All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  ‘You right?’ he says.

  I nod.

  He inspects the dirt underneath his fingernails, decides it’s right just the way it is and starts to roll a smoke. ‘Fitting in pretty good, for a chick.’ I look up. He points to his tobacco with his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Ta,’ I say and he takes out another paper to roll me one too. I have a friend.

  ‘So where were you before here?’ he asks, and a ripple goes through me.

  ‘I worked for my uncle on a station up north.’ I hate myself for the lie, not because it’s a lie but because it’s a stupid one and I should have been prepared.

  ‘Your uncle has a station? Where north?’

  Don’t think about it or he’ll know you’ve made it up.

  ‘Marble Bar.’

  ‘Marble Bar? I know Marble Bar – maybe I’ve worked his station, what’s his name?’

  I can feel now the sweat is beading on my upper lip and forehead. I fight to control the flush of my face.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I say. ‘He died, it was really bad.’

  Connor grimaces. ‘Jeeze, sorry to hear it,’ he says, looking uncomfortable, but he opens his mouth and I know he still wants the name of the uncle, and so I cut in and a story comes out that has nothing to do with my brain.

  ‘He was trampled.’ Again Connor looks like he wants to ask a question, so I cut him off. ‘Sheep got spooked by a storm – went crazy.’ I am sure Connor’s never heard of a death by sheep-trampling; there’s a look on his face for a moment when he seems like he might think I’m joking with him and so to stop him, I say, ‘The head came clean off.’

  Whether or not Connor believes me, his eyes are wide, and he has stopped trying to ask questions. Perhaps he thinks I am a mental case, which is fine. He raises his drink. ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Well, jeeze – these things are liable to happen to a bloke working out in these sorts of places. Sheep can be flighty bastards – got no loyalty, not like dogs.’ He hands me a roll-up and lights mine first then his. He clinks my mug softly with his can. ‘To Uncle . . .’ He leaves a gap for me to fill the name.

  ‘John.’ I say Dad’s name, a name that always seemed too fancy and European for him.

  ‘To Uncle John.’ And we drain our drinks and go and sit back at the table.

  Clare is beasting the kid, calling him nicknames that don’t mean anything much but which make Bean go red in his pale cheeks, as if his real name wasn’t bad enough. Nippy Balls, Sour Tit, Pussy Willow. He won’t leave the kid alone, but it is pretty funny.

  ‘G’wan, Ball Ache,’ says Clare, ‘show us where your dick’s hidden.’ Clare pulls a stool up opposite me and gestures for Bean to sit. ‘Let’s see who wins a wrestle between you and Alice the Goon here.’ Mostly the men laugh, but not all of them. There’s a quiet moment when Bean and I look at each other. I would like for this not to happen, and when Bean sits opposite me with a look of drunken determination coming over him, it breezes through me that if I let him win, then maybe he’ll get less of a hard time. But I won’t do that, I know it as I settle my elbow on the table. Bean will have to fend for himself; he might be small and awkward, but I am a woman on a sheep station. We grip hands over the sleepers, position our elbows to everyone’s satisfaction, and money starts getting laid down. I catch Greg’s eye and he smiles at me, holds up twenty dollars. I see Bean’s white biceps bulge like a new potato, and there’s a countdown shouted by everyone. The kid’s face goes red and fierce, his lips pull back from his teeth, and it’s not a total pushover. There’s some strength in him, but mainly it’s the strength of fear, like those times you hear about kids lifting lorries off their parents. Our fists wobble in the centre, but soon Bean has used up his burst of self-belief, and his face sweats and he is tired and done. I start to push his arm down, and I see in his face the huge disappointment, he had thought this was his time to be hoicked onto the shoulders of the men, for his movie-self to be stronger than he looked, but once we are three-quarters of the way down, he has no way back up and I flatten him and everyone cheers and whoops, and Bean lays his head on his spent arm.

