All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  ‘You can stay here the night,’ I said. He opened his eyes wide again. ‘But in the morning, you have to leave.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If you don’t leave in the morning, I will shoot you,’ I said, but his eyes had closed and he was already asleep.

  He was sitting on the bare concrete, wrapped sadly in his wet sleeping bag. I left him there, turning off the light as I went and taking my gun.

  It could have been the air, the wind. It could have been that out there in the dark, all of my sheep had turned to stare at me. Or that something pulled itself out of the sea and lumbered up the path towards me. But it wasn’t. It was only the night like I’d seen it a thousand times before, alone.

  Inside, I looked at the telephone, imagined the sergeant’s face and then turned away from it again. I thought of how Don’d tell me to call on those young farmers.

  In the kitchen I looked at the bread I’d cut. I put the coffee back on the stove and sat down. I got up and went to the boiler cupboard and found a scratchy blanket and took it back out to the shed. I could hear his breath wheezing in and out of him at the doorway, and I didn’t need the light on to know where he was and that he was still sleeping. I cleared my throat a few times, but he didn’t wake and so I laid the blanket over him then walked back to the house, trying to go without urgency. I bolted the door and checked the windows.

  I poured whisky into my coffee and took it upstairs to bed. Dog came with me. I sat on the edge of the bed a while and then went back downstairs with Dog. I pointed at the front door. ‘Stay,’ I said, and Dog raised his eyebrows, but lay down with his chin on his paws.

  I took the bottle of whisky up with me, and half an hour later came back down the stairs and found Dog curled on the sofa. I rang home and no one answered, everyone was out, living their lives in the way that they did. If the phone was in the same place in the hallway, resting on its same wicker cabinet, it faced out towards the front garden, unkempt, fireweed and dead leaves, brown snakes and bindi-eye. Butcher birds caught mice in those places, speared them on the branches of the jacaranda, dead mice and voles. I hung up. I collected all the knives I could find into a roasting tin, and on second thoughts the carving fork too, and took them up to bed with me. I turned off the light and pulled a stool to the window and propped the gun up next to it. I sat and waited for my eyes to get used to the dark and I watched the door of the shed with a mug of whisky in my hand.

  8

  By the time I reach Kalgoorlie, something is rattling badly under the bonnet of the truck. The kangaroo seems a long time ago, but it did more damage than I’d first thought. There are no papers in the glove compartment, only WD-40, an open bag of peanuts and an empty pack of condoms. The best I can do for her is to sell her to a scrapyard. I cut the engine in the wreckers’ yard and count the ticks for the last time. When they stop, I know I’ve arrived somewhere else.

  Along the journey the roll of money from Otto’s tin became thin, and there have been moments when, sat in the truck in the dark, I’ve thought about going back to the old way. But that person is like someone I’ve never known. The thought of it – of the flesh and the smell and noise of it, the ache and hollow afterwards, the taste that makes drink curdle and turn thick in your throat – it makes me clench my fists so that my nails dig into my palms. I have had dreams sleeping in the locked cab of the truck of gritting my teeth until they break, until they shatter inside my mouth, and when I wake up I expect to see his face at the window, looking in at me. Some nights I’ve woken up and I can hear someone singing, Is it you or is it me? Lately I’ve been lost it seems . . . and then it turns out just to be the drill of a nightjar, or a fruit bat complaining in its tree. While the sun comes up I stare at myself in the rear-view mirror, holding my own gaze until I am just a blur, like when you say your own name over and over until it doesn’t make sense any more.

  I only get $45 for the truck, but there is something good about thinking of it taken apart, limb from limb, the licence plate nailed up on a wall, just one among hundreds, unseen and ignored, the last link to him disintegrated and untraceable. I spend the last of the money on a sleeping bag, a change of clothes and a backpack to put it all in.

  ‘Those are big bloody bastards,’ says a man called Alan, holding my palms open on the bar of the Fleeced Lamb in Kalgoorlie. There’s something in the businesslike way he holds my hands which makes me relax – like he’s looking at the hoof of a goat. ‘You’ll be right, love,’ he says. ‘Look like you can bloody look after yourself, I bloody reckon.’ He lets go of my hands, and drains his drink before fixing me with his eyes again. ‘Reckon you’re the sort with an old soul, and that’s just the sort I like.’

