Crystal Coffin

by Anita Bell

  Locklin swore under his breath, hoping he’d come to the right place. There were two processing plants in the valley, but as far as he knew this was the only one that had started taking horses. It was also the closest one to his home farm and he figured his father’s killer wouldn’t bother paying extra to transport a horse over to the next valley just to satisfy his revenge.

  Locklin put two fingers inside his mouth and let out a low, clucking wolf whistle. It was the low frequency call that he’d used in noisy classrooms to distract girls at high school without getting detention. He’d used it at military college later to warn his mates whenever an officer was coming, but he’d used it mostly on the farm to call a horse that his father had given him for his tenth birthday. That horse answered him from the top end of the chute and Locklin swore again.

  There were only three horses left between his stallion and the door.

  The horse bolted its head up, trying to look around. It pushed forward and back against the others, but it was wedged in too tight for it to move. Then another horse disappeared inside the building and a grey mare pushed the stallion from behind to get into the space.

  Locklin whistled again and the stallion planted its hooves in the crush like a mule. A broad white blaze crowned with a star pointed at the sky and the horse let out a long whinny with two loud snorts at the end as it kicked at the steel rails. Fear rippled through the slaughteryards and the other horses screamed, drowning the sound of machinery that came from within the building.

  Locklin jumped off the ramp, landing at the bottom of the crush and reached through the rails to unlatch the gate to the holding pen. The yearling backed out, feeling the pressure release off his rump and that started a cascade effect along the crush. The young horse was the first out and it bucked and bolted around the yard, squealing as it sooked loudly for its mother.

  ‘Idiot,’ Locklin hissed. The rider would hear it. He slid between the rails and opened the gate into the next yard. The animal saw the gap and bolted through, taking others with it. More pressure released off the other animals in the crush as each horse backed out of the chute, but at the top, the grey mare panicked as she tried to turn around and caught her head between the rails.

  Locklin heard the whip crack and realised he needed more time. He ran along the outside of the yard and opened a gate to release the yearling into the car park as a distraction. The animal saw the new gap and bolted, this time with its tail up as it leapt a narrow strip of bitumen beside the lunch room. More horses followed and as the animals spewed out of the yard, the rider saw the yearling and kicked his palomino to the nearest gate to fetch it back, but the yearling’s mother was already in the corner, calling to it.

  He hunted her away and bent forward to unlatch the bolt as another horse rushed his palomino from behind. The rider fell. The gate flung open, and the third yard full of horses emptied into the car park.

  Cheers erupted from the activists at the boom gates and Locklin ran back to the chute, scrambling up the rails, keeping his head down until he got to the grey mare that was blocking his stallion’s escape. Her head was wedged between the top two rails and she was looking back towards her own rump. In trying to bring her head around, she had wedged her neck against a pillar and now it was so tight she couldn’t move.

  Locklin scrambled over her back and got in front of her, cooing to her to calm her down.

  ‘G’day, Jack old mate,’ he said, patting dust from his stallion’s rump. ‘Look what you get up to as soon as I’m gone a while. Stand up for me now and I’ll get you out of here.’

  He sat backwards over Jack’s rump, holding onto the top rails on each side while he put his boots against the mare’s neck and pushed her backwards. Her ears pulled out from the pillar as soon as the pressure was released and he eased her nose out with the toe of his boot. When she settled, he slid off his stallion to stand between them.

  He pushed the mare’s nose up and slightly to the side so she could see behind her and then applied a gentle, poking pressure to her chest with his other hand.

  ‘Back girl,’ he said, pushing back on her nose at the same time, and the old mare took a nervous step backwards. Locklin stopped poking her chest for a second to reward her, and then he repeated the process.

  This time her backwards step was longer.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, wishing more owners taught their horses to back up. He repeated the improvised lesson twice more, and each time she stepped back he rewarded her with a release of pressure. She learned fast. Her stride lengthened and she hurried backwards towards the holding yard. His stallion started to follow with the two remaining horses close on his nose and Locklin scrambled up the rails to let Jack back out underneath him. He reached forward, offering the bit into his horse’s mouth before fastening the bridle.