  Later, when I am drunk, and Bean has been relegated back at the end of the table, where Denis now and again asks him a question and then doesn’t listen to the answer, Greg sits himself in front of me and puts up his massive arm. I laugh and he laughs and I put my arm up too, like we’re about to wrestle, but all we do is grip hands like that.

  ‘Strong lady,’ he says.

  In the morning, I wake up in between Greg’s bear arms. I hold my breath and count to fifty. Okay, I say to myself, okay, and I check through my body from the feet up. All is warm and nothing hurts except the crick in my neck from lying on his shoulder. The smell of him, lanolin and whisky that has been sweated out of him in the night.

  The sun is rising and there won’t be long before the gong goes and work starts, and with the hangover worming in my guts I try to roll softly from the bed. In a sitting position, I’m about to make it, when Greg springs from where he is lying and makes a noise like a lion, grabs me by the waist and wrestles me back into the bed, growling and grunting into my neck and squeezing me hard. It takes me a few seconds to understand that this is a joke and I laugh.

  Just like the other times it has happened, the rest of the day we will catch little looks at each other and I will worry and feel good and feel sick and trip up over my feet. It is simple in a way I thought wasn’t possible. At smoko he will sit opposite me on the bench and touch my knee under the table, and when I look up at him he will wink. It’s getting so when he touches me I don’t even think about pushing his hand away and I will even give myself a shock by walking past him while he’s bent over a bucket washing his hands, and thwacking him on the behind before I can stop myself. He will jump up and crack a smile that cuts his face up into segments – it’s a face I like, it’s wide and has a tendency to smile.

  Clare is missing from tea and I see him over at the phone-stand behind the shed. He’s nodding and he’s looking at me in a way that I don’t like. He turns his back, and finishes up the call. I drink deeply and feel better. It’s just the paranoia, and maybe I could lighten up on the drinking.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asks Greg when Clare comes back to the table. He doesn’t often use the phone, none of us do, other than poor Bean who misses his sixteen-year-old girlfriend in Rockhampton.

  Clare looks up brightly. ‘Just Ben – letting us know what a dickhead he is. Reckons he likes the uni course, reckons next time we see him he’ll be air-conditioned and rich.’

  ‘Ha!’ says Greg.

  ‘Prick,’ says Connor.

  Clare looks at me and smiles. I shift in my seat.

  Bean sits apart from everyone else. Greg strides past and clunks a beer down in front of him without speaking, and the boy’s face opens and he looks happy as he sits there chewing his meat and drinking his beer.

  Later, Clare is in a bad mood with the drink, and even Denis seems to enjoy winding him up.

  ‘Gettin’ a bit soft around the middle,’ Denis says, prodding Clare’s gut with a bony finger. ‘Finding it slows you down in the shed?’

  ‘Get fucked, you old cunt,’ says Clare, but it only makes Denis chuckle and his eyes shine. Denis is too old to say much to, and so Clare rounds on me, ‘Y’know,’ he says, ‘they won’t have a woman at sea – reckon it’s bad luck. They reckon a clothed woman on board is bad luck, angers the seas.’ I square myself up and look directly at him, but he doesn’t want to meet my eyes. I know I look hench, but I can feel a nasty beat to my heart.

  He knocks back the rest of his drink. ‘It’s just not right, it’s just not!’ he belts out. ‘In me old man’s day, there’s no way they would have tolerated it.’

  ‘I dunno,’ says Greg, ‘your old man gave you a girl’s name. Reckon he might have been quite progressive.’ Everyone laughs a bit.

  Clare is red in the face and Greg smiles behind his drink. Clare stands up abruptly and sways over the bench.

  ‘You
’se are all fuckin’ poofs,’ he says and flounces away into the night.

  With Greg breathing like a tanker next to me, I draw up a contract in my head with Dad. This will not go on for long, I will keep moving. In return he will sink beneath these new memories, just for a while. He only exists now as the money in my bank account. I can keep it all at arm’s length because there is nothing here yet to connect me to that time, with those people, other than the marks on my back which are pinked over enough to look like they happened in a past that can be left alone.