  Alan is the bloke I’ve tracked down who has advertised for a new roustabout. It’s the only sheep job that doesn’t say, ‘Skill Level: Experienced’ next to it; instead it says ‘Skill Level: Intermediate’, but Alan’s interview is pretty much: ‘You scared of bloody sheep at all?’ and when I say no and he has a look at my arms, it seems a done deal, and he doesn’t even glance at the side-of-paper CV I printed off in the internet café which is made up.

  When the first day in Alan’s team comes, it has me feeling sick, like there’s a test I don’t know how to pass, but no one looks surprised to see a woman in the woolshed where the tin roof keeps the heat in, and pushes it down on our heads. It smells like piss and burnt hair, but I’ve smelled worse things.

  ‘I’m Jake,’ I say to the men. I hold up my hand, and they look back, six of them all the same, the same hats and jeans, the same sun-dark skin and hair that pokes out just a little bit at the sides. Someone says, ‘G’day mate,’ and two of them lift their hands back at me. One of them pushes his hat to the back of his head to look at me and smiles. He’s got a wide face, deep-set blue eyes.

  ‘You the cook, mate?’ asks a man with a red moustache and someone answers for me, telling me, ‘Nah, Sid’s cook. Sid Hargreve.’ And I breathe out, thinking of feeding all those men burnt chops and eggs.

  ‘She’s bloody roustabout for now,’ Alan says from behind me, ‘an’ we’ll see how she goes from there.’ He claps me on the back. ‘She’s got a pair of shoulders on her,’ and there’s a nod from most of the men – they have seen stranger things – and they all turn back to their gear, checking blades and blowing dust and sheep skin out from behind the teeth. At the side of the shed I can hear a mechanical grinder at work. One of the men stands still, holding his shears and just looking, with no expression I can understand. A sweat breaks out on my upper lip. I’d like a smoke, but not in front of everyone.

  Alan shows me where I’ll sleep.

  ‘We get a woman now and again working with us – no one that’s stayed on too long. I’m not bloody prejudice,’ he says, ‘but sleeping is the tricky bloody thing. If I get caught not offering you a separate room, I’m in the bloody poo.’ He shows me into the shed where there are two utes parked and a dirt bike. There’s a cot-bed set up in a corner of the shed, which is a work area – the bench has been cleared of tools and petrol and given a wipe down. There’s a green plastic washing-up basin there and a bar of soap. ‘Also, I’m supposed to provide a separate bloody washing facility. There’s a tap round the back.’

  He turns and looks me up and down. ‘How are ya with spiders?’

  Ben is the roustabout I’ll be taking over from and for the first two days, he shows me the ropes. ‘It’s a hard job,’ he says, and he eyes my shoulders, ‘but I reckon you’d do all right.’ He grabs a ewe by the front legs, flips her over and drags her backwards towards one of the men who is on his final strokes. As he picks up the finished fleece, a swarm of blue bottles tumbles off it, more crawl than fly. Ben shows me how to fling it onto the table. I try and look like it’s harder than it is.

  ‘What’ll you do next?’ I ask.

  ‘Going to uni to do agriculture, they’ve got a course at the Hedland I’ve got a place on,’ he says. My jaw sets at the mention of the Hedland. One of the men ove
rhears our conversation.

  ‘Little fucker’s got ideas – reckons we’ll be working for him in a few years.’

  Everyone laughs as if this is the most tragic delusion a person could be under.

  Ben rolls his eyes and gives the man the finger. The man smiles and goes back to his sheep. ‘Part of the job,’ he says, hoicking another sheep up by the legs, ‘is copping shit from this lot.’

