Pig Boy

by J. C. Burke

  The dogs bark and the Pigman sings louder. ‘Ukrevet od ruza …’

  I peer out. The sunrise is burning in the sky like Armageddon is coming. The Pigman is digging, covering the last of the fire’s glimmering coals. Slatko dives and yelps at the shovel. Sara is flat on the ground growling at him like a big brother with a headache.

  Quietly, I sneak into the bushes and pee, hoping Sara won’t notice me.

  ‘I make coffee,’ the Pigman calls. He is stamping on the dirt he’s just laid. ‘Or you want tea? They like tea in morning, don’t they, Slatko, like English.’

  ‘I won’t have anything,’ I answer.

  ‘Today is big day, Demon. We have more driving and tonight we go for pigs. So you must eat and drink.’

  ‘I’ll have a coffee, then.’

  I lean against the bonnet of the ute but there’s no point waiting, the Pigman isn’t going to say it. He seems content to act like it never happened. I’ve got to clear the air or it’ll psych me out and all this time will have been wasted. In some ways me freaking out with the kangaroos is good. It’s forced me back on track. It’s tempting to forget why I’m here when I’m so far away from home. But I can’t forget because they won’t. There’s no turning back. The plan must go ahead. So I spit it out. ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

  The Pigman starts to unpack a box of food.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  He unscrews a jar, sticks his finger in, sucks it then nods. ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I said, did you …?’

  ‘Yes, Demon. I hear. But first we eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Demon, I cook proja. I have kaymak, I have many things …’ The Pigman is using the tray of the ute like a table. He’s opening containers and taking out plates. ‘You will like proja, is my bread, homemade.’ He opens a tea towel. Inside is a mound of saffron-coloured dough. ‘As well I have slatko. Remember I tell you is the jum we give to guest at our house.’

  I wonder if every meal will include a lecture on Serbian culture. ‘You try proja,’ he says, passing me a fistful of bread. ‘You taste.’

  The bread sure needs the slatko. It’s salty and feels like a sponge on my tongue.

  ‘You like, Demon?’ I’m chewing and the Pigman’s eyes are growing rounder as he awaits my verdict. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Probably better with jam.’

  He breaks off another hunk and smears it with an orange-coloured syrup. ‘Bread and jum. Is what you English like. No?’

  ‘I’m Australian,’ I say through a mouthful. ‘Not English.’

  ‘But you Ozzie all come here as convict from England, no?’

  ‘Not all of us. My mum’s family were Dutch …’

  ‘Me, my mother, my father, my grandfathers, my uncles, all family Serbian.’

  ‘Take a bow,’ I mutter.

  ‘Where your father from, Demon?’

  ‘Damon,’ I say. ‘My name is Damon, not Demon – that’s like calling me the devil.’

  ‘Devil boy!’ he splutters. Yellow specks of bread fly between his jagged teeth. ‘Devil boy, where your father from?’

  ‘I don’t remember. My father pissed off when I was a kid.’

  The Pigman closes his mouth. ‘Where he go?’

  ‘Just away.’

  ‘You have brothers, sisters?’

  ‘No. It’s just my mother and me.’

  ‘Your mother is alone now? At home?’

  I ignore the question. He wouldn’t understand. ‘Can I have a cup of coffee, please.’

  The Pigman shakes his head and makes the ‘pfff’ sound as he pours the black sludge into a cup. ‘Is not good she alone. Is not safe for woman.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here, you dickhead,’ I whisper.

  ‘I no understand you Ozzie,’ the Pigman says as he shovels fistfuls of red meat into the dog bowls. It’s the flesh of the kangaroo he shot last night.

  So here’s an opening. I have to jump in, now. I count to three. ‘That’s why I was a bit nervous last night with, with the rifle.’ My words spill out on top of each other. ‘My father used to get off on pointing one at us. He always said he’d come back and finish us off.’

  ‘What you mean “get off”?’

  I tip half the coffee into the dirt. ‘Like he enjoyed it,’ I reply.

  ‘Your father enjoy pointing rifle at you and your mother?’

  ‘He was a sick bastard.’