  In the morning Greg traces the scars with his fingers. ‘Those are hell good,’ he says with real admiration in his voice. ‘How’d you get ’em?’

  I turn and look at him and feel that countdown, how it could go either way. ‘Bad relationship.’

  Greg shifts up the bed and puts his hand on the back of my neck, like there’s something I deserve comfort for. I can let myself believe it just for now that I am some kind of victim. He lifts my hair up and I can feel him looking. He kisses the top bone of my spine and says, ‘I’ll kill him.’ And there it is, the lie, and it becomes real, another contract signed, stamped and dated.

  There’s a yell, which turns into a scream. Greg shoots out of bed in his undies and runs towards the noise. By the time I make it over to the shed, everyone’s standing in a circle around the grinder. Blood is misted up the wall and Bean is on the floor sobbing and holding what is left of his hand. Greg is trying to get him to hold it up above his heart, but the kid won’t have it, can’t stop looking at it.

  Someone’s gone to call the Flying Doctors and Alan comes running out of the house, his face white and red at the same time. He pushes men out of the way and squats down on the other side of Bean, inspects the hand and holds out his palm to Connor. ‘Gimmie yer bloody singlet,’ he says, quietly, and Connor strips it off.

  ‘Okay, Arthur,’ says Alan to Bean, ‘bloody doctors are on their way.’ He tears the singlet in two down the middle and ties it with a firmness that makes me wince around the kid’s wrist. ‘There’s nothing here can’t be sorted out,’ he says and Bean carries on sobbing. There’s no getting to him.

  ‘What the fuck was he doing on the bloody grinder?’ Alan hisses at us. Clare is standing at the back with a hand over his face. He raises his arm.

  ‘He was sharpening my gear for me.’ There’s a silence, deeper than before, and everyone turns to look at Clare. Alan’s mouth drops open, but he doesn’t say anything. Clare walks a little way away from us.

  ‘We’ll get yer mum on the bloody phone,’ says Alan to Bean. ‘She’ll be there by the time they’ve got you sorted out.’

  When the plane lands, they’re worried about the blood loss, and Alan goes with them to the hospital. Bean is blue in the lips as he’s carried, between Alan and the medic, into the plane. Clare kicks over and over again at a stump of wood stuck in the earth.

  We get on with work, I go back to roustabout without being asked, just seems the right thing. Clare is slow and hardly makes his quota. No one talks. The next morning, Alan is back and you can hear him going off at Clare round the back of the sleeping shed.

  ‘What the fuck were you thinking? The bloody hand’s gone, mate. Kid can’t read. Certainly can’t fucking write now. What the bloody fuck do you think he’s going to do for a job? That’s it, you’ve fucking fucked it. I had to tell his mother – fuck, I told her I’d bloody look after him.’ It goes on, and every question Alan asks is left unanswered by Clare. Everyone pretends not to have heard any of it, and Clare comes limping pale into the shed, to start work. Most of the men make an effort to turn their backs to him, Denis mutters something under his breath. But Greg slaps him on the shoulder and says, ‘You right?’ Clare nods and takes up his position. I hand him a sheep and it’s all go but we work in silence.

  Just after midday Alan comes in and when he sees me flinging a fleece onto the table he goes apeshit. ‘Why in filthy bloody fuck are you doing that?’ I stiffen and feel my eyes stretching wide. But the shouting’s not for me. He turns to Clare and points at him. ‘You, you useless fuck, until further notice, you’re bloody roustabout, not Jake.’ Clare’s mouth is open. ‘I’m not losing a prime shearer just because you can’t look after your own shit.’ I don’t know where to look or what to do. No one moves. ‘Jake, where’s your bloody kit?’

  ‘Back in my room.’

  ‘Go and get it, you’re on.’ I take a second to respond. ‘G’wan, get!’ he barks, and I scuttle off across the yard to my room. It’s awful; it’s humiliating for Clare, poor Bean’s life is wrecked, Alan is all kinds of fucked-up, but I can’t stop smiling.

