The Shepherd's Hut

by Tim Winton

  Then I heard a voice inside the hut.

  A man.

  And the fucker wasn’t just talking. He was singing. That day it was like the whole world was out to do my nut in.

  I pointed the glasses at the doorway and then the window but it was just black shadow. All I had to fix on was this bloke’s singing. And the way he went at it, lunging it out shameless, it was like he fancied the sound of his own voice. Like he’s fully fig jam. And fuck me if he isn’t singing a song I know. As if me head isn’t scrambled enough already. Rare enough you hear a bloke sing but singing a song you actually know, what’s the odds? So I’m stuck for a sec, kind of blank, and that’s when he steps out barefoot through the open door. I drop the binocs and stare.

  It’s just an old fella. Mostly bald. Walking dainty like his feet’s tender. And still singing. With some things in his hand. He puts them down on a drum. Sits on a milk crate in the shade. Pulls on a pair of gumboots. Then he snatches up the things from beside him and shuffles out in the sun and leans against the verandah post and I see him clear enough. Singlet. Baggy-arse shorts. Thick specs. He’s short and thick, this fella. Red in the face. And that stuff in his hand, it’s a knife and steel.

  He looks round kind of slow and lazy. Stops singing then and just hums a minute while he hones the knife. And he knows how to freshen up a blade, that I can see straight up. When he’s done he hangs the steel off a nail in the verandah post and takes up a slip of rope and heaves off down towards the mill. The old black gumboots slop against his shins. That’s a sound I know too well. And it’s pretty obvious then it’s his prints I come across on the salt. But I’m thinking it can’t just be him I gotta deal with out here. Can’t just be one old man. Because there’s no car.

  Once his back’s turned fully I get the glasses on him and see his big red ears and his hairy shoulders all blotchy with freckles and moles.

  I check the goat butting at the fence down under the mill stand. I can see now what the game is. That yard, it’s a water trap. Bloke’s got it all figured out. Animal smells water in the trough, pushes through the sprung gate and the thing snaps shut behind it. Beats the shit out of chasing roos all over the wildywoods. Way he’s gimping along though, cracking the gate like he’s sorry to interrupt, this old dude’s gunna have his work cut out chasing that grubby white goat round the pen.

  But he’s quick as a snake. He’s hardly through the gate and he’s got her. The nanny can’t quite believe it. He’s snagged her with the noose and it’s all over before she can even yank on it. When the knife goes through her throat she sounds like she’s laughing. Or maybe that’s the bloke. I hope to fuck it isn’t me, because I’m cold all of a sudden. Like it’s kind of took me breath away.

  Really, no shit, I’m frozen stuck. When I shoulda been bolting for the water tank while he’s busy I’m laying here watching this goat die on its feet. Giving a shiver and a gurgle and suddenly floppy as a bathmat.

  And look, I seen plenty of things killed in me day. Seen cows bolted and pigs necked. Done it meself a heap of times. Stuck them, plugged them with a rifle, took them down with a crossbow. Jesus, I knocked a dog’s brains out with a hammer. And I done worse than that too. But seeing this goat go, it give me the horrors. And the mad thing of it is I really did want to laugh. Out aloud. Like some nutbag who can’t control himself.

  Only time I felt like that before I was still little. It was down in Moora. Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. She was all layed out on her bed in one of them spotty frocks she liked to wear to the sports club. She had high heel shoes on and stockings. The room smelt of lady powder and Mr Sheen polish and wee. Auntie Marg was in there, sat up next to the bed. She was brushing Nanna’s hair with this little baby brush and when I come in, getting kind of pushed in really, with Mum hard up behind me, she reached out the brush and I just looked at it. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. You can brush Nan’s hair, she said. I just stared. Nan looked like she was asleep. But she had makeup on and her teeth were in like she was ready to go out.