  The bitumen road turns to dirt. Soon the ute is lost in a cloud of swirling brown dust. Our windows are up but I can taste the thirsty earth in my mouth. It coats the lie that just slipped off my tongue.

  I’m not sure my father even owned a rifle. At least I have no memory of one. The table next to his side of the bed is what I remember. ‘No touching Dad’s tablets’, that was the rule but I would stand there and study the multicoloured piles of tiny pills. There were the pink ones to stop him from falling asleep; the yellow ones to make him fall asleep; dark brown were for his ‘movements’ and the green and white were for back pain.

  ‘Did you nab my sleepers?’ the old man’d shouted at mum. He was just back from four days on the road and he was wild with tiredness. His eyes were swallowed up in his skull and his lips drawn in a straight line. That morning he emptied drawers out onto the floor, wiped shelves clean with a single swipe of his hand and clawed through Mum’s handbag until it was empty and inside out. He’d puffed and roared till white balls of spit stuck in the corners of his mouth like cotton wool.

  Mum found a new packet of sleepers, so it was back to what we knew. Mum and me obediently whispering and tiptoeing around. Every now and then the bedroom door’d open, his bare feet’d stomp down the hallway and the house would echo with the sound of him taking a leak. I’d hold my breath until the bedroom door closed, then wait to hear Mum’s footsteps before I started mine.

  A few days later he was back in the truck. ‘See you soon, little man,’ he’d said. Like always I stood by the fence, watching him disappear down our street while his Bon Jovi songs pumped through the air.

  That was the day I broke the rule. While Mum was in the shower, I took three of Dad’s sleeping tablets out of the packet I’d spied in their cupboard. The three yellow balls stuck onto my sweaty palm and for a second I remember being terrified that they would stick there forever, that this would be my punishment for breaking the rule, for touching Dad’s tablets. I’d fumbled, almost dropped them, as I pressed a tissue onto my palm and wrapped the pills inside it, then hidden the parcel in a pair of socks that I pushed down the very back of my drawer.

  The job was done. If Dad lost his sleepers again it would be okay. There’d be no need for his yelling at us, no need for him to trash the house and make Mum cry. Instead I’d present him with my open hand, three pills sitting there like on a silver platter and I’d say, ‘They were under your bed, Dad.’ But my plan came too late. I didn’t see him ‘soon’. We got a letter or three but we never saw my father again.

  That’s how I learnt the importance of being one step ahead. Planning until every detail has been considered. Those lessons are tough, the unexpected stings. But the pain is necessary because it makes you never forget.

  When the red sand gets too thick I swerve the ute towards the edge of the scrub. Up ahead I watch for tyre marks, looking for someone’s track to follow. Sometimes crisscross markings appear on the ground like a car’s just rolled through. But they haven’t. There’s no one and nothing here.

  We’re surrounded by emptiness, smack bang in the middle of ‘serial killer’ land. Below this red earth are probably shallow graves filled with the ‘missing people’ whose mottled photos appear on our TV. The ‘crime stoppers’ number flashes into my head. Maybe I’ll need to call that number soon.

  My palms drum against the steering wheel and I search for happy thoughts.

  ‘Manager live up here,’ the Pigman tells me.

  ‘What? Someone actually lives out here?’

 
; The Pigman points ahead. I watch his fingers, wondering if they’ll do their dislocation trick. ‘Up here. You will see.’

  Soon we’re approaching a set of gates. A cabin with nothing surrounding it but rocks is perched on a hill as if it rose from the earth just minutes ago.

  ‘So the serial killer has a home,’ I mumble.

  ‘Stop here,’ the Pigman says. He opens the glove box and pulls out a wallet. His thick fingers take a few goes to slide out a card. I see it’s his hunter’s licence. ‘I go to manager,’ he says, slipping it into his pocket. ‘Not long.’

  Slatko’s already jumped out of the back tray. He’s waiting by the Pigman’s door, his thick pink tongue hanging out of his mouth like a slice of Christmas ham.

  ‘Sara?’

  The tray creaks and rattles but Sara doesn’t appear. ‘Okay, Sara. Slatko do work instead. Pfff!’ The Pigman opens the gate and starts the journey up the hill while Slatko trots behind.