  7

  I watched out the kitchen window as the sun melted behind the wood. The fading white shapes of sheep on the black grass. When the air turned thick and dark I drew the curtains above the sink and turned on all the lights.

  A sheep coughed loudly from the bottom paddock and Dog pricked up his ears. Stew sweated in its pan on the Rayburn. The radio played out the soccer report and I spread the table with newspaper so I could pick apart my shears, sharpen the teeth and oil and polish them. I took my time, put a pot of coffee on the stove, stirred the stew. I sharpened every tooth until they were perfect. I finished my coffee and poured whisky, restrung my shears, and then wondered what would happen if I tried to shear the dog.

  I cut fat slabs of white bread and left a black thumbprint in the butter. I spooned stew into a bowl and poured another whisky to go with it. I poured some into the stew as well. The cough came again and I remembered that I’d moved them all to the top paddock away from the woods. I cracked my mug down on the counter and Dog let out a small growl. I went upstairs for the gun and tried not to think about why I was getting it. There was not supposed to be much you could do with a gun in England you couldn’t do with a rock, but I was less sure of that now.

  The night had settled in, but a full moon lit up the paddock, slid over the backs of the sheep in the top field. Dog let out another deep growl – and the cough echoed from inside the woolshed, not the field. I stayed still. The sheep were motionless on the hillside. A field of ghosts.

  Dog was snuffing at the shed door and barked. The cough again, this time followed by a moan. Blood pumped in my fists. Just a wounded fox, I thought, just the wind rattling through a fracture in the grate, just a ringing in my ears.

  The shed door was a crack open and inside the darkness coddled like black water. Dog disappeared into it and I cocked the gun and went for the switch. The light blinked on, ticking, flashing green and then yellow, and I watched in slices as in the corner Dog attacked something large, hacking and snarling. I was stuck for a moment with my mouth open, then I trained my gun.

  ‘Jesus!’ screamed a man’s voice. Dog had hold of his wrist, shook it hard.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I shouted and whether I meant it or not, my gun went off. Dog fell to the floor, and for a terrible second I thought I’d shot him, but he was just gun-shy. The man covered his face with his hands and didn’t move. My arms shook, and I lowered the gun. No one was dead, and the man didn’t appear shot. I had to put the gun down before I dropped it.

  ‘What do you want? Did you kill my sheep? Who sent you?’ I barked. The man didn’t answer, just sat there, covering his face.

  Dog sloped back to stand next to me, his fight gone.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said again loudly. I thought about getting the gun again but my arms had lost their strength, I felt them flapping at my sides.

  ‘I want to sleep,’ said the man. ‘I only want to sleep.’ His voice was thick and swollen, just a croak. He lowered his hands. It was the man from the hedgerow. ‘You didn’t have to shoot at me,’ he said and met my eyes. ‘God,’ he said, ‘you look awful. Do you cut your own hair?’

  I took a step forward to look at him in the green light. A wet sleeping bag draped around his shoulders.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I asked again in my most menacing voice. I could smell the drink on him. His beard
had crept up to the very tops of his cheeks. His exposed hand had a number of punctures in it, from Dog. I swallowed. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I just wanted to sleep in your shed—’ The end of his sentence collapsed into a coughing fit.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Is it you? Have you been killing my sheep? Have you been in my house? Have you been banging around in my house at night?’

  He looked at me with eyes pink from coughing. His jaw shuddered from the cold. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said.

  There was a fleck of blood on his lower lip, from where he must’ve bit himself.

  He looked at me, one of his eyes drooped a little. ‘I did not kill a sheep.’

  He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. My heart pumped thickly.

  ‘I didn’t shoot you, did I?’

  He opened his eyes again. ‘What on earth are you on about now?’ he said, exasperated, like I was bothering him with some kind of ridiculous information. Rain had started up and it drummed on the roof. I didn’t know how I could move him.

  ‘I’ll call the police if you don’t leave right now,’ I said. The man made no response. I watched him for some time. He didn’t move, just his chest rising and falling, just the moustache hairs blowing in his breath. I nudged him hard in the leg with the toe of my boot.