  Voices shouted from the building and Locklin ducked against his animal’s neck, holding the gate wider with Jack’s rump and hissing at the last pair of mares to hurry them out.

  A skinny meatworker jumped from the slaughterhouse, followed by five bigger men who came out of a side door. They circled round the horses, shouting and running as they tried to scare the biggest mob back towards the yards, but they flapped their arms and squawked like chickens running from a fox and the horses bolted in all directions to get away from them.

  Sirens wailed near the boom gates and Locklin heard hooves galloping up the road. Activists cheered again as the truck emptied onto the street and the yearling and his mother jumped the boom gates to join them.

  The palomino galloped riderless ahead of them and Locklin smiled at the smaller outbreak that he’d inspired, knowing there were plenty of horse-loving hobby farmers nearby who would take them in. Some of the farmers were probably among the protestors already, he realised, and he headed for his own exit, with the grey mare and three other horses happy to follow him.

  He rounded the loading ramp at a full gallop, but the skinny meatworker had made it to the supply shed and found a length of pipe.

  ‘Damn greenie!’ he shouted, spotting Locklin as he veered right. ‘Get back here!’

  Locklin urged his horse faster as he neared the refrigerator van, only this time the driver wasn’t snoring. The passenger door kicked open, catching Locklin in the leg. He screamed as the shrapnel shoved deeper against the bone and his horse shied before he could catch his balance. He fell heavily, the wind knocked from his lungs as he hit the ground.

  He still had hold of the reins so Jack only dragged him a few steps before he pulled up. Locklin tried to roll to his feet to get back on, but the metal pipe thumped across his back and he let go of the reins as he hit the ground again.

  The bar knocked him a second time, this time harder across the kidneys and he rolled. Steel jabbed into his hip and the pliers worked loose as he kicked up, flipping to his feet as he caught the skinny man in the chin. Skinny’s jaw cracked and he fell screaming to the ground, but two large boots thumped down beside his writhing body as the van driver jumped down to take his place.

  ‘Yer want to play, do yer greenie?’ the driver said, rolling his r’s.

  He was as big across the shoulders as he was tall and his hooked nose made him look like a retired boxer, but his eyes were still groggy from sleeping through his break.

  His fists curled up preparing to strike and Locklin winked at him and ducked. He rolled under the truck to the other side, trying not to groan from the fresh bruises in his back, while the driver squatted, following him with his eyes because his body wasn’t small enough to fit.

  Locklin squirmed out on the other side, and faked a few steps of running towards the back of the truck, where his horse was waiting. Then he heard the driver skid into a run and he jumped backwards instead onto the running board. There was a thump as the pliers hit the ground behind him, but he didn’t have time to go back for them.

  He wrenched open the driver’s door and scrambled in, pulling it shut behind him. His fingers searched for the ignition key and he shifted into
second, knocking off the handbrake. Then he twisted the key and the engine jolted to life.

  The driver appeared in the rear-vision mirror, rounding the back of the truck with his arms ready to tackle empty air. He shouted to his mates and one of them pointed at the cab.

  Locklin pushed the accelerator to the floor and shifted up a gear. The engine was sluggish, but the passenger door swung shut as he shifted up another gear and he checked the mirror again, seeing two more meatworkers join the chase.

  The van driver was gaining fast now that he was awake and Locklin punched the door lock down. It clicked loudly, but the window was open and the handle jammed as he tried to wind it up. There was a turning circle for trucks to his right below the slaughterhouse and he swerved hard for it, hoping to lure as many of his pursuers as possible in the wrong direction before doubling back to his horse.

  A giant hand landed on the door latch. A fist punched through the open window and caught Locklin in the shoulder. Pain spread faster than blood from the wound near his collarbone and his vision went white.

