The Shepherd's Hut

by Tim Winton

  And you know someone’s special when you never get enough of them.

  After Auntie Marg lost the house Lee and the others come down every holiday and lots of weekends. We never went up to Magnet much anymore. Mum said it was because they had to move into the pub where Auntie Marg works and she was embarrassed. Anyway having them down was cool. Lee and me didn’t waste a single minute. Them coupla years things got hectic. But there was always family everywhere, beds and bodies in every room, nowhere to be alone. So from breakfast to dark we just pissed off together and did our own stuff.

  Sometimes we rode out past the silos to that patch of salmon gums on the edge of town. And there was the grandstand if no drunks were about. In winter we got on the roof of the old bowls club and that was mint. No one goes out there, the greens are all dead and there’s been no one playing for years. We layed up there on the asbestos till our backs got rippled, it was just us and the black cockatoos. Then I guess it went where it always goes. Don’t need a diagram to explain that, I reckon. We’re just two ordinary people.

  And okay, she’s me cousin. Mum’s sister’s daughter. There’s bugger all we can do about that. We didn’t ask to be cousins. We didn’t ask to be born. And we didn’t plan on this. One thing Mum told me, love isn’t always convenient. Well she got that right. Even if she pretended later she never said it at all.

  This thing just snuck up on us. You might think we’re dirty bastards and too young to be at this sorta thing but actually I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks anymore. I’m sick of getting the piss kicked out of me, tired of cunts looking down their nose like I’m nothing. This is what I got, it’s all I got. It’s better than anything I ever had before and I’m not saying sorry for it and I’m not backing off, not for anybody.

  You probably just think it’s about rooting. Yeah, whatever. You can say what you like, whatever gives you a tingle. But that isn’t even the half of it. Not like we were at it all day. How could we be? In Monkton or Magnet, places so small everyone’s watching? You wouldn’t understand if you never had to buy frangers off truck drivers. You can’t be walking into a shop asking for a pack of condoms unless you want everyone in town to know what you’re up to. You’re always on the lookout, sneaking and creeping about, grabbing your chances. Everything’s gotta be squared away and normal looking. The biggest thing in your life and it’s deadly secret.

  And that eats at you. Even the buzz of hiding it wears you down. Best we could do was imagine everything being different. Sometimes we’d be squished in some crack at the granites or even just riding up and down by the silos and all we’d be doing was this daydreamy thing about having somewhere we could go. A house of our own. Or one of them Winnebagos tourists had. Maybe one day we could slip up the back stairs of the Railway, find ourselves a room that was empty. A bed and a sink and a tall window with the blind down. All to ourselves. Just to lay there on pillows and sheets with the door locked. When all you get is dead grass and asbestos roofs and the stinky shade of the grandstand, the idea of a proper room is deadset luxury. It was a fun thing to talk about, making this picture up together. Being right with each other. Left alone.

  Neither one of us ever really said so out aloud but both of us knew we’d never be safe and happy the way things were. Being secret is cool, but I don’t reckon it’s as good as feeling decent and safe. When you get talking about a room to yourselves and cooking up scenes of how it could be, like something off TV, you know there’s no chance for you at home. Lee and me were always gunna have to get away. We just never got to make a plan. How things were made us careless as well as crazy.

  Some days you hoof along with your head full of memories and you’ve been so took up with thinking you can’t hardly believe how far you come, like you arrive just after you started. Well that day in the salmon gums it wasn’t anything similar at all. God knows, me mind was busy but the track just went on and on like someone was up ahead out of sight making it as he went and some other prick was growing new trees and birds either side all ready for me, just to keep the joke going and piss me off to the living fuck.

  I swear I got thinking that valley was gunna go on forever.

  Then it got so late I packed it in. Made a fire and kicked me boots off. I had a brew and a decent feed of cold meat but I can’t lie about it, that night I dropped me lip a bit. And I never slept much neither. Bloody trees cracked and whispered and farted and groaned all night.

