‘G’day, there.’
‘G’day.’
‘Hot, ain’t she?’
‘Yeah, warm all right.’
The old man dropped his swag and scratched his sweating head under his hat. The hat joggled but didn’t fall off. He was like a smoked fish, dry, wrinkled and brown. His boots were the colour of an old cow pat. His palmer knapp trousers, with the pencil stripes rubbed out entirely here and there, were bent to the shape of his legs like a loose casing; they were caught on the hips and the hips stopped them from dropping. As it was the slack was down round his knees. The belt with the big buckle that was supposed to keep them up was girdled round his stomach, doing nothing except ornament his grey flannel. Frosty hair sprouted from the neck.
Macauley let the old man take the initiative. He could wait for the colours to show. In his time he had met plenty of these plain turkeys, as they were known. He had been in trouble with some, or rather they had been in trouble with him. None of them he liked. It was all to do with their professional character. They disliked the hillbilly bagman, these turkeys, as much as they hated his hilly country, and they treated him with contempt. They always avoided helping him. They were clannish and secretive.
They zoned themselves on the plains, wandering the roads and the backtracks among the sheep stations and the wheat farms, doing the rounds year in and year out. They did the rounds from shed to shed at shearing time, ate a couple of good meals, had the tuckerbag filled, and moved on to the next place. When all the shearing was completed throughout their run of the flat country they still moved about among the stations, obtaining some rations and camping in the bagmen’s huts on the station property. If for a change they felt like some exercise other than walking they would take a job burr-cutting, walking about with a long-handled hoe, and not minding it, so long as the burrs were not too plentiful, as there was money for their trouble. They knew all the handouts and rest huts and all the familiar faces of their plain-turkey brethren.
The old man sensed the expectant atmosphere. He shrugged, smiled with friendly ease.
‘Not gonna ask yer which way yer came. Don’t matter to me son. Not gonna say, “How’s the mountains these days?” Yer’d on’y bite, and next thing I’d be doin’ yer over.’ He chuckled.
Macauley squinted at him, went back to rolling his cigarette.
‘Got a joey with yer, have yer? And what’s your name, young ’un?’
‘Buster,’ said Macauley’s kid promptly.
The old man straightened himself as with a shock of admiration.
‘Buster, eh? Well, ain’t that a knacky little name. Suits yer, too.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘My name? Ah, I got a lotta names. But me mother called me Sam.’
‘Where’s your mother now?’
The old man wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, and he was saved the trouble of thinking. Macauley had finished his summing up. He was satisfied.
‘Drop o’ tea there if you want it,’ he said.
The old turkey looked at him wonderingly as if deciding the matter of whether he wanted it or not, when all the time, Macauley knew, he had decided.
‘Ta.’
Macauley rinsed out his pint, handed it to the old man whose shaking hand filled it to the brim. He sat down on his swag with a sigh, put his elbows on his knees and cradled the warm mug in his hands. He glanced towards the child.
‘You cart him about with yer?’
‘It’s a her.’
Old Sam looked astonished. In his mind that was even worse. He was curious about the relationship, the circumstances, the why and wherefore. The signs were as easy to read as a calendar. But Macauley wasn’t saying anything.
‘Puts a bit of spoke in yer wheel, don’t it? I mean, movin’ and that.’
‘I get on all right.’
‘Be pretty tough, I reckon.’
You don’t know how tough, Macauley thought, but he didn’t want anybody considering him a sorry spectacle, seeking out the clues and surmising the case-history with all its background of humiliation and unhappiness. Sympathy or gloating – he didn’t want it.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve carried a swag bigger than both this and her put together,’ he boasted. ‘Smoke?’
‘Ta.’
Macauley threw the tea slops on the fire and began to prepare for the road again.
‘What’s at Millie?’
‘Bugger all. I just come through there. Tryin’ to see if I can get a bit of burr-cuttin’.’
Macauley gave him a quick, hard glance. Old Sam didn’t mistake its meaning. He said with some heat, ‘Don’t you worry, I can swing a hoe with the best of ’em yet. Give you a start, and lick yer hands down, young and all as you are. Me – I been a burr-ganger in some of the biggest camps in this country.’
