‘Gooby said he want to do his job.’
‘Okay. Take him over there somewhere.’
Last job he did was a bit of fencing. With one mate. Before that, spud-digging, with two other diggers in the camp. Hard as they were, with the kid burdening him, they were more suitable than other jobs; and he saw them through and salted away the sugar.
‘Gooby’s finished now, dad.’
‘Good. I hope he feels better.’
A man went out to that burr-cutting camp, say. It wasn’t a nest of Sunday-school teachers. They were a dirty mob. How could he be a nice feller among a gang of dingos? He wasn’t the type. He was a bit like that Jimmy Abbott. No backing and filling with him, either. They’d like it or lump it. He’d throw the bloody stew in their faces, but he wouldn’t budge. Unlike Jimmy, he’d stay there. They might sack him, but they’d never wear him down. He’d get respect from them. He’d last the job out all right.
Macauley had no doubt about his confidence in himself. He had been in too many tough spots to fear his inability to handle another one. Always, though, he was on his own, and that made all the difference.
But this time he had a kid, and he couldn’t reckon without her. It all came back to the kid – the bloody millstone of a kid. Looking after her and looking after himself at the same time: handling two kinds of trouble. And the two kinds mixing together. She had only to wake up with a nightmare, disturbing the beauties in their sleep, and there’d be trouble. Get under their big hoofs on the job and the ganger would be on his back. Get him in the gun and they’d take it out on her and on him through her, as they thought. A big number nine out of place, a candle knocked over, and she’d be accused of snooping in the huts; something missing and she’d get the blame for stealing it. Be no end to it, and he’d have to bear the weight of it all, the humiliation, the nerve-battle, the shot and shell, the whole damn lot.
Every way he thought of it, it all came back to the kid, and Macauley knew there was no more thinking to be done. It was hopelessly clear. He would not be taking the job at the burr camp.
‘Gooby wants to kiss you.’
She held the animal close to his face.
‘Ah, get the silly thing away from me.’ He knocked it out of her hand.
‘Don’t!’ she shrieked. She raised one hand with the fist bunched. Her eyes were brittle with anger. She relaxed in a moment and picked up the toy. ‘Gooby’s going to cry now.’
‘Come on, and shut your trap. Only for you … Ah — ’ He gestured helplessly, and started walking back down the street. She followed with soothing words for Gooby.
Macauley took his time. He thought he had made the decision, but as every footstep brought him nearer the main street he began to feel unsettled. The clarity of his judgement became ragged and confused. There was something opposing it, a reluctance to execute his verdict because it was giving in. It was bowing to defeat without having been defeated. It was truckling to a hypothesis, however right it may be. He didn’t like the sense of belittlement he felt. He even began to wonder whether he hadn’t conjured up the difficulties and formed them into a conviction so as to find a reason to prove that his rejection of the job was not dictated by cowardice.
He thought he would give himself a little longer to resolve the doubt, to make absolutely sure that he was doing the right thing. As he walked down the opposite side of the street he saw two men come out of the auctioneer’s office. They stood on the kerb, staring at him. Macauley narrowed his eyes. There was something about them that caught his instinct for danger. He didn’t know what it was. He knew when he was being garped at out of idle curiosity, and casually by the town loafers and the post-holders and the women with little to talk about and thirsting for sensation in their dull lives. But these men were not garping at him like that. They were staring silently, there was an air of menacing assessment in their attitudes. They had the aspect of plain-clothes police watching a mark.
Macauley stopped, lowered his swag and stood on the kerb. He pulled out his tobacco and started to make a cigarette. His head was down, but under the brim of his hat his eyes were on them.
The tall one was well-dressed in a bush-dandy way. He wore a brown pencil-stripe suit, and a brown, short-brimmed, high-crowned hat the shape of a hat block. It was tilted to one side of his head. A sponge of curly sorrel hair showed at the temple. His collar-peaks were clutched neatly together by a tie pin under the knot of his tie, and the tie itself was drawn up from the vest to form a semi-hoop. His shoes were black patent-leather pumps with pointed toes. He had square-cut jaws and a gingery look about him, the cold milky-blue complexion of blancmange lightly freckled.
