The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  She called her brothers’ names as she ran and in her voice was the note of the bearer-of-news.

  ‘Dad must be home,’ said Jo.

  But the little boy was resentful of this intrusion. ‘What does she want?’ he said sourly.

  The little girl had reached a flat stretch of grass and her speed had increased. Her short hair fluttered in the wind of her running.

  She waved a hand. ‘We have a new baby sister,’ she yelled.

  ‘Aw, pooh!’ exclaimed the little boy.

  He turned and tugged at Jo’s arm. ‘Have you thought of anything exciting yet, Jo?’ His face lit to a sudden recollection. ‘Tell him how I got chased by the turkey,’ he cried.

  Bulls

  The little girl ran quickly from the shed and stood listening.

  Again she heard his voice, loud and menacing:

  ‘Bring up those cows, blast you!’

  She darted back and hid a tin of mud beneath a loose board on the floor. She wiped her hands on her stained, blue dress and ran towards the paddock gate calling with rising and falling inflection:

  ‘Ja-ack, Ja-ack!’

  A black dog rushed after her, barking excitedly.

  ‘G’way back!’ she commanded, pointing.

  The dog sped past her, its flexible body animated with an intense energy. The little girl picked up a long stick that lay on the ground and followed, running with short, swift steps.

  The cows were scattered across the paddock. Some were lying down. At the sound of the dog’s imperative barking, they rose laboriously to their feet and commenced to walk towards the track that led to the cowyard.

  The little girl stopped. She leant on her stick, waiting for the dog to collect those in the far corner. She was seven years old and had brown skin and smooth, round limbs. Her fair bobbed hair hung in an untidy mass from her head. When she ran it shook across her eyes so that she could not see. She would toss her head and push it back with her hand, but its natural position seemed to be before her face. It was generally adorned with a dirty ribbon secured by a single knot. The ends hung to her shoulders, the original bow having disappeared earlier in the day.

  The cows soon collected into a herd that moved slowly towards the yard at the end of the paddock. Occasionally one would stop and bellow loudly. The little girl urged the lagging ones by running to and fro, shouting and waving her stick. The dog barked and snapped at their heels. Some broke into a clumsy trot, their heavy udders swinging violently from side to side.

  A bull walked among the cows. The little girl glanced at it frequently. As it altered its position she moved so as to keep as far away from it as possible. This fear was always with her. Frightened thoughts startled her in the midst of play, like the touch of cold hands. In the night the bull’s head came out of the darkness and looked at her.

  The bull walked with its head held low, swinging it from side to side with the movements of its body. The tremendous muscles on its shoulders rose and fell. Its staring, wicked eyes seemed to be always looking back at her. They were concentrated and intent as if it were listening to the sound of her feet swishing through the long grass.

  The little girl knew that some day it would whirl suddenly and rush at her with its short, black-tipped horns. It would bellow and toss her and throw her to the ground and she would never move again—like the calves her father struck on the head with a piece of iron. Then the bull would go back to the herd and her father would milk the cows just the same.

  He stood at the open cowyard gate, swearing at the delay. ‘Blast you! Get a move on.’

  He was a large man with a heavy, unshaven face. He scowled continuously. His lips were full and bore small, dry flakes of skin. His round, obese stomach, confined by a tightly stretched galatea shirt, bulged over the twisted leather belt that supported his dungaree trousers. The cuffs were caught up by the tags on the back of his boots revealing the boots in their entirety like the enormous, misshapen hooves of some grotesque animal. The untied laces were almost hidden by an accumulation of pollard, mud and chaff. His felt hat was stained with milk, and stuck to the grease were numerous small red hairs from the flanks of the cows against which he had pressed his head. There breathed from his clothes, and accompanied him continuously, an odour repulsively animal—the smell of the cowyard.

  The little girl ran backwards and forwards behind the herd. The dog barked frantically. The cows plunged through the mud which lay deep round the yard, striving to get away from the snapping teeth.