  I’m good at the job, I can feel it, better already maybe than Ben is, but I don’t want him to dislike me, so I hold back, let him bark at me a few times so that it’s understood that I’m the new one, the arsehole without a clue. The sheep are thicker than the ones at Otto’s and they have more fight in them, but we get along fine. It’s good to feel the fat on their bones, the grease from their wool on my palms, like they’ve got it to spare. I learn the names of the men as we go along, listening in on conversations, and the stuff they shout at each other over the buzz of the clippers. There’s the tall one with a heavy-looking skull, who seems quiet until one of the others starts to tell a joke. I miss the first part because I’m watching the way the one telling the joke breezes through the wool, right at the root. He takes ages with his joke, because he has to breathe in that way with the sheep round him, and when the fleece falls to the ground and I take him a new sheep, he shaves her soft underbelly and stops telling his joke, and I hold my breath with him, as he palpates her around the groin, getting the skin there taut. On the joke goes, something with monkeys and cannons and dicks. When he’s finished with the sheep he straightens up and says the punchline: ‘And she says, “That’s just what my husband said, Reverend.”’

  The tall one is working on the long blow of a ewe and he hugs her to him while he’s laughing, holding the shears away from her, and he says, ‘Shit, Clare, you’re an arsehole.’ And he gives his sheep a pat on the head like she is in on the joke too, before carrying on with the shear; a chuckle comes now and again from him, small shakes of his head. His name is Greg.

  Sid the cook feeds us stew with some bread he’s baked. The bread is like wet cement inside and it sticks to the bottom of my stomach and sets. The stew is brown mutton. I can’t take the taste of it, which coats my tongue and smells of death.

  ‘Watchin’ yer weight?’ asks the one called Clare when he looks at my plate, and so I smile and shovel a forkful in just to show it doesn’t bother me. My stomach contracts and sweat pricks out on the back of my neck. I smile wider.

  No one complains or compliments Sid, who doesn’t seem to expect it. We get the same for tea, but with a steamed jam and sponge pudding out of tins, and Alan sets up a bar. You write down the drinks you take in a ledger and it comes out of your wages. I take a six pack and offer one to Ben as a friendly thing. Ben is pleased, says he’s spent most of his wages buying drinks he owes the shearers.

  ‘Fuckin’ bastards, had me today,’ he says, but he says it smiling and someone walks past and tweaks his tit.

  In the shed there’s no door to close, and so I can see the night sky from where I lie. I get up and root around in a drawer until I find a hammer, and then I put it under my bed, just as a comforter. The sky is big and thrown with stars. The shed smells of diesel, which is not a bad smell, and once I spot the huntsmen up on the ceiling like fat grey stars themselves, I’m happy as long as they’re still. I fall asleep and dream nothing, nothing touches me in the dark.

  In the morning I wash at my basin on the workbench, with an old singlet for a sponge. There are kookaburras and miner birds racketing about, and I wonder that I never heard them at Otto’s, just the morning buzz of blowflies.

  Once the sheep have been mustered and are secured in their runs, my job is to keep the pens full and to get the sheep to the shearers so they don’t have more than a couple of breaths before starting on the next one. Then I fling the fleeces up on the wool table, where an old bloke called Denis skirts them and all the dags and maggoty bits fall through the slats in the table, because people don’t want shit in their jumpers, or even in their carpets. I can see a couple of the men hang back a little, and expect me to take my time, to be slow. There’s that solid heat that gets bounced down on us from the tin roof, and the flies in here are fat and damp – when they land around your mouth you feel like you’ve been kissed by something dead.

  Clare calls out, ‘Hope you know the tradition, girlie – if there’s fleece on the boards and no sheep in my arms, you owe me a beer.’ I ignore him, because I can already tell he is the one to ignore.

  Everyone takes their places, I have a sheep to each man, and I wait to see how quickly they go. There are two, Connor and Stuart, who work side by side and they are the quickest, because they make it into a race. At the start of work they give themselves a countdown, ‘Three, two, one, go!’ and they are off, as fast as they can. There are a few nicks on Connor’s sheep, and they wobble back into the out-run looking a bit scrubby. Greg’s sheep are sleek and clean with no grazes, like they’ve been buttered, and so are Clare’s. They’re fast too, but only Clare is competitive. Greg won’t be drawn into a race, just smiles, but Clare races him anyway.

  The day’s work is drawing to a close and Greg asks if I’ve ever tried to shear a sheep before. He smiles in that way that’s started to make my tongue do roll-ups in my closed mouth. ‘Reckon you’d be good at it.’

  ‘Couple a times,’ I say.