The other was a blocky man, with a dark heavy face. His grey suit was unpressed, with baggy knees and dog-eared lapels. He wore an open-necked white sports shirt. The hat sat on his head like a pork pie.
Macauley leisurely drew on the cigarette and let the smoke curl away from his mouth. He glanced casually up and down the street, not appearing to be particularly interested in them.
He watched them move off, first the tall one, then the short; and they got into line, drifting slowly, not glancing at him again. Macauley followed their progress, the loose, lithe, snaky movement of the tall one, the heavy listing stride of the short. He saw them go into the pub.
He walked on down the street and stood in front of the picture show. Buster looked at the posters. Then he sauntered up again. He walked back down the street. There was something in the air, and he didn’t like it much. Like when you woke sometimes at night in the bush, sensing a presence lurking about you; just like a listening nerve in the surrounds of black space, and black space filled with all the faint sounds of the bush, magnified by your blindness and hazarding imagination, and the nerve alert to distinguish the unknown among the familiar.
A truck came chugging down the street, and pulled into the kerb, and young Jim Muldoon hailed him. His light hair was unkempt, his face strained. He looked unslept. He eased himself out of the seat, and walked over to Macauley standing in the sun.
‘How’s the old man?’
‘He’s dead,’ Muldoon said quietly. ‘Conked out just as I got in the door.’
‘What, last night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘Nobody’s fault. And it was quick, anyway. Just in the middle of a sentence and — Phut! Didn’t know anything about it.’
‘A good way to go,’ Macauley said.
‘Yeah. How’d you get on? Get the cook’s job?’
Macauley just shook his head slightly and noncommittally, and Muldoon went on, ‘Seems to be a pretty lousy turn-out. Talking to an uncle of mine at the house last night. He tells me they’ve had trouble there since they started. Old Ned Redshaw that owns the property, he’s fed up. He’s been giving O’Hara the works proper. Ned’s one of his best clients and O’Hara doesn’t want to lose him. Ned can make it tough for him with all the other station owners about here, too. O’Hara’s in a tight corner. That’s why he’s running about all over the country looking for a cook.’
‘A cook won’t mend matters,’ Macauley said, ‘if that’s the way they are.’
‘Don’t know how O’Hara came to hire them.’
‘I don’t suppose you’re going home yet awhile.’
‘No, I’ll have to hang around here for a few days now. Fix up things. See what goes. Might have to take the old lady back to live with us. Funeral’s tomorrow. That’s why I’m in here – to make the arrangements.’
‘Yeah, I see. Just thinking I might have got a ride back with you as far as Moree.’
‘You’re not going to worry about the job, then?’
‘No, I’ve been thinking about it. The rough-and-tumble doesn’t worry me. I’m not squibbing the issue. But’ – he nodded towards Buster sitting on the kerb – ‘I don’t think it’d pan out.’
‘No,’ Muldoon said thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘A man’s crazy to think of it. I don’t know why I came
here.’
‘Well, you didn’t know what you know now.’
‘I knew I had a kid, that was enough,’ Macauley said. He took out the makings and passed the packet to Muldoon. His eye caught sight of the tall man and his mate strolling along the footpath.
‘Hey, Jim!’ He licked the cigarette paper. ‘See these two birds coming up on the other side? Who are they, do you know?’
Muldoon looked. He kept looking, and talked as he looked.
‘Yeah, the one in the brown suit, that’s Son O’Neill. Gets it easy. Standover man. Comes from down the line, Garah, but gets about, you know, wherever he can swipe a few bob. They reckon he can go the knuckle, too, but I’ve never seen him fight.’
‘Who’s the short one?’
‘That’s his half-brother. Frank Christy. He’s a proper bad bastard, that feller.’
‘Christy,’ Macauley reflected. ‘I’ve heard of him, I think. Didn’t he do time for carving some bloke up at Pallamallawa?’
‘Yeah, that’s him,’ Muldoon said. ‘Some drunk who was so stewed he didn’t know what day it was. Christy got twelve months, but it didn’t seem to change him. He’s a violent bastard. I don’t think he’s all there.’