  ‘Hi! Hi!’ called the father.

  The cows, crowding and jostling, flowed into the first yard, which was unstoned and knee-deep in black, slimy mud. The little girl plodded through the morass and closed the bottom gate. Her father opened the one leading into the small paved yard confronting the bails. The cows standing near moved forward, lifting their legs high as they pulled them from the mud, and heaving their bodies as they clambered on to the stone paving.

  The father put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The dog appeared and rushed in among the cows. They jammed and pushed in the gateway, their heads held aloft, forced up by the hindquarters of those in front of them. They crowded forward, slipping and horning one another.

  ‘That’s enough, Mick,’ came a plaintive voice. The little girl’s mother stood at the entrance to a bail holding a bucket. The father kicked at the cows coming through and forced the gate shut. The cows nearest the bails walked into their position.

  The little girl hurried from bail to bail, pulling the rope that manipulated the upright securing their heads. She leg-roped them, pushing hard against their flanks to force them against the rails, and pulling their legs back into an unnatural rigid position. Their legs were thick with dripping mud and the ropes became slimy snakes, horrible to touch.

  A bucket made from half a kerosene-tin and a piece of wire hung from a nail driven into one of the posts. The father lifted it down and filled it with water. He took a dirty rag that lay on a bench. He went to each cow and, resting a hand on their flanks, he bent and soused their udders and teats with splashings of cold water. Many of the udders had been dragged in the mud. The water became black. A muddy sediment collected in the bottom of the bucket.

  He commenced milking. His pudgy hands pressed and released the teats tirelessly. They seemed to have an existence apart from his clumsy body. The milk spurted in rapid streaks. A white froth arose in the bucket. Where the straight, white stems lost themselves in the froth, a grey, discoloured circle appeared making an unclean stain upon the white surface.

  He often squirted milk on his hands to moisten the grip. Mixed with mud from the udder, it dripped from his fingers in round, grey drops. Where the top of his hand pressed against the udder a circular encrustation of grease and dirt collected.

  ‘Let some more in!’ he yelled at the little girl.

  She ran to the gate and swung it open. The bull entered with the cows.

  ‘Open a door and let that bull through!’ he commanded.

  The bail doors were weighted and had to be held open. The bull’s body would brush hers as it passed. The little girl was afraid and made no move to obey. She stood pressed against the fence, looking first at the bull and then at her father.

  He rose from his milking block in a rage. He pointed at the door and roared: ‘Open that blasted door, I say!’

  The little girl took a few faltering steps forward.

  ‘The bull,’ she said weakly. Her powerless eyes never left his face.

  He put his bucket on the stone floor and stepped out of the bail. The little girl shrank back, her clenched hands pressed against her mouth, her terrified eyes looking upwards.

  The head and shoulders of her mother arose from behind a cow. ‘She is afraid of the bull, Mick.’

  ‘Afraid, is she!’ snarled the father. ‘I’ve told her the bull is harmless. She’s lazy, that’s what’s wrong with her.’

  The head and shoulders of the mother shrank from view.

  ‘Come here!’ he
shouted, his head thrust forward.

  The little girl came to him as a dog would that expects a blow.

  ‘Open that door!’ he mouthed, pointing with his hand and looking down on her.

  As she turned to obey him, he struck her heavily between the shoulders, precipitating her violently forward for a few steps. He watched her, then walked over to the bull and drove it toward the bail.

  The little girl watched it approaching. As it drew near, her eyes slipped here and there with quick little movements like the eyes of a bird. It came straight towards her, its head swinging low, its small black eyes gleaming. She stood very still with one arm outstretched to the door, the other held stiffly by her side. The bull’s head passed her barely a foot away. She could see the red, curling hair between its eyes, the texture of its horrible horns, its black slimy nostrils. She felt its hot breath.

  Her father returned to his milking, grumbling.

  ‘She’ll turn that bull savage, that’s what she’ll do. You’ve got to stand up to them. It knows me. I flogged it once and it’s never forgotten it. What with her howling and running every time it comes near, it’ll never be safe.’

