Pig Boy

by J. C. Burke

  As though we are about to dance, the Pigman takes my waist and carefully folds me to the ground. My head rests against his shoulder and he holds me firm.

  MIRO’S NEW BREW OF PLUM rakija calms the endings of each nerve. It’s almost as if I hear my body sigh, relieved that the weight I’ve been forcing it to lug around has finally lifted.

  I have told it all to Miro. Every last detail and the lightness I feel is incredible.

  Sara’s head rests on my lap. My fingers rub the smooth, silky fur of his ear and I realise it’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt such peace inside myself.

  ‘Bit more,’ Miro whispers as he tops up my glass of brandy. ‘Sarajlije, he look like he drink my rakija too.’

  ‘What do you think I should do with the AK-47?’ I ask Miro again. ‘I don’t know about handing it in to the police. I should’ve done that straight away but I thought I’d need it. I thought they’d come looking for me.’

  ‘Why, boy? I still no understand why you think they come looking for you?’

  ‘Because, because they probably know I, I saw the whole thing.’

  ‘But they no see you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Miro,’ I cry. ‘They know. You even said yourself the Marshalls know everything about this town. No one gets away with anything.’

  ‘They no see you, boy. They shoot you if they do! Now stop!’

  I take another long sip of brandy then savour the thick haze that swims around my brain.

  ‘We need to talk about real thing. Not, not crazy devil whispers in your head.’

  I nod.

  ‘AK-47 locked in your wardrobe, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you not open bag, Demon?’

  ‘No. No, of course I haven’t. I’m too scared.’

  ‘Do you think your mother find key to lock you make on wardrobe? Because this is what I most worried for, Demon. Maybe she do some cleaning.’

  I tug at my pocket and produce two small padlock keys. ‘They’re on me all the time,’ I answer. ‘The only way she could get in there is with a pair of bolt cutters and I don’t know where she’d get them from.’

  ‘I think when safer you bring Kalashnikov to my house. Is best idea. Then we decide what to do. No rush. But no open bag and touch. You understand?’

  ‘And you don’t think the Marshall boys know that it’s me who has it?’

  ‘No!’ Miro shouts and Sara’s head lifts from my lap. ‘I tell you this again and again, boy! They too stupid. Why they kill man so close to town and leave bag with AK-47 and dead body I not know. Stupid. Stupeed! They think they big tough gangster but they not. They bullies. They piss.’

  ‘But why did they throw the bag into the bush and just leave? They must’ve thought they heard something.’

  ‘Demon, they stupeed, idiots, that why.’

  ‘Curtis Marshall knows I’ve got the gun. I, I saw him at the petrol station and he waited till his mates were out of earshot then he told me he was watching me,’ I say. ‘Why didn’t I just leave it there? I should’ve left it alone.’

  ‘Yes. It would have been better.’

  For almost an hour I lay on the ground too scared to move, hearing the man’s shallow breaths disappear. I covered myself with leaves because I was shaking so much. They were damp and stuck to the vomit on my hair and school clothes. But I stayed there and counted until I forgot what number I was up to, so I’d start again and again and again. It was the only thing that could stop me from screaming and howling because just metres away he lay sprawled on the dirt, which was slowly turning to crimson.

  ‘Now, Demon, I tell you this one more time. They no see you.’ Miro says it with such certainty and I really want to believe him. ‘They no see you, Demon. They not going to do anything to you. It all devil whispers in your ear.’

  My face is buried in my hands. Devil whispers. I want to believe him but Miro wasn’t there that summer afternoon. He didn’t see the way Steven Marshall hurled Princess Anne across the river. He didn’t hear the ‘splat’ as her tiny body hit the tree, hear their laughs and whoops at what a good ball their brother had just bowled.

  Miro’s still speaking. ‘Marshalls not coming to get you or your mother. You listen to me, boy. You no need Kalashnikov to protect your family. Anyway, you not know how to shoot Kalashnikov!’

  ‘That’s why I bought the rifle.’

  ‘Ahhhhh, now it make sense,’ Miro sighs. ‘But you give Kalashnikov to me to take care. We will do this and when good time we go to police.’

  ‘The problem is getting the bag out of the wardrobe without my mother seeing it and asking me a hundred questions,’ I say. ‘My mother has no life, she’s always at home and she watches me and she …’

  ‘You no speak about your mother like this!’ Miro scolds. ‘I no want to hear this things. We wait for moving bag. No hurries. We be patient.’

  ‘Patient! I’m so bloody sick of being patient.’

  I yawn and stretch my limbs, careful not to disturb Sara, who has settled back on my lap and now is snoring. It feels strange it being daytime. It doesn’t suit our mood. We need a night sky, velvet black and sprinkled with stars. That and a spitting orange fire should accompany us and our rakija. Not this brilliant blue sky and a dented old gas bottle.