  I was eight then maybe. And I really didn’t want to touch her. Hell, I didn’t know nothing about brushing ladies’ hair. But then the others come in the room, all quiet and a bit sniffly. I couldn’t see them but I sure as shit could feel them there, behind me. And I was just stuck looking like a pussy with Auntie Marg holding out this brush and me mum saying me name like she was trying to wake me up. And everyone’s watching. So I took the brush. Made a coupla dashes with it near her piggy-pink face. Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That’s what dead things are. She was gone but not gone. Meat is something gone and not gone. It didn’t feel right. Never really does. And that was it, soon as I felt that porky cold I pushed past them females and went out in the yard that was all dead grass and doublegees and hid behind the laundry shed where no one could see me. Because I was sure I was gunna bawl. I wished that I could of. But all that come out was a laugh that burnt me throat like vomit.

  So there I am, laying up under them bushes like a stunned mullet. Not running for the tank, not even creeping back somewhere safer to watch from. Using what energy I got left just to keep me shit together. And then it’s too late to do anything at all. Old geezer’s hauling the nanny by the legs through the spring gate and out of the little corral. Dragging it one-handed behind him like it never had any more life in it than half a bag of chaff. In his grey singlet and gumboots. With the knife still in his red hand.

  He come up by the hut and kept on towards me. I pushed down into the dirt and turned me head aside so he didn’t catch my eyes direct. And I should have figured it all along cos he stopped close by. At the silvery dead tree where the rope and gambrel hung.

  So I’m caught there while he hoists the goat up and gets on with it. Close enough that I hear him wheeze and fart and talk to himself, though I can’t really make out what he’s saying and his eyes are hid behind the shine of them specs, but from the start I could see he’d done all this a thousand times before. He starts to hum again. And he’s not too shabby with a knife, I’ll tell you that for free, because it doesn’t take him long to get that nanny skun.

  I watched him open the belly and drop its bag right there on the dirt. He got the windpipe and gullet out real quick and pinched off the arse so nothing shat up the meat. Flies on his head like a twinkly crown. He wasn’t humming after that. His lips looked pooched up for whistling but I couldn’t hear a thing. Then he got a little smile going, like he was pleased with himself or something.

  He wiped the carcase down with a rag. Then he shuffled back to the hut and I figured it might be me chance to fuck off, but I needed water so bad I just couldn’t. Wondered how long it’d be before a car come down them ruts behind me.

  Under the verandah he tipped bushwood out the barrow and chucked in some tools. The barrow was one of them steel-wheel jobbies, like something out of a museum, and there was a long-handled shovel jumping round in it when he rolled it up to the tree.

  He worked like there was no rush. Took a cleaver and split the chest nice and clean. Then he set each half on a stump in turn and chomped it into quarters and cuts and he put them all in a hessian bag and strung the lot from the gambrel out of the way of ants. Once he done that he grabbed up all the offal in the skin and slopped it into the barrow with the head and hoofs.

  Then, for a second, it was like he was wheeling the thing straight at me. I was pressed to the dirt like a fucking cowpat. Pushed me face into the stones till me bung eye nearly jumped backwards through me head, and even when I heard him veer away and go jangling off in the distance I wasn’t game to look up. I waited and counted and counted and waited and it was only when I heard the shovel clang I peeled me face from the ground and saw the cleaver laying on its side on the old gum stump. Down at the verandah that honing steel hung off the post. And his knife was somewhere t
oo. I wanted them things, needed them to stay alive, but I needed water more.

  I didn’t know if I had time to fill a five-litre jug. Maybe the best I could hope for was a quick dash to the tanks and a suck on one of them taps for as long as I dared. Up to now I’d been so bloody careful. But I was crazy dry.

  I got meself ready. Grabbed the Igloo. Figured it didn’t weigh nothing to run with if it was empty and if I had more time than I thought I might get it full.

  And either he was quick or I was slow because before I was even up off the dirt I heard the barrow rumbling back. So bugger me, that was that. I was wild at meself. Ground me face back into the stones and listened to that barrow rattling, the shovel jangling, the steel wheel hitting every stick and stone along the way. And thought what now, what the fuck now.