‘Why don’t you get the pension and settle down?’ Macauley taunted.
‘Pension!’ snorted old Sam. ‘Settle down! That’ll be the bloody day. They can stick their pensions up their jumper. When I go out I’ll go out in me stride. And if I ain’t dead enough when I fall down I’ll get up and keep goin’ till I am.’
Macauley laughed. He couldn’t help it.
‘How you off for tucker?’
‘I’m right.’
‘Weed?’
‘I’ll get some at Bellata.’
‘Take that,’ Macauley said. ‘It’ll see you there. I got another packet.’
The old man hesitated, looking up. ‘I’ll pay you for it.’
‘Don’t offer me money,’ Macauley said, strapping his swag. ‘I mightn’t knock it back.’
‘You think I’m a bludger.’
‘Nobody said that. Well, we’ll be getting along.’
Macauley had made his point. Nobody was going to put it over him. Whether the old turkey was guilty or innocent didn’t matter. Either way, he was compelled to acknowledge Macauley’s shrewdness. Old Sam thoughtfully hoisted his own swag.
‘Where you makin’, son?’
‘Walgett way.’
‘You ever done any cookin’?’
‘Yeah, I’ve had that on,’ Macauley said.
‘I was just thinkin’, if it’s any help to you, there was a joker in Millie yest’y lookin’ for a burr-camp cook at Boomi. Too far for me to go, but it might suit you.’
‘Good.’
‘O’Hara’s his name. Nice feller, too. Tell him old Sam Bywater sent yer. He’ll do anything for me.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
Old Sam put out his hand. Macauley considered it for a moment unprepared and slightly surprised. Their brief acquaintance in passing – nodding strangers – hardly justified the formality. There was warmth in the old man’s half of the handshake, casualness in Macauley’s.
‘We’ll meet again, boy, and I won’t forget the drop o’ tea and the bit o’ weed you gave me.’
‘Keep your legs together,’ Macauley said.
He started off, easily getting into his stride.
‘So long, Buster,’ old Sam called.
‘Goodbye,’ Buster said.
They had walked for two hours, and Macauley couldn’t help but observe, as he had been observing, the growing endurance of the little girl. It dragged from him some slight sense of gratification. He wasn’t paying out tribute to the child: he was merely feeling the small but positive diminution of responsibility. But it wouldn’t be long now. At the end of the third hour and a steadily maintained pace, Buster’s feet were scuffling, and she was whining to be carried.
‘Don’t kid me,’ Macauley said. ‘You can go on a bit yet.’
‘I can’t. I can’t,’ the kid whimpered desperately.
‘Come on.’
Macauley took her hand, and kept going. He felt the tugging weight. It got heavier and heavier. It was not brutality, but purposeful tactics. He stopped them short of the verge of exhaustion. When the child was swaying, leaning back from the mooring of his hand, the legs wobbling, the voice dreeing mour
nfully while the tears flowed unattended down the crumpled face – that was when Macauley picked her up.
She was asleep in five minutes, her head on his shoulder.
Pity crept like a little flame into the smoulder of his resentment, but the resentment was too strong for it and it was smothered. Macauley told himself this could not go on. He was vehement.
Yet when he saw emus he had a wish that she should see them; when he saw the wild pigs had been rooting up the ground he had an inclination to point it out; and when he came upon a goanna disgorging at his approach a kitten rabbit he had an instinct to wake her up and show her the sight.
But he did none of these things, though he stopped when he saw the goanna and watched the ejection of the rabbit buried to its hind-legs in the reptile’s insides. The legs scrabbled as the rabbit, aware of the mysterious interruption, seized the advantage and struggled to back out. The goanna bolted with fright, and the rabbit, startled, weak, damp all over, made every attempt to run away, but failed. Macauley stepped after it and with one merciful kick put it out of its misery.