  He clutched his arm as the door wrenched open. He kicked sideways, not well because the steering wheel was in his way, but the pattern on the sole of his boot transposed to the man’s nose and he grunted like a pig as blood spat onto the seat.

  ‘Sorry pal,’ Locklin said, encouraging him to fall backwards. ‘Time to bail.’

  But the man didn’t fall and a second punch to Locklin’s arm knocked him from the wheel. He slumped sideways across the seat groaning and the van driver grabbed his legs. A punch to his stomach curled him towards his attacker and the man grabbed him by the collar.

  ‘Come here, laddie,’ he said, dragging him towards the door. ‘Yer fight like a girl. Now it’s yer time ter bail.’

  Locklin grabbed the wheel and the truck veered for the shed.

  ‘Oh, no yer don’t,’ the man said, punching Locklin’s bleeding knuckles.

  Pain made him let go of the wheel, but reflex saved him as he fell. His feet found the running board and his good arm caught the door, but as the man hauled himself into the cab, Locklin looked up and saw the shed coming at them. He jumped clear and rolled, clutching his shoulder as the van pierced the wall. It gouged a long gash through the sheeting — then the building swallowed it.

  Locklin ran whistling for his horse and Jack cantered to meet him. He slid up onto his animal’s back, still favouring his punished shoulder and heard a series of smaller crashes inside the shed. He looked back and saw sparks light up the guts of the building like it was full of fireworks. Machinery ground to silence and three more horses ran out. Eight men and the van driver stumbled out after them — and then it blew.

  Flames licked the sky and men ran to put them out with anything they could find. The crowd at the gate cheered again and the media cameras turned towards the fire. Locklin ducked close to Jack’s neck and galloped to the hole he’d made earlier in the wire. He folded the mesh panel back on itself without getting off and hooked it open. Then he clicked his tongue for the last of the animals to follow him through and some did. The grey mare was one of them and she followed him down across the gully and up the other side.

  She stayed with him as he jumped a low fence into someone’s backyard while the others baulked, and she followed him further down a cobbled driveway to come out beside a truck that smelled of cows. Something in the cabin barked at her as she pulled up beside the stallion and her ears pricked as he slid off Jack’s back to roll the crate door open. He clicked his tongue again and Jack reared up to jump in. She took a step to follow, stuck her nose in to sniff the floor, and then followed him up.

  ‘Stage one of mission complete,’ he said, surprised that he’d picked up a hitchhiker. ‘Now for the hard part.’

  Eric Maitland rubbed the blood back into his butt after his eight-hour flight from Brisbane to Singapore. It wouldn’t have been so bad flying economy class on a ticket that his stepbrother had arranged for him, except that turbulence had kept him seat-belted onto a backside that was turning blue and purple in the shape of a pair of hoof prints.

  Maitland rubbed a smile into his greying red goatee, pleased that at least he’d gotten the last laugh on the culprit, and the timing couldn’t have been more poetic or convenient. The new slaughteryards had started taking horses at exactly the same time that he needed to get rid of one.

  It should be dead by now, he thought, sniggering. The idea of recycling someone’s pet to feed others appealed to his picture of save the planet, and it kept him smiling all the way through the terminal until he saw the driver and limousine that his stepbrother had arranged to collect him.

  ‘No luggage,’ he told the driver in awkward Malay. He was going back in a few hours and didn’t need any.

  The driver didn’t reply. He just opened the passenger’s door for him, and then drove for about an hour, skirting swamplands to get through rubber plantations on the northern end of the island. Then they turned off one narrow road onto an even narrower track. The track led down to a ramshackle peasant’s farm on a secluded inlet and Maitland swallowed hard when he saw the twin-hulled white yacht moored to a makeshift jetty. The Italian buyers had beaten him to the rendezvous.