Macauley watched the two men go into the auctioneer’s office.
‘What about a drink, Mac?’ Muldoon invited.
‘I could do one, but what about the kid?’
‘She’ll be all right, won’t she? We won’t be that long. I don’t want to make a session of it. I had a helluva night; I feel bloody half-dead. I’d just like a drink to pick me up.’
‘Okay.’
They drove down to the pub, and Macauley told Buster to stay in the truck. He left his swag in the seat beside her. Muldoon waited for him. They went into the bar together. Muldoon ordered a whisky. Macauley had a beer. There were eight or nine drinking beside themselves. The air was cool and clean. Macauley ordered the second round when Christy and O’Neill came in. They ambled slowly down to the centre of the counter, and the barmaid pulled two beers for them.
Macauley noticed the look on Muldoon’s face as the men passed. He saw him swallow. There was an impression of subdued agitation and haste about him.
‘Come on, Mac, drink it up and let’s get out of here.’
‘Take your time,’ Macauley said. ‘Drink it fast, and you can’t taste it.’
Muldoon gave a little grin. ‘Sure, I know, but it’s just that I want to see that undertaker and get it over and done with.’
‘I know,’ Macauley said, and drained his glass.
Muldoon was ahead of him as they walked casually towards the door, and Muldoon was saying something about there being nothing like a whisky to pull a man up, and then he was through the opening, and Macauley had just reached it when he stopped, arrested by the voice.
‘Hey! You!’
He turned in the doorway. O’Neill was walking towards him, with that soft, rolling, cat-footed walk. He looked at the dead white face. The eyes where a pale icy-blue. O’Neill’s coat was open, and Macauley observed the slight beer-drinker’s paunch.
‘You talking to me?’
O’Neill didn’t answer. He stood fixedly at Macauley. Macauley’s gaze was unswerving. He waited. Christy moved round to the left of his mate. There was a black stony glitter in his eyes, a glare of hostility on his brutal face, dark with stubble. He couldn’t keep his lips still. He licked them, bulged them, worked them back in a snarl.
‘Want to have a word with you,’ O’Neill said. He had a soft drawling voice, not unpleasant on the ear.
Macauley stepped out on to the footpath. The two other men followed. O’Neill stood opposite Macauley. Christy ranged himself again on the left. Macauley saw Jim Muldoon, standing on the edge of the verandah, some six feet away, looking like a friend waiting for another.
‘What is it? Macauley said.
‘You going to take that job cooking at the burr camp?’
Macauley looked from O’Neill to Christy and back again.
‘I might. Why?’
‘My mate here’s after that job, too.’
‘Yeah?’ Macauley said.
‘Dickson, down in O’Hara’s office, says you applied first; you get first preference. There’s only two in it, you and my mate here. And as I said, my mate wants that job.’
‘We both can’t have it, can we?’ Macauley said quietly.
‘No,’ agreed O’Neill. ‘That’s why you got to forget about it.’
‘Come on, Mac,’ Jim Muldoon urged helpfully.
‘In other words,’ O’Neill went on, deliberately placing the words, ‘you just don’t turn up at O’Hara’s office. It’s easy that way, and nobody gets hurt. See?’
Macauley felt the palms of his hands sweating. He felt the churning sensation start up in his stomach. He knew there was only one way out of this. Somebody would have to back down, but it wouldn’t be him. That went without saying, and if the two men before him knew anything about his character they would have realised it.
‘But, I want that job, too.’
O’Neill squinched up his eyes into blue crystals. ‘Listen, mug, I’m not playing a game. You’ll do what you’re told.’
Macauley felt the old familiar sensation of his pride and independence being placed on trial. The wrath in him was swinging on a thread, and the thread was unskeining itself with the strain. He burned with the old contempt and hatred for those who took him cheaply. The fact of these two even considering him for intimidation scorched his self-esteem. Their efforts to daunt him, if they but knew it, only made a gun for his hand, bullets to fit it, cocked it, and wrapped his finger round the trigger.
‘You go back to that office,’ Christy threatened, ‘and I’ll tear your guts out.’