  ‘Is good to learn patience. We wait, Demon. There will be right time to tell police. And boom.’ He clicks his fingers and I feel my heart beat. ‘They will get big bullies. It will be over. Trust me. Patience good thing.’

  ‘If I could get his face out of my brain,’ I moan. ‘That’s what I can’t handle any more, seeing his face. It doesn’t matter if my eyes are open or closed. Awake or asleep. I still see him. His, his face. It takes up every space in my head. Especially his eyes, just that second before, before he knew he was going to die. He knew. He knew. I could tell.’

  ‘Maybe his face never go from your head.’

  The image of Princess Anne, her broken head flopped in my hand, her eyes peering up at me, is a picture that is hard to budge. I know Miro is right but I wish he wouldn’t say it.

  ‘Maybe you remember forever, Demon. You ask me, you think dead forgotten. You say this to me once. But they no forgotten because dead like to follow. They stay close.’ He whispers, ‘I know this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Miro gets down on the ground next to me. He holds out his glass and asks me to pour him some more rakija. For a second he stares at the cup then tilts his head back and pours it down his throat. One swallow and it’s gone. Again he holds the glass out and I fill it up.

  At last Miro is about to tell me a truth. But now I’m afraid. I’m not sure I want to hear it.

  ‘War is very bad, Demon,’ he begins. ‘You know this?’

  I nod.

  ‘Many, many people die. But it war and this what happen.’

  I hear the saliva catch in my throat.

  ‘Since this war I am afraid of storm. Afraid of wind. This is why I like to find good place for camping,’ Miro explains. ‘When big wind, I hear them.’

  ‘Who?’ I mutter. ‘Who do you hear?’

  ‘All people I kill.’ He breathes in each word like he is trying to swallow his whispers. ‘I hear them, up there in trees.’ Miro’s arms begin to wave about. ‘Up, up high. They never go away. I know this truth. I do.’

  ‘What do they – sound like?’

  ‘Sometime screaming. Sometime whispering. Sometime they shout.’ He leans over, taking the brandy, this time drinking it straight from the bottle. ‘You say to me, “Miro you talk in sleep. You say ohprohstee mee …”’

  ‘Yeah!’ I answer. ‘So you do know what I meant.’

  ‘I know these word. I no tell you truth. I say these word in day, all time, when sun shining and when sun going down. I say them to myself.’ Miro’s hands still hold the rakija. He swirls the bottle around then holds it up to the sun to watch for bubbles that will tell him his new brew is good. ‘But I not,’ he begins to say, ‘but I not know I sa
y these word in my sleep. See, it never leave you.’

  I am almost too terrified to ask but I know he waits for the question.

  ‘What does it mean, ohprohstee mee?’

  ‘Oprosti mi,’ he repeats. ‘Forgive me,’ Miro answers. ‘It mean, forgive me.’

  I nod. That’s all. There are so many things I could say to him, so many questions I could finally ask – but for now I think silence is best. We have unzipped our wounds and let our secrets out to play. For now silence is best.

  THROUGH THE REST OF THE day and into the night we hardly exchange a word. Yet this silence between Miro and me is different. It’s not the cold, loud, ear-piercing ‘no talkies’ that I know so well. It’s not like that enormous space between two people, that sucking vacuum that sounds like an echo of nothingness.

  There’s no space between this silence; instead it feels warm, as if we’re standing close together. It’s comforting. It speaks. It says, ‘It’s okay.’ There’s been plenty of rakija consumed, but it’s this silence that I’m drunk on, not Miro’s brandy.

  We drive off in the ute, heading for a waterhole fifteen kilometres away. Miro tells me that at this place the pigs outnumber the roos, although I find it difficult to believe this.

  I wind down the window and peer up at the night sky, which is as perfect as the day was. The moon is full. It’s a golden ball, perfectly round, floating in an ocean of black. There’ll be no storm tonight.

  ‘You want shoot pig, Demon?’ he asks. ‘Or you want me to use rifle?’

  ‘Miro, you might as well keep my rifle,’ I reply.

  ‘No! No, it your rifle, Demon. But maybe some days I will use it, yes?’

  ‘I’ll work with the dogs,’ I offer. ‘I’m better at that.’

  My next question frightens me. Not so much the question but the answer. ‘Miro?’

  ‘Yes, Demon.’

  ‘Can I still come on these trips with you?’ I ask. ‘I know we’ve established that I’m hopeless with a gun and don’t really have the guts to shoot anything but –’

  ‘Demon!’ he interrupts and I notice his fingers tighten around the steering wheel. ‘It not guts that stop you from doing killing. It your heart,’ he tells me, now pressing one hand against his chest. ‘You no have heart to kill. I know this. I know someone like you once.’ Now his hand squeezes my shoulder and he says, ‘I would very much, very much like you keep being with me.’

  The dirt road disappears and Miro turns the ute into a trampled path, a makeshift road that seems to weave its way through the scrub.