He came into Millie in the hush of sundown. It was so quiet it might have been a scene painted on a canvas. It was a pocket of civilisation – a few houses, a few groceries, a sort of post office: the vestiges of a settlement, so that you couldn’t be sure whether it was just starting or just ending. By night a shut-up village, a huddle of buildings drenched in darkness. Or with moonlight on the rooftops shining like the blade of a knife. By day a cell of life set in the shadeless open amid the burning sun and the hot winds.
Macauley felt pretty worn, but a good feed under his belt, a rest, and he’d be right. Buster walked at his side again, refreshed and loquacious. She was hungry, too. Macauley thumped on a side gate, and the storekeeper came out wiping his mouth with a serviette and admitted them. He took them through into the shop. Macauley bought eggs, a tin of preserved pears, some rashers of bacon, and a packet of sweet biscuits.
‘Old Tubby Callahan still the butcher here?’
‘Oh, no,’ the storekeeper said. ‘Old Tubby passed on about three months ago now.’
‘Well, you don’t say!’ Macauley was surprised and slightly shocked. ‘I didn’t think there was anything could ever knock him over.’
‘No, you’d never think so to look at him. But he went pretty quick. Got crook one weekend. Went to Moree, and they bunged him down to Sydney. Just took a look at him there, sewed him up and sent him home again.’
‘His missus still around?’
‘No, she’s gone, too. Living with her daughter at Tamworth. Will there be anything else?’
‘That’s the lot. What about the new butcher? Is he on the premises?’
‘Oh, you won’t get any meat there now.’
The storekeeper shook his head vigorously and let it peter to a standstill. He had a grave face, with sallow cheeks and eyes like the slit in a money box. His hair was slicked back on either side of a centre parting, in a way like the dark folded wings of a bird. He had a bit of Chow in him somewhere.
‘That’s too bad,’ Macauley said. ‘I was going to turn on a proper feed tonight. But never mind.’
He placed the money on the counter as the storekeeper wrapped up the goods. While he had been talking Buster was roving the store, peering at the rafters hung with hurricane lanterns, brooms, buckets, meat safes, mops, rifles, and other merchandise. The posts were draped with whips, belts, slippers, coat hangers, and cards of buttons. The floor space was mainly taken up with a rickety table on which were stacked bolts of cloth of many colours. There were open bags of potatoes, barrels of brown and white onions, behind the door and along the wall bags of sugar and flour. Pumpkins and marrows lay heaped in a corner. The place smelled of sultanas and spice.
‘Just a minute,’ said the storekeeper, and hurried out the back into the living quarters.
Macauley looked casually over the shelves, every alcove stuffed with goods. Hanging lopsided from a tack just above his head was the warning: A Clock Ticks But We Don’t. Another placard farther along said: Come In But Leave Your Dog Outside. Another notice asked the customers if they had placed their Christmas orders yet, and notified them that a turkey on the lay-by was better than one on the go-by, and finished off with: For a few pence a week you can dine like a prince at year’s end.
Macauley couldn’t tie up the wit and humour of these notices with the humourless face of the storekeeper, but he didn’t question its impossibility. Gravediggers could act like clowns; clowns like gravediggers.
The storekeeper came back with the change and a small parcel.
‘There’s a few chops there,’ he said. ‘I can’t use them and you’re welcome to them.’
Macauley said nothing, throwing silence over his embarrassment, and the necessity of framing an appropriate expression of thanks. If he offered money the storekeeper might not be offended, but some of the good would be taken out of his charitable gesture.
‘I’ll only be throwing them out, anyway,’ he said.
‘All right,’ Macauley said, ‘if you don’t want them. They’ll go goodo with the cackleberries.’ He added on an impulse, ‘Better give us a bob’s worth of lollies for the kid. Mix ’em up.’
Outside, in the darkling evening, they walked round to the front of the store. Macauley looked up and read the owner’s name: R. C. Cheetham. Underneath in smaller letters was the inscription: Only By Name, Not By Nature. Then followed the words: General Store.
Bit of a wag, Macauley mused.