  Then it was quiet a moment. Like the old man had stopped. To pick something up maybe. I heard him mumble to himself. And I thought, shit I hope he hasn’t clocked me. But then he was rolling in again. Close up. By the killing tree. I didn’t dare look up but I heard him take down them sacks of meat from the gambrel. I didn’t peep till he was back at the hut and clunking round inside.

  I saw the dirt under the dead tree, dark as a diesel stain. Flies bristled on it like prickles, like burrs and doublegees. I’m wondering if there’s time to make a run for the water while he’s in there and then the old prick steps out and grabs an armload of wood from under the verandah. But then he goes inside again and I hear a rattle like a stove grate jerking open. I tense up again, all ready. Only here he is again. With a rag across his shoulder and a lard bucket. And he stands there a minute and says something, plain as day.

  To everything a season, he says.

  And I’m thinking what the fuck.

  Then he says, A time for blood. And a time for soap. Am I wrong?

  Talking like he’s on TV, the old bugger. Like he’s got an audience. And then I think, is he a bit tapped or is he fucking with me? Has he twigged I’m out here?

  Then he’s off to the mill yard and the trough. And I’m stuck there. Figuring if I can see him at the trough then any move I make for the water tank he’ll see me for sure. And if he knows I’m here already he’ll be looking out sharp.

  If he hadna said anything I woulda tried for sure. That’s what I told meself anyway. But really I was snookered. Just laying there like scenery, watching, twitching, trying to get a read on him and racking me brains the whole while, the time it takes him to get there and fill the bucket and slop himself off and scrub his arms and face and wipe with that grey rag and then dip a fresh bucket of bore water and haul it back up, doing everything slow like an old man will do it.

  When he’s back he leaves the bucket by the door and hangs the rag on a wire strung from the verandah. Then he goes inside and I get ready again to bolt but in a moment he’s back with something in his hand. A book. And he sits in the shade on one of them car seats.

  And that’s it. For the longest bloody time, that’s all. After a while the smell of roasting meat gets going but nothing else happens. He just sits there. Reading his bastard book with that poochy, puckered look on his face. Like it’s a hell funny book or he’s just happy he’s got a hunk of goat in the oven. Or maybe he thinks this whole setup is hilarious, me out in the dirt itchy and ant-bit, thirsty as a motherfucker, and him all set with two tanks of water and a feed on the way. No, I tell meself. He won’t know, he can’t. And I reckon I only tell meself that so I don’t jack a round in and blow a hole in him.

  So I don’t know what to think. But I can see soon enough I’m stuffed. At least till dark I am. There’s no way now I’ll make it back to the diggings without a drink. So I gotta sit tight till I can sneak one. All night if I have to.

  And that’s what I did. I never really thought I would have to but that’s how it went.

  The sun got low. All the shadows stretched out past me towards the hut and crept up to that old man’s feet. They were like dogs on their bellies to him. And all he was doing was scratching his balls and reading that book. Now and then it was like he was saying something out aloud from it or just talking to himself. He had this funny way of saying stuff. Like an accent. But also like he was used to talking out aloud. Weirded me out, that. But I stayed put. I knew I could tough him out.

  People say I got no self-control, no discipline. Well they don’t know shit. I’d like to see any one of them get through a night like that one.

  See, a dog knows how to wait. Dogs are good at that. Only because half the time a mutt doesn’t even know it’s waiting. Real waiting’s when you know you’re waiting. But you gotta make yourself like a cattle dog and forget what it is you’re doing. I don’t mean go to sleep like a kelpie. What I’m saying is you’re there but not there. You go somewhere in your head. Otherwise you’re fucked. I’m used to that. The way I’m used to being alone.

  I know I was sposed to feel sorry for me cousins. But really I was jealous. Because there was three of them. They had each other.

  I used to wonder why it was just me on me own but I figured that out. Mum never woulda said it but I reckon by the time she had me she knew what she’d got herself into. Knew what she married, I mean. Maybe the Captain started out decent but he spoiled. Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got. Sometimes I wonder if that nasty mean shit is in me too, like he’s passed it on. Does that mean I’m gunna be that way? To Lee? And our own kids? Jesus, thinking like that puts the wind up me. To live you gotta be hard, I know that. But nobody wants to be a deadset cunt. That’s just not fucking decent.

