Wankbag kept his licence. It was all over the district. And things were already getting crook at home but after that everything was truly in the toilet.

  Maybe I was caught up remembering all this stuff or just half tapped from thirst cos I nearly went past the diggings without even copping on. It was there on me left and halfway behind me before I took it in. I stopped like I’d forgot something and couldn’t remember what. Then I turned round like the oldest man alive and saw the mullock heaps and piles of rusty cans and the sun flashing off the tin roof. The day was just about done and I was pretty much done too for that matter. But I stood there blinking like a knucklehead for a bit before I could believe it was real.

  A shack. With a tin chimney and the last shreds of a sunrooted awning hanging down in front like a fringe. And up on a stand right next to it a real life, honest to God water tank.

  I stood gawking so long anyone inside that place coulda painted a picture of me, made themselves a cuppa and called the cops, but once the penny dropped I was flat on the dirt and crawling. Like I was some kinda Call of Duty dude instead of a twisted off retard who couldn’t see a prospecting camp when it’s there in front of him.

  Anyway I got meself to the foot of a big pile of dirt and saw it was digging spoil. All round there was bits of wire and rotten lumber and hunks of rusting iron and hills of slag and stones. There was no smoke at the chimney and no clothes on the drooping wire strung from props out front. No vehicle neither.

  I pulled the glasses from the case round my neck and watched the whole setup for a long time. Saw the tomato bush sprouting next to the tank. The only thing that moved out there was the canvas shade. I watched and waited as much as I could stand to. I woulda called out but I didn’t have the wind for it yet. In the end I thought screw it, I’m gasping here, so I got up and went in real careful. I had the Browning out and up like some kinda badarse but the truth is I didn’t even have a round in it. That day I was too dry and fucked up to get anything right.

  It was one of them shacks a bloke and his mates chuck together in stages. You could see the original square of corryiron walls and roof, the clouts half out from strong wind or bad work. And down one side there was a kind of add-on with a strip of louvres, some of them bogged up with ply or sheets of azzie. Bunged onto that was a dunny you could smell from Adelaide. Had a flystrip door and a tin-funnel shitter and not much else from what I could see. Fucking reek.

  The front door of the place was shut. I give a croak but there was no noise from inside. I was still bricking it then but I was mad for a drink too. I turned the handle and it wasn’t locked. I pushed the door back, peered in. It was gloomy inside and it stank. I hoped to fuck I wasn’t about to find some prospector dead in his bed with a face like a rat-eaten pavlova. But there was no one. And no bed neither. Just a wood stove and a cement trough, a chrome chair with no back on it, and a table made of milk crates and half a door. The dunny door by the smell of it.

  I shrugged me load and dropped it right there. I went straight out to the tank and when I whacked it with me fist it give a long thick shiver so I knew I was in business. The brass handle was gone off the tap but there was a vise-grips rusted on the stem and that did the job good enough. Water pissed out on the sticky dirt. It looked fine to me but it coulda been brown and I woulda gone it. I got down next to the tomato bush and sucked it straight from the tap.

  It didn’t taste that bad. Couldn’t get the stuff down fast enough. I made noises I’m glad nobody could hear. If you never been that thirsty you won’t know what I’m talking about. But I tell you, I drank till it felt like there was water in me balls and legs and feet, till me belly was hard and me back hurt. And when I finally left off I couldn’t hardly get up again.

  Staggered back into the shack like a wino, tripped over me pack and pitched up against the stove. Saw the bunky shelf with the bent saucepan and the black skillet and the tin of snaggly forks. Pulled meself off the cement floor and stood up to look round. And that’s when I really saw how lucky I’d got. Because along the shelf was a bone-handle butterknife. Not just an ordinary butterknife neither. Before I even picked it up I saw it had an edge on it. When I ran it down the hairs on my arm it was wicked sharp. Some dude musta been grinding that thing day and night since before I was born. Just to pass the time. Why else would you up and leave it? Whoever he was he saved my ar
se.

  The water was one thing. It spared me, true. For the moment anyway. But having a blade meant I could stay alive long enough to rest and figure things out. A gun’ll get you meat, no question, but with no knife you can’t hardly get to it.

  Jesus, I was so relieved I nearly got a cry on. I just sat on that wood stove and tried to keep me shit together. Then after a few minutes I got this urge to get clean so I stripped off and grabbed the saucepan and went back out to the tank and doused meself all over. I stood in the sun on the stony dirt and dried off, feeling a whole lot better, but when I went inside and got me dirty clothes back on I felt all floppy and worn out so I just layed down on the cement floor and rolled me camo jacket up for a pillow and went to sleep.

  When I woke up I didn’t know where I was. Bars of light poked in through a hundred nail holes in the tin and for a second it was like I’d come to in the bottom of a cage. But then I saw the door half open and there was the rifle up against the wall and the busted chair in front of the stove so I knew I was okay.

  Outside the mullock heaps were golden and the shadows from the trees were spilled long and flat across the gravel. I walked out in me bare feet a minute. It was nice to be stopped, even if it was only a while. I took a piss in a scrape full of old cans and wire and nests of plastic rubbish and thought, fuck me, who else leaves a mess like a miner. I felt calm. I noticed there was scat here and there, some of it pretty fresh, and all round the tank stand there was scuffs and diggings and more roo shit. That give me a bit of a charge. Like maybe I’d be orright here, could be this’d work.