A nippy nor’-wester was springing up. He pulled his hat more firmly on his head and strolled down the eastern end, looking for a place to camp for the night. He settled for a spot on the lee side of an old stable. While he grilled the chops on a small wire rack over a scraped-out table of red coals and hot stones, he baked the eggs in the hot ashes. The billy was simmering on the opposite side, lashed by the gusty flames.
After they had eaten, Macauley rolled a smoke and lay back on the spread blanket with his hands clasped behind his head. He was just beginning to enjoy the soothing torpor of relaxation when Buster jumped up and said, ‘We got any paper?’
Macauley sat up, pulled the tuckerbag over to him, and tore off a piece of brown paper that had come from the store.
‘Duck over there somewhere,’ he said.
Buster was gone about ten minutes. Macauley was dozing when he heard a piercing yell. He leapt up like a cat, peering about him. The kid came running towards him out of the darkness in an outburst of sobbing, wailing incoherencies. He swallowed, alert with the impact of alarm and mystification. She stood before him, screaming and muttering.
‘What is it? What is it?’ He grabbed her frail shoulders and shook her.
He couldn’t understand the lachrymal babble that poured out of her mouth.
‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying. What happened? Did something bite you? Stop that yelling and tell me.’ He was shouting.
‘My caterpullar — ’ she got out.
‘Your caterpillar, yes. What about it?’
‘It’s gone!’ she howled in a fresh paroxysm of weeping.
Macauley’s shoulder’s dropped. He let out a deep sigh of relief.
‘Is that any reason to wake the whole neighbourhood?’ he demanded. ‘Anybody’d think you were being murdered. Cut it out.’
The loudness of his voice only reduced the volume of her hysteria, like a radio turned down; it didn’t stop it. She fell on her hands and knees, crawling over the blanket and round the fire, peering, sobbing all the time. He saw the tears dropping from her eyes.
‘Where is my caterpullar gone?’ She was in a rage of grief, and as the search proved unavailing the rage mounted to an inconsolable dementia.
‘Stop it!’ bounced Macauley. ‘You sound like a fire engine.’
He, too, went down on his hands and knees. They crawled about like a big dog and a little dog. Macauley gave up. The bitter agony of the lament was beginning to unnerve him.
‘Li
sten, listen to me,’ he commanded, ‘I’ll get you another one.’
‘Want that one.’
‘You’ll have to cut it out,’ he snarled furiously. ‘Cut it out.’ His words had no effect. He smacked her hard across the bottom. The sound came up with new and more hideous notes in it as the gas comes up when you put a penny in the slot. He thought of the lollies, dragged them from his pocket.
‘Here, look – look what I’ve got.’
Buster glared at him with a crumpled face, keeping the emotion simmering, while she investigated his claims to captivation. They weren’t strong enough.
‘Don’t want any’ She sniffed and went off again into an even more discordant bereavement.
‘To hell with you then, you little bastard,’ Macauley swore. He pulled his hat down on his head, dug his side into the hip-hole and pulled the blanket up to his neck. If nothing else worked, the dissimulation of sleep, the repudiation of interest in the child and her problem, might. Left to the loneliness of the hunt and the loneliness of the night with the wind whistling about the stable, and sensing the unpleasantness of ostracism, she soon relented. Macauley felt her scrabbling over the blanket, and then sitting beside his bulk, hooning to herself. But though she had relented, she had not surrendered.
He heard her get up. He raised his head. He saw her walking slowly, timidly, away to the blackness. He thought of a blind child groping. He thought of an apparition apprehensive of a strange listening world of darkness and prickling stars. She stopped, her courage run out, blocked by trepidation.
‘Hey, where are you going?’ he called.
At his voice she ran back, propelled by fear, to the haven of his protectiveness. She fell down on her knees beside him, big-eyed, panting.
‘You come with me?’
‘Where?’
‘Down to that man?’
‘What man?’ Macauley was raised on one elbow.
‘The man in the shop. And find my caterpullar. My caterpullar’s in that shop.’
The urgency of determination was in her voice, on her face. It was the first real insight Macauley had into the strength of her possessiveness.
The Shiralee Page 3