  ‘Sheeet!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tyre in dirt. You see?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Someone being here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I think Glen.’

  ‘Glen the butcher?’

  ‘I stupid!’ Miro barks, giving the steering wheel a good thump. ‘I tell Glen about pig and now he come here and take all.’

  ‘Glen doesn’t sell the wild pig meat at the butcher, does he?’

  ‘He sell to Terry. That what chiller doing at his place three days ago. He have pig. I know this now.’ Miro slaps the wheel again. ‘But I no want to sell meat! I just want to teach you to make salami with me.’

  ‘Is that illegal, what you do with Glen? Selling the meat to Terry? Is that why he brings the chiller truck down in the middle of the night?’

  ‘How I make money?’ He’s beginning to shout. ‘How do I eat? You tell me? How I make new life here in Australia?’

  ‘Hey, settle, mate! I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I was just asking.’

  I decide it’s better not to mention Moe’s ‘criminal’ theory. Miro’s thoughts need to be kept on the trail ahead. The gears of the ute clunk and groan as he reverses out of a ditch he’s landed us in.

  I am sitting forward. My eyes are glued to the ground, following the headlights. ‘Boulder on the left,’ I call.

  Miro slams the gear into second and swerves towards the trees to cut a wide corner. The branches smack into the cabin roof then snap away. It sounds like stones hailing from the sky.

  ‘Whoooaaaa,’ I shout and my hands grab onto the dashboard.

  I remember the night we were flying towards the kangaroos. Miro’s foot down, steering the ute between the trees like a blind kamikaze pilot. But what I really remember is the thought that flashed through my brain – that it was preferable to die there than back in Strathven at the hands of a Marshall brother.

  Steven and Billy Marshall didn’t see me down by the old schoolhouse. Miro is right. It is just devil whispers in my head. If the Marshalls had spotted me the next bullet would’ve been through my head. That is a truth.

  Steven and Billy Marshall don’t know that the black gym bag containing one AK-47 sits down the very back of the wardrobe in my bedroom. A wardrobe that is padlocked on the outside and on the inside has five coathangers spaced exactly fifty-two centimetres apart.

  Miro’s theory of pigs outnumbering kangaroos is a complete dud. His suspicion that Glen has hunted the land dry is right on the money. For the third night we sit up on the same ridge that gives us a perfect view of the waterhole below.

  Miro sits here like he did last night and the one before that too: turning my rifle over in his hands, peering through the chamber, playing with the rifle scope and then taking it apart and starting all over again. He’s like a kid who’s been given his first ever birthday present. He can’t get enough of it.

  ‘You get very good bargain, Demon,’ he whispers. ‘Veeery, very good bargain.’

  ‘So you’ve said a million times,’ I mutter under my breath.

  It’s boring waiting up here, eyes peeled on the waterhole watching for a hog to waddle through the scrub in search of a drink and a wallow. Miro won’t let us talk. The occasional whisper is acceptable but anything more has him slicing his hand across his neck and pursing his lips in the ‘shhh’ position. It’s really starting to give me the big-time shits. Doesn’t he realise that he’s the one making all the noise, taking my rifle apart then clicking it back into place?

  But, as he has also said a million times, we must sit up here, patiently waiting like ‘snipers’ – all in the name of tender meat to make salami with. The more the pig is frightened and makes flight, the tougher its flesh will be. But that’s not the problem for me. My problem is that I can’t stomach the idea of making salami at all, let alone with stinking pig meat. It’s not the type of sandwich I ever plan to hoe into.

  Miro doesn’t see it that way. He’s cracking a fat over the salami we’re going to make. How the mustard seeds and cayenne pepper are the secret ingredients and how he and some other bloke once made it in the war, then traded it for American cigarettes. Wonder who got the better deal there!

  Sara turns his head, his ears pricking tall like antennae. Slatko jumps up on all fours until Miro shakes his hand and his haunches fold back to the ground. Miro snaps his dislocated joints back into position and picks up the rifle. Now I can smell him too. The thick stench of a boar heats the hair in my nostrils.

  We watch as down below the branches part like a curtain opening on a stage and out lumbers a good-sized boar on his way to the waterhole. Miro lies on his stomach, his shoulders positioned at the edge of the ridge, his elbows supporting the rifle that’s aimed and ready. ‘Perfect size,’ he whispers. ‘We want big but not so big. Good for salami.’

  It’s as if the pig hears us because immediately he stops. His stance suddenly stiffens like he’s sensed the danger. But he’s too slow, for I hear what sounds like the click of a tongue and Miro squeezes the trigger.

  It’s as if the bullet doesn’t touch him. The boar spins around and bolts into the scrub.

  ‘Did you hit him?’ I ask.

  Miro doesn’t answer. He’s up on his feet, shouting and running towards the ute. Slatko and Sara are already charging down the ridge chasing the sound