  It wasn’t in there last night but it is now, so I take it out of the glove box. The Pigman’s wallet is light. I bounce it in my palm a few times, amazed that what he needs can add up to just this.

  Miroslav Jovic is the name on his driver’s licence. Date of birth 3 April 1971. Crumpled cigarette papers sit among hundred-and fifty-dollar bills. Behind the licence are two faded business cards in upside down letters, like the writing on his hat. There’s also a card that reads Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Barbara Stilton, Lawyer.

  I look under the flap, behind where the cards sit. A creased corner of a photo peeks out. I have to really dig my thumb and index finger in to get a grip. I check ahead; the Pigman and Slatko are almost dots at the top of the hill. So I pull the photo free and hold it to the light.

  The edges of the picture have yellowed, but the middle, which shows a group of guys hanging off a truck, is untarnished. In front is the Pigman. He’s much younger but his jagged teeth grinning from inside a beard make him unmistakable. His arm’s around a fat guy who looks about the same age as me. The guy’s wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt and their cheeks are touching as if their faces are stuck together.

  A grumbling – deep, like you can barely hear it – rumbles behind me. For a second I wonder if it’s someone driving up the track. But when I glance into the side mirror I see Sara’s square head, his ears pricked and his dark lips like rubber tyres as he snarls at me.

  ‘So what’re you going to do about it, Sara?’ I say, one hand winding up the window, the other tilting the photo at different angles. ‘I’m just looking.’

  Some of the guys standing behind the happy couple are wearing copies of the Pigman’s black hat. All of them are scruffy looking. No one’s been in a hurry to find running water or a razor.

  There’s a man sitting on the roof of the truck’s cabin. Beyond that the image blurs but it looks like there might be people in the back of the truck too. I hold the snapshot up close then gradually move it towards the light. It’s only then that I notice some of them have something slung over their shoulder.

  I’m trying to really study the photo but my hands have begun to shake so much that I have to lie it flat along the dashboard and lean over it. The Pigman has one too. His sits more towards the front of his body.

  ‘Holy fuck.’

  I sit back into the seat. I can feel my lungs pushing into the vinyl, each breath nearly lifting me into space. ‘Holy – fuck.’

  Carefully my fingers lift the picture off the dashboard. How did I miss it?

  I stare at the image till my eyes water, but I understand why. It’s the way the Pigman’s hugging the fat guy, it’s because of the way they’re smiling into the lens; it’s their togetherness, something about the energy between them that overtakes the whole scene as though nothing else in the photo matters.

  That’s how I missed it. I wasn’t really looking at the picture because I was too busy looking at them. Looking at them while it felt like all the air inside your chest is being sucked out until it’s just an empty space of nothingness.

  But the fact is that in this photograph the Pigman, plus one, two, three, maybe four men have an AK-47 slung over their body as though it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  The open wallet still sits on the seat. I have to put the picture back because the Pigman and Slatko are making their way down the hill. It’s like my fingers are a new, un familiar growth on my body as they fumble and slip trying to manoeuvre it back into its place.

  Now Slatko runs towards the ute like he’s pined for Sara in the twenty minutes he’s been away. But the Pigman takes his time and I begin to count – one, two, three, four, five … but what am I going to count to and when I reach that number, what am I going to do?

  ‘I drive now,’ the Pigman says, opening the door. ‘Many hill. Can be dangerous.’

  I slide across to the passenger’s side. The Pigman hands me his hunter’s licence. ‘Put back, please.’ I keep my head down as I slide the plastic card into his wallet.

  ‘Greg, he manager, he good man,’ the Pigman says, starting up the ute. ‘He say he think there one family of pig …’ I could go through his wallet now like a regular busybody. I could just pull out the photo and start asking questions like I’d never seen it before. ‘Maybe more then fifty. Twenty plus boar …’ But I have to plan. I have to prepare the questions. ‘… lamb killed in one month.’ You can’t just go in without a plan. ‘We will be busy, Demon, and so will Slatko and Sara.’ There’s silence. Is he waiting for an answer? ‘We make camp maybe one hour. We have lunch, big feed for dogs, take rest and then we talk about hunting.’