  I started out next day feeling pretty ordinary. Didn’t think much. I was just looking for a break in the trees, a bit of white to get me hopes back up.

  It was after bloody midday when I finally come out in the open. A while before that the trees got a shine behind them like they was thinning out, but it wasn’t that so much as eventually there was no more trees past them, nothing at all but stumpy saltbush and samphire. I spose I wasted a lot of time at the shore just staring at it, trying to take it in. The salt was more blotchy-looking than I remembered. And the lake was bigger than you could get your head round.

  The wheel ruts I was following took a turn north but you could see plain as a donkey’s donger no one had driven down here lately. At the bend there was two deep trenches where someone musta got himself bogged to the living shithouse but now the mud was all baked hard again.

  I stepped off the track about there. I had no use for it anymore. Went on through the samphire till it thinned out to nothing but salt. It was strange going, flat to look at but uneven to walk on. Mostly it was packed hard but now and then one boot sank a little and then you didn’t know what to expect. It was like you didn’t know if you could trust what you were looking at and sometimes it was hard to keep me balance with all that gear hung off me.

  I pulled up after a while and got down to scrape up a half a handful. But the salt here was dirty-looking with bits of black stone through it. The softest patches had kind of grey veins in it like something gone off. So I kept on.

  Maybe a hundred metres out I come to a dip I didn’t even see until I stumbled into it. Everything was so bright and glary it all looked even, but the ground sunk gradually into a crater no bigger than a farm dam and in the middle of that it got so soft you went right through the crust and up to your ankles. Once you broke through the white icing it was all purply mullock underneath and in the end I was using the rifle like a walking stick to get through. Man, that stuff stuck like shit to a blanket.

  By the time I got across to the good white pan on the other side me boots was just two huge blocks of stinking goo and as it come off in dags and splats you could see the trail of it plain as day behind. But even on the better stuff I left footprints that’d give me away and I didn’t like the feel of that.

  I got out far enough that the trees were like a greeny blue strip behind me and past that the ridge had the sun nearly on it already. Looking east you could just make out the other shore. But left and right the lake went on as far as you could see.

  I plugged ahead and when the salt looked dry and clean enough I shrugged all me stuff off, took a quick sip from the jug and layed out the two tea towels I brung from home. The one from under me hat was pretty manky now but I couldn’t afford to get particular. If I’d been that particular I woulda had a spare shirt or some clean undies but I never brung neither one. Still, I was glad I had something to scrape that salt onto. I used the cup from the waterjug, scratched away till I had a pile I could mash up into a ball the size of a pig melon or maybe a baby’s head. Then I screwed each towel off and twitched it with a bit of rusty wire. After that I just shovelled cupfuls of salt straight into the pack, deep as my hand, and then I set those two parcels down into it where they wouldn’t spill. But that shit’s heavier than you think. When I got the pack snibbed up again it felt like it was loaded with rocks.

  I don’t know how much time all this faffing about took. Turned out getting salt off the lake wasn’t as quick and easy as I thought. Wasn’t hours or nothing but it was long enough I started to get a bad feeling. I already knew I’d be
camping in the salmon gums again tonight. And that roo wasn’t getting any fresher hung off a tree the way it was. But it wasn’t that giving me the yips. It was being this far out in the open and taking so long to get the job done. Hell, by now anyone within a country mile coulda seen me on that big bare pan. And it was like I was starting to see things.

  I got the pack hooked on and brushed me hands clean. Then I reached down for the rifle and the waterjug and when I stood up straight I had this dark patch bobbing at the edge of me good eye. You been whacked in the head as many times as me, you get used to floaty spots and stars. Sometimes it’s just an eyelash but not this time. It was a black splotch. In all that white. I turned me head away, it was gone. Looked back, it was there. Up north a way. Dancing in the warm wavy light.

  Aw fuck me, I said out aloud. Snatched up the glasses from round me neck. Saw it was something dark and thin and tall. Or someone. I couldn’t be sure. But it sure looked like someone. I couldn’t guess the distance. Couldn’t pick a face neither. I let the binoculars drop and broke into a run.