  He wasn’t more than five minutes late, but as he lowered the window and heard the familiar buzz of the seaplane that he’d helped to load in Queensland before dawn that morning, he yawned, realising just how long a day it had really been. He looked north to where the narrow inlet bled into the Johore Strait and watched the fifteen-year-old Cessna circle around to land in the narrow channel. Then he got out of the limousine, thankful that his day was nearly over.

  He knew the buyers would take all the merchandise that was hidden inside the plane. They’d elude authorities from Brisbane to Rome by paying for the entire plane and laundering payment almost legitimately through his brother’s company back in Australia. And as he watched the old but still flight-worthy Cessna rattle onto the glassy water like a cheap white coffin with wings, he knew customs wouldn’t click to what they were up to unless they actually saw the kind of plane that their buyers were willing to pay over four million dollars for.

  They’d order another one too. Drug dealers always had an appetite for aircraft that could be adapted to land on almost any kind of surface. And even better, many of them were developing a taste for the kind of merchandise that he and his brother could hide inside their floors.

  He waited until the plane had jolted against the jetty before jogging onto it to attach the mooring ropes, and he was doubly thankful that his brother had made him travel separately to the cargo. Eight hours on a commercial jumbo that could fly at altitude was far better than ten hours in a Cessna that had to fly between 500 and 5000 feet to legally avoid lodging a flight plan. Then he rubbed his rump again, frowning at the thought of another eight-hour flight home as soon as he was finished here.

  At least back home, he thought, he could relax — especially now that he didn’t have to watch his back for a set of hooves.

  Locklin drove with his window down to get rid of the smell.

  ‘Next trip, Tuckerbox, you’re riding in the back,’ he told the old red cattledog that was dozing on the seat beside him. The dog yawned and got down on the floor, curling up under the air vent. There was a plush pink beach towel down there, rolled up carefully and tied with the noseband off a bridle and the dog used it as a pillow, avoiding the buckle as it stretched and let out another toxic cloud of garlic sausage exhaust.

  Locklin coughed as he indicated left to get off the bitumen, and dropped the truck down to second, doubling the clutch to give the horses a better ride.

  The dirt track ahead cut a path through dry grass and squeezed between the trees on its way up a short ridge. It got a little steep about a hundred metres down from the crest and Locklin accelerated quickly to help make it up.

  ‘Lean forward guys,’ he said mostly to himself as the truck slowed, then he dropped down to first to stop the engine from stalling under the weight of the
extra horse.

  The crate rocked and gravel churned beneath the rear dual-wheels as the truck struggled to climb the hump. Then he turned sharp left below the crest into the open gate of an old cemetery and pulled up in a patch of pink freesias that had escaped the bottom row of graves.

  Some of the higher graves were grown over with bougainvillea. Others were covered in broken concrete or coloured gravel and most were marked by simple headstones, standing like ornaments in a garden gone wild.

  Forest around the cemetery hid the truck from the road below, but between the trees Locklin could see out over most of the valley. To his right there was an assortment of hobby farms on the lower fringe of Lowood. He could see the flats with the hollow near the river where his grandmother’s ostrich farm was nestled, and to his left he could see the estate where his mother’s farm had been chopped up into housing blocks long before he was born. He couldn’t see Lake Wivenhoe behind him unless it was full, but he could see the top end of his father’s farm where it rolled over the next ridge to the water’s edge.

  He didn’t like being in the cemetery. He could feel dead eyes watching him, but it was the only secluded place he could think of for him to prepare for the next stage.

  Locklin jumped from the truck and his boots crunched in the short dry grass. He leaned on the rails of the crate and stared at the horses for a long time, thinking. The stallion put his nose down to sniff his fingers and Locklin rubbed his muzzle.

  ‘What am I going to do with you, Jack?’ he said. The chocolate-coloured stallion had four white socks up to his knees and a broad white blaze with a heart-shaped star that made him look distinctive. Locklin knew he had friends who might be willing to put him in their paddocks for a while, but with grass so scarce this time of year and the worst of summer still to come, he couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t need their paddocks for their own mares.