  ‘Have a go of this one, long as you don’t cut her in half,’ he says, and he catches his sheep under the front legs, and holds it for me with a nod towards the back strap. ‘Put that on, helps take the weight.’ I pause and look at the strap.

  ‘I’m fine without it.’ I’m worried it will change the weight and feel of the sheep, make it less natural. My back still feels knotted together and strong.

  Greg raises his eyebrows. ‘Whatever madam prefers.’ But he clearly doesn’t think I can manage it. ‘I can hold her for you if you like,’ he says, and I let him lock around me with his arms. The contact makes my mouth go dry but I concentrate on hiding that, and it feels different. He smells like sawdust.

  His shears are sharper and fancier than the ones Otto had, and it takes me a moment to understand them. I take off the belly wool first, and the new shears are so simple, they hardly stick at all. It’s so easy and I can feel the sheep relaxing under Greg’s arm, and when I start at her neck, I get it all, and I get it well, and quickly with just about the minimum amount of strokes. Once her fleece is lying on the floor, intact and full, and she has wobbled away with no trace of red on her, I wipe the sweat off my upper lip and Greg steps away from me with his hands on his hips. ‘Well, shit, where’d you learn that?’ and behind him, Stuart and Connor who have come to watch start laughing. Clare walks out of the shed.

  It’s too hot, but I like the way the heat makes my arms feel like they’re full of warm oil, and sweat runs down them in sheets soaking the sides of my singlet. There’s an ache in the bottom of my spine from bending and lifting, but it beats lying on my bed at Otto’s waiting for the day to be over. I catch myself smiling as I throw another fleece onto the table and Denis nods to me, impressed. I don’t pull the sheep as strongly as Ben did, I wrap part of my arm around their middle, so their legs don’t drag, and in return they don’t buck as much, and it goes smoothly. No one comments on it, so I reckon it’s not a bad thing. At the end of the day, my arms bulge at my shirtsleeves and I’m on the nose, but so is everyone else, and when I go for a proper wash behind my sleeping quarters where there’s a small pallet shower with an open top, my body feels like a new one; I can picture the layers coming away, the dirt and the grot and old terrible skin. I’m pulling a singlet on over my head when I hear someone cough, and I snap around, my heart barrelling about inside me; my eyes dart to the hammer underneath the bed. It’s Connor, looking embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he says, ‘forgot you were in here – just come to get some oil for the grinder.’ I smile hard while he locates the oil and nods to me as he leaves. I try not to think about what he mig
ht be thinking if he saw my back. It’s dark in the shed, and probably he didn’t see a thing. I breathe and close my eyes for a few moments before setting off to find the others. They’re sat at a long table out in the field; Connor is there and looks normal. I take a place at the end of the table and try to relax. Greg sits himself next to me and hands me a beer. Panic is replaced by a warm feeling.

  A skinny boy everyone calls Bean who is younger than me and has a voice that is perfect for copying comes along. Clare says Bean sounds like a donkey getting its dick yanked, and when Bean blushes I stand with everyone else and smile. Bean is there to bloody replace me, Alan says, and for a moment I think I’m being fired, but he’s telling me to get in with the shearers.

  Clare is shitful to Bean, who struggles to tow a sheep out of the pen. Bean screams and goes bright red when one of them bites him. Poor sod, I think, and I show him how to grab them so they don’t freak out. Why’d you have to have such a crap name, I think, you could have got away with the rest of it.

  I love being in the line and working the day out. I notice Clare watching and I feel him racing me. I try not to be bothered by it, but he cuts a sheep badly, and he shouts, ‘Fuckit!’ and chews Bean out like it’s his fault. ‘Get me the tar, you fucking retard!’ he shouts.

  ‘Calm down, man,’ says Greg, and Clare shrugs, ignoring him. I catch Bean’s eye and smile, and he turns away. He probably only just got away from his mum, doesn’t want to team up with the only woman.

  We’re not that far from a small town with a pub and a bank and a supermarket, and on my half day, I go to the bank so I can see about getting my wages to go straight in. It’s been a long time since I’ve used a bank. The cashier has a small frown when she looks at my statement, but I ignore it, not offering an explanation. She turns the screen so I can see it. Three months ago, my mother deposited $50,000 into my account. I stare at the screen, and mutely hand over my payroll details.