  Swish, swish went the milk in the buckets. The cows, with heavy, drooping lids, chewed their cuds in silent ecstasy. The milk sang from the coolers.

  Each Monday her father drove to the township five miles away. Her mother accompanied him. The little girl stayed at home to ‘look after the place’. She played with the dog and built little houses beside the hay-shed with bags and fencing rails. On one of these days she sat on the paddock gate watching the bull feeding. A deep hatred of it stirred her. That morning it had shaken its head at her as it walked through the bail. She suddenly felt she wanted to hurt it. She remembered her father’s words, ‘I flogged it once and it has never forgotten it.’ She would like to flog it too. She pondered on ways of hurting it, of making it afraid of her.

  She climbed from the gate and ran to where a bluish dog with one wall eye was chained beneath an old gum-tree. Her father used him when he drove cattle to the saleyards or brought springers from the dry paddocks. She unfastened the chain from his collar. He bounded away and tore round the yard, glad to be free. He stopped suddenly beside a bucket of water and began to drink noisily.

  ‘Here, boy!’ she called.

  She ran with him to the paddock fence and climbed through. She walked watchfully towards the bull, then stopped and waving her hand urged the dog: ‘Sool ’im, Bluey! Get hold of him!’

  The dog gave a delighted yelp and raced towards the bull. He dived in, snapped at the animal’s hocks and shot past, propping frantically.

  The bull gave a startled jump; then, realising the dog’s intention, commenced trotting down the paddock. Again the dog drove at him, sinking his teeth into the firm, sinewy legs. The bull broke into a lumbering gallop. The dog followed, harrying the animal with vicious, perfectly timed attacks. The bull kicked as it ran. It kept turning its head from side to side so that it could watch the dop leaping behind it. The dog was an old heeler and squatted low as it snapped, so that the powerful legs shot over its head.

  The bull slowed down, then turned and, lowering its head, made a rush at the dog. The dog dodged and tried to get behind the bull so that it could continue its onslaught; but the larger animal kept turning so that its horns always confronted its antagonist. The dog made short little jumps towards the bull’s head, barking savagely. This continued for some time. The dog paused and, evading the bull’s horns with a quick bound, dashed in, biting savagely at the bull’s legs. The beast again set off at a gallop.

  Later they stopped and repeated the performance.

  Occasionally the dog looked towards the little girl for encouragement. It stood still with one front paw raised, its ears pricked, its tongue dripping. Her voice: ‘Sool ‘im, boy. Get to him,’ relieved its dog’s mind of any doubt as to the wisdom of this unusual latitude and it returned eagerly to its persecution.

  Round the paddock they went. Long threads of saliva floated from the bull’s mouth. Its shoulders were streaked with shining strands. Its sunken flanks rose and fell. Blood from its torn hocks dripped to the ground. At last, almost exhausted, it made a stand in a corner, its back to the fence, and defied the dog’s attempts to rout it. It pawed the ground, tossing lumps of earth and grass shoulder high with sullen rage. It dropped to its knees, burying first one horn and then the other in the earth and flinging its head upwards. Small lumps of damp soil and grass adhered to the ends of its horns. It bellowed onimously.

  The dog stood in doubt. It looked towards the little girl for guidance. But a sudden fear smote the little girl and she called the dog to her and ran swiftly towards the house, her heart beating rapidly.

  When her parents returned her mother hurried her into the house. Her father wasn’t well. He staggered and swore. Her mother cut the child a thick slice of bread and jam. Her movements were flurried and nervous. She was a thin woman with tired eyes. Two bright red smudges of colour high on her cheek-bones stood out from the pallor of her face. She glanced often at the door and urged the little girl to hurry.

  ‘Bring up the cows quickly,’ she said. ‘Your father isn’t well.’