  If I speak I’m not sure what will come out. So I nod.

  ‘Yes, Demon. It will be busy.’

  I turn to look at him. My face feels tight, like it’s being sucked inside my skull. But the Pigman’s face is soft. All his wrinkles have drained away and for a second I see his younger face, like in the photo. ‘You look so worry, Demon.’ He smiles and squeezes my shoulder. I slump into the door. ‘It will be okay. You no think about your father.’ I close my eyes but I know he’s looking at me.

  ‘You sleep, boy,’ the Pigman says. ‘We be up all night finding bastard pig. You need strength.’

  Strength? The Pigman has no idea how much strength I need. Instantly I feel the salt scratch at my eyelids, but why? Is it because of the old girl, at home alone; unsuspecting, ready to open the door at the first knock? Is it because of fatuous Pascoe, who deems it his role to protect everyone except me? Is it because of that dirty thing sitting in my wardrobe, waiting for me, just like the Marshall brothers are waiting for me? Or is it something more dangerous: because I just felt the kindness of another man.

  My fingertips curl into my palms and I squeeze my fists until the urge to cry dissolves through my body. Then I curl further into the seat and count until I stop hurting.

  ‘ARE WE GOING TO STAY here the whole time?’ I ask as I hand the Pigman the final peg.

  ‘I think here good place. Good camp,’ the Pigman says.

  ‘Why don’t you sleep in a tent?’

  ‘I think it better you have tent.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It still cold at night and I sleeping outside many, many years.’

  The opportunity is there for the taking. ‘During the war?’ I say.

  The Pigman starts a vaguely familiar tune. His broken English softly squawks while the hammer bangs the peg into the ground.

  ‘You did fight in the war, didn’t you?’

  The Pigman stands back viewing his work. ‘Everyone fight in war. That what war is.’

  ‘Were you in the army?’

  ‘There were many army.’

  ‘So – what army were you in?’

  ‘I fight for Serbia. That is my army.’

  ‘But I thought you were from Bosnia?’

  ‘I am Bosnian Serb.’

  ‘I don’t really understand.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Demon. It was long, long time ago.’
<
br />   I follow the Pigman to the ute. ‘But I want to understand,’ I say. The Pigman’s favourite topic is his homeland. If I help him unload the camping gear I can probably get him talking, trick him into telling all. I just have to choose my words carefully. ‘You had bombs and tanks and guns and all those weapons, didn’t you? Serbia’s really powerful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Get firewood, Demon. There one big piece back near track. Is good for burning all night.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  The Pigman slides the esky towards me. ‘Put over there.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Serbia have all the latest weapons? Weren’t they, like, the strong ones?’

  The Pigman hands me the shovel.

  ‘Weren’t they?’

  Then a box of food.

  ‘Don’t you like talking about the war?’ The Pigman is lifting my swag over his head. ‘Miro?’

  He stops mid-air. I have him.

  ‘You ask me one question, Demon. I answer.’

  I cover my smile as I reach out my arms to take the swag. People are so gullible. All it took was his name.

  ‘Did you use an AK-47 in the war?’

  The Pigman’s jagged teeth pierce through his lips in a grin. ‘Kalashnikov! Everyone use AK-47. It never break. Except AK-47 made in Romania.’

  ‘Are they simple? To use, I mean.’

  The Pigman spits out a laugh. He shakes his head and turns back into the mound of camping gear. ‘Ahhh, Demon,’ he snorts. ‘I think it better you start with simple rifle. In my country we have saying: “Niko se nije nauchen rodio”.’

  ‘For the non-Serbian native what does “nickoh seh niye …” whatever, mean?’

  ‘It mean, Demon, “No one was born fully learned”.’

  ‘What sort of a stupid saying is that,’ I groan.

  This is not the conversation I wanted, so I walk off to get the firewood.

  I return dragging a mammoth piece of tree behind me. The Pigman’s fussing around with ropes and dog collars, all the time chatting and chuckling to Sara and Slatko. The only word I can make out is ‘Kalashnikov’. Evidently he’s still tickled by my question.