  You might think I’m one heartless prick not caring he’s dead but you didn’t know him. All I can say is I hope he heard something. Right at the end. The way I used to hear his knife bucket rattle half a second before he come up behind to king hit me. He was rat-arsed on rum but maybe that night he heard the chassis creak on the Hilux, or maybe the jack made a tiny groan before it give way. So he had one last fuck me moment before it all come down on his head. But that’s just daydreaming. Because when you think about it, Wankbag hit the jackpot. All his filthy vicious sins went unpunished. He died quick and easy. Warning or no warning, he went out fast and clean. He was always a mug punter, a waster and a loser all his life, but in the end he got lucky. Luckier than Mum, that’s for sure. And that shits me no end.

  When I think of Mum now I try to remember her before she got sick. I see her out at the clothesline. Just before a summer storm one time when the Cap was away shooting horses and sawing them up into prime Angus beef. The sky was black and the paddocks the colour of bread. And the wind was up before the rain come in and Mum still had her real hair that was flying behind her. I come out on the back step and she was pulling in the shirts and whatnot and the sheets were rippling and I run over there in me bare feet to help. But I forgot about all the prickles and bindies and doublegees so pretty soon I was hopping round like a dancing poof and we’re both of us laughing.

  And I’m happy. When she reaches out for me to keep me from falling over I feel like it’s my birthday and not even the bruises up her arms can ruin it.

  But now she pushes me off and there’s a clap of thunder and I think what the hell and she points at the last sheet where there’s someone stood behind it. And I think, fuck he’s back. But it’s not the Cap at all. I know the shape of that body. With the wind pressing the sheet so close I know who it is. Then the rain pelts down and I’m not even there anymore. All of a sudden I’m in Magnet. And I think, hang on, this didn’t happen. I’m in the backyard of the pub and there’s a roo hanging from the spinning clothesline, leaking blood onto the grass and jo-jo prickles. I just walk straight past it and up the steps to the big balcony on the second floor. It feels like me feet are full of broken glass but I don’t stop until I’m outside their window looking in. Four skinny beds and a fan turning on the scratched up dressing table. None of the others are there, only Lee. Reading a book. In
her shorty pyjamas. Her arms and legs all brown from the sun. And the curtain moves every time the fan turns my way so I’m thinking she’ll see me any second, I won’t say anything, I’ll wait for her to see me. Me feet hurt but I don’t mind, I could stand there all day. Because she knows I’m there. She’s pretending. And it’s cool.

  But then there’s another clap of thunder and she looks up and what she sees terrifies her. For a sec I think it’s me she’s scared of and it’s like a kick in the nuts. But she’s looking past me. I hear the rattle. The knife pouch. The steels and blades. The sound of death. I’m half turned round to face him but it’s not the Cap at all. It’s Auntie Marg. With a knife as big as a fucking sword. And when I put me arm up to stop her the blade takes me whole hand off at the wrist. I think, this woman’s gone mental. Then whack, off comes the other hand. You filthy grub, she says. So I belt off down the stairs on me prickle feet and for a moment it’s like I’m free and away until I see what’s strung from the clothesline and bleeding out all over the prickles is not a roo at all. It’s me. I’m there already, ahead of meself, the little stumps of me arms still twitching against me chest like roo paws. And I think, fuck this, this isn’t right.

  And then I jerked up a bit and knew I’d dropped off a sec. Next thing I hear the swish of a knife steel and I look out and see the sun’s gone. Now the old dude’s just a silhouette in front of the hut. Out beyond him the lake’s got this weird greeny glow on it. And the smell of roast meat is everywhere and Christ, I can hardly move me legs, it’s like they’ve gone to sleep. I’m wild on meself for drifting off and to make it worse the old geezer starts singing again.