  The little girl trotted across the paddock munching the bread and jam. She kept as far away from the bull as she could. One of the cows was standing near it. The little girl was afraid to approach any closer. She urged Floss to ‘fetch her out’, but the cow was one that her father had bought at a sale the week before, and refused to leave the corner where it stood looking towards some distant hills and sometimes lowing in a restless, unsettled way.

  The little girl looked first towards the house and then towards the cow. She began to cry. Floss trotted up with wagging tail and pushed her damp nose against the little girl’s limp hand. They both walked after the rest of the cows which were approaching the yard.

  ‘You haven’t brought in the brindle cow, you little fool!’ her father yelled. ‘Go and get her.’

  ‘The bull . . .’ she began faintly.

  Her father spurned the stool back with his booted foot and took several quick steps forward, but the little girl turned and ran across the paddock towards the corner in which the bull stood motionless, its head bent at an acute angle.

  When she got half-way there she stopped and looked towards the yard. Her father was watching her, his big hands resting on top of the gate.

  ‘Get a move on there,’ came his voice.

  She approached a little nearer to the bull then stopped once more. Again her father’s voice bellowed from the yard. She did not move.

  He slammed the gate savagely behind him and walked towards her. The little girl watched him approach, plucking at her skirt with her fingers. When he was so near that she could see his face she sank upon her knees in the grass.

  ‘Get up,’ he said through his teeth.

  She made no effort to obey him but crouched closer to the ground, her legs drawn beneath her, her elbows close to her sides, her hands pressed palm downwards on the grass. He kicked her. Anguished sobs, almost inaudible, shook her. He seized her by the shoulder and lifted her to her feet. ‘You’ll come with me, miss,’ he said.

  He dragged her towards the bull. It stood with stiffened muscles but, as they approached, it began to bellow menacingly and shake its head.

  The father hesitated and released his hold on the little girl. She darted through the fence like a terrified rabbit. He picked up a dry clod and hurled it, with a curse, at the animal.

  The bull made a sudden, swift rush. It went forward with great bounds, digging its hooves into the ground. All the tremendous power of its smooth, rounded muscles was concentrated in hurling its heavy body at this hated man.

  He flung out his arms, took a faltering step backwards, then turned to run. His eyes were wide open. Curved wrinkles corrugated his forehead. The muscles of his hanging jaw were loose and flabby. He cried out with a loud, harsh voice. The enormous head struck him, a driving horn caught him
in the armpit. The bull tossed its head, lifting the man from his feet and flinging him sideways like a loosely-filled sack. He fell sprawling to the ground. In a very access of fury, foam flecked and bellowing, the bull turned and hurled itself at the recumbent figure. It gored it into the soft grass, using the body as a pivot round which it circled with its hindquarters. The thing’s passiveness infuriated it the more. It buried its red horns in the shapeless bulk again, and again, and again. . . .

  The Grey Kangaroo

  She knew the old prospector. From a cleared patch on the hillside she often noticed him washing for gold in the creek that ran through the valley.

  Sometimes he stopped his swirling and sat on the bank watching her while he filled his pipe.

  He had known her for two years. She was his friend. She was smaller than her companions, and differed from them in colour. She was grey; they were almost black—‘scrubbers’, the old man called them.

  Each morning the creaking of his cart, as he followed the winding track round the mountain side, would cause them to stand erect for a moment, nostrils twitching.

  But they did not fear him. He was one with the carol of the magpies and the gums.

  When his ‘Whoa there!’ stayed the old black horse, they knew he only wished to look at them. They continued feeding. Their movements were like music—rhythmical—an undulating rise and fall of symmetrical bodies against a background of slender trees.

  Occasionally they stopped and, sitting upright, looked back at him, a look of intense interest, of watchfulness.

  Their flanks, wet with the dew from sweet-smelling leaves, glistened in the morning sun. They seemed like children of the trees.

  There was a day when the old prospector approached within a few yards of the grey kangaroo. She awaited his coming, standing with head extended, eyes half-closed, nostrils working with curiosity. He remained motionless, and they regarded each other.