  There was no shout. No shot yet. And once I was running I couldn’t see much at all.

  I tried to go round the mucky patch but got caught up at the edges. Nearly went arse over. By the time I was through the samphire and into the first line of trees I was really blowing. Dropped flat and looked back through the rifle scope and couldn’t figure how I hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t just one of them out there. I counted three now. No, four. All pulled up in a bunch. Like they were watching me. Waiting. Maybe to see what I’d do. And bugger me, even I didn’t know what I was gunna do. What would happen when they come in range, was I really gunna shoot at these pricks? What was the use in that? I didn’t fancy killing people I never even met. I thought, that’s not me, that’s batshit. And what if there’s more nearby? One bit of me said fuck off Jaxie, get clear. But I also had this crazy feeling I needed to see who they were. Maybe they weren’t even after me. Then again, meeting anyone at all out here was trouble. I was only safe if nobody knew where I was. Smartest thing woulda been to pull back west into the valley, lose them in the trees. Instead, of course, I moved north. Like someone who couldn’t help himself. I had to get one decent look before I legged it.

  I went low and quick as I could, zigging and zagging through the trees like I was in me own frigging movie. I couldn’t even see the lake properly most of that time. And pretty soon I wasn’t even sure where they were anymore. But in the end I come to a little rocky spur above the lake and wormed me way in where I could get the glasses on them.

  And then I saw what a fucking muppet I really was.

  That wasn’t people on the lake. Wasn’t even animals. It was a bunch of bloody rocks. All stood up in the salt in curly lines. And it wasn’t just a few of them neither, there was heaps of the things. When it finally sunk in I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or pissed off. I layed on me front and rested there huffing and puffing, muttering to meself like a mad cunt until me heart slowed down and the head cleared a bit. That’s when I got curious again because I still couldn’t figure what was going on out there. It wasn’t something natural. Somebody’d gone and put that stuff there. Which kinda done my nut in.

  They were a lot further away than they seemed. For a while they looked like a fence. Until you got up close and saw they had a kind of tadpole shape with a swirly head and a long tail. Weirdest-looking thing. Hardly one of them rugged slabs was high as your waist.

  Before I come out of cover I had one more good look up and down the lake. There was definitely no one out there. Nothing but stones and wavy air. I stood round for a bit to satisfy meself but it was hard to feel satisfied knowing you’d nearly twisted off over a mob of rocks.

  Anyway I got going again. Before I did I took a sip and felt how light on the jug was. So it wasn’t gunna be the nicest trip back. This was turning into a bit of a mission.

  I was halfway to the shore before I saw there was something off about the prints I was following. The treads had changed. And once I paid proper attention I saw the whole shape of the boot was wrong. These ones weren’t mine. And fuck me if that didn’t come like a kick in the clacker.

  I got down on me hands and knees to make sure but it was no mistake. They were some other bastard’s bootmarks. And I was like faaark! When I hauled meself up again I looked round slow and careful. Then I backtracked to the stone whatsit and saw another line of prints fanning out at an angle. I walked over and put my steelcap in one and it was me orright. My tracks come as they should from the smudge of trees in the distance. And once I had a proper look it was clear the other trail hived off northish. It wasn’t newly made but it was fresh enough to set the hairs up on me. Now even the salmon gums didn’t feel safe.

  It shat me to have to take another detour. I needed to crack on and make some serious distance. But I couldn’t rest easy anywhere if there was someone about. I had to know who they were and how many of them and what the hell they were up to. There just wasn’t any choice.

  I followed the trail maybe half an hour. It come ashore near some low cliffs made of the same greeny dark stone as out on the lake. Then it headed north again through the saltbush along the edge. Just as I lost it, where the ground got stony, I copped a flash of silver way up ahead. I got the glasses out and saw it, like the shine off a car, a windscreen or something.

  That’s when I pulled right back off the lake and took to whatever cover the sheoaks and jams give me.