‘What guts?’ O’Neill asked smoothly.
That was as far as Macauley would go. He wanted to set his shoulders and bunch his fists and let the words fly at O’Neill: You can spot the stranger that comes on a visit and mark him down; you can swagger the streets at shearing-time and reap a harvest; but don’t lump me in with the weakies and the yellow-bellies busting their cheques over a good time; the curs and the possums who get silly-drunk and fall in fear to your authority. He had seen pigs like Christy powtering in the slops, all grunt and hair. He wanted to tell him to get back in the pen.
But he had to go canny. He couldn’t handle two of them together. Aware of the tension, but undismayed by it, he glanced across at Jim Muldoon, standing uncomfortably, chewing a matchstick. He couldn’t expect much help from him. He noticed the three or four men watching from the road, and the group inside the pub getting their view through the door. There’d be no help from them, either. This was between him and O’Neill and Christy.
Macauley relaxed. He edged his body casually into position. Then he shrugged.
‘I’m not used to being told what I have to do,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’
‘Well, what’s it going to be?’ O’Neill said, already disarmed by Macauley’s tone of abjection.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Macauley said.
And he was perfectly placed, left shoulder thrust out, with the utterance of the last word. In the moment of his victory, in the split second of his laxity, O’Neill was stunned with surprise. Macauley threw his right with the whole tremendous power of his body behind it. He felt O’Neill’s belly give like a rubber ball. He felt the expulsion of air in his face. Lightning-like he carried the same fist upwards in a blow that clapped O’Neill’s jaws together like the shut of an oven door. Then he danced back, ready for Christy, but Muldoon was wrestling with Christy like a terrier with a baboon.
O’Neill’s knees bent outwards. His hands hung slackly at his sides. He was like a girder canting before it drops; a figure collapsing in slow motion. Blood oozed down his chin from his broken mouth. His eyes rolled. But Macauley’s eyes glittered with relish. They were eyes of steel. His back arched. He hooked with the left and the right, joggling O’Neill’s head this way, then that. And,
still, as he was going down, Macauley found time for a hard right that smashed O’Neill’s nose. He poised on his knees for a moment, then fell sideways in the dust.
It all happened so quickly the crowd were flabbergasted.
Macauley took in a glance the uneven tussle between Christy and Muldoon. Muldoon was wobbling, his teeth bared like a snarling dog’s with exhaustion. A haymaker caught him on the side of the head, dropping him cold. Christy, his chest heaving like a bellows, ran forward and drew back his boot to kick in Muldoon’s head, but Macauley knocked him off balance, hit him with a straight left, and sent him stumbling backwards to fall against the pub wall. He sat there, shaking his head, glowering.
The onlookers were coming from everywhere now, making a crude and pliant ring; some calling to stop it; others to fight it out.
‘Get up, Christy. You’re not licked yet.’
‘I got ten bob on the bagman.’
Macauley ripped off his coat and spat on his hands. A feathery smile touched the corners of his mouth, but only a killer gleam flashed in his eyes. This was what he liked: a fight. And better still a fight with a cause for it; a thrashing with a reason to it.
He watched Christy get up, using the wall for support. Macauley wasn’t certain whether he was going to come out for more. Then he knew he was. And it stiffened him. For a moment he felt a spasm of fear. Christy grabbed the bottle from the crates of empties stacked against the wall and, gripping the neck, broke off its base against the bricks.
Then he stood there with a different look on his face – an expression of malignant humour. He held the jagged weapon out and slowly turned his wrist in the air with a grinding motion.
‘Put it away, Christy, and fight fair.’
‘Stop it, someone, or there’ll be murder.’
Macauley heard the terrifying shriek of his daughter, but he didn’t turn his face. Next second she flung herself at him, trying to drag him away by the hand, looking with terror at Christy.
‘Get away!’ he cried. ‘Get back there. For God’s sake, take this kid, someone.’
Two men grabbed her and dragged her back.
Macauley waited coolly now. His nerves were sitting down, trembling with vigour. But there was a darkness on his face like a black light. His eyes were as cold as a shark’s.
The Shiralee Page 5