  Round then a breeze got up from the east. Or maybe I just noticed it because of the noise in the trees. Whenever I snuck a look I saw them flashes coming quicker all the time. Until I saw it was a windmill. Up beyond that, set in a nest of york gums, was a tin roof with the last sun on it.

  The mill might be good news. But a house probably wasn’t gunna be. All I could do was hope it was empty. From here I couldn’t tell, even with the glasses. I had to think what to do but by then I wasn’t feeling so flash. Crampy in the legs. Light in the head.

  I scrambled back into cover, got all the kit off of me and drank the last of the water. If there was no trough under that windmill I was in for a shit of a night. I gnawed on some meat but it was caked in salt now and I can’t say that helped. I just give meself a spell till the wobbles let up. After that I hauled all me clobber back on and crept in closer. When I smelt smoke I nearly spat it. That’s it, I thought, I’m buggered now.

  Then I told meself to man the fuck up and stay cool. First thing I had to do was get some water. Everything else, like changing me plans completely, would have to wait. So I pulled back a way to try another angle, get a better view.

  I snuck north a bit. Then I come in from the ridge side with my nose into the wind and the sun behind me. Pretty soon I was in close enough to tell it was desert pine burning down there. That’s a smell you don’t forget.

  Further in I come upon a vehicle track. Followed it round a bend where it run past a pit full of rubbish, bent tin, coils of old fencewire, busted chairs, a water tank holey as a flywire door. Half in the ditch was an old LandCruiser stripped to nearly nothing. When I looked over the edge a mob of flies stirred and showed a pile of bones. The ones on top still had streaks of dried meat on them.

  I stepped away gentle so I didn’t make anything clank and that’s when I noticed the wheelmarks. Something was rolling in and out of this camp, and pretty recent too but from what I could see it was on tyres with no treads, which I couldn’t figure at all. I got even twitchier after that. Kept following the track in but stayed in the jams and sheoaks alongside, crouching low and stopping every little bit to make sure everything was sweet before I got moving again. And when I saw grey tin through the mulga I got on me belly and crawled in as close as I could, right in under some wattles. Now I was glad of that stinking hot camo jacket. Just had to hope there was no dog. I layed the Browning down careful and took up the glasses, but every time I made some tiny move the pack on me back snagged and swished on branches. So I wriggled out of it slow and quiet a
s I could. Then I took a proper look at where I was.

  It was a corrugated iron hut. Not much bigger than my place but better built. Had a gable side and a pitched roof with rain gutters, a good tin chimney. In the shade of the verandah were two chairs. Come off a car, from that junked LandCruiser by the looks. Next to them on one side was a door wide open and on the other a window shutter propped out. Along the rest of the front wall was a heap of drums and rusty tools and rope. Plus a wheelbarrow.

  It wasn’t a new-built place, that’s for sure. There was streaks of rust down the roof and the two water tanks were up on stands made of railway sleepers like the olden days. Whoever camped here was no weekend warrior neither because round the tanks I saw old kero tins with vegies growing in them. Back towards me, a bit to the left and clear out in the open, there was a shitcan with the lid shut. And closer still, maybe only ten metres from where I was wormed in, there was a dead tree, a big old gum silver as the hut with a rope slung off it with a pulley and a gambrel that twisted a bit in the wind.

  I looked at everything hard and careful as I could. There was no sign of a vehicle, not even a trail bike. So I couldn’t figure the wheelmarks at all. It was hard to keep calm. And tough to be this close to water when I was so dry. Man, by then me lips were like tree bark.

  This was a pretty organized setup. The hut was in a clear patch of orange stony dirt. Behind the hut, a little way towards the lake, was the windmill. There was a trough at the foot of the tower and round that a fence, a kind of corral made of wire and bushwood. And shit, someone was moving round in there. But when I got a good focus I saw it wasn’t a person at all. It was a dirty white nannygoat. And that thing was pissy. It was jumping at the wire, bouncing off the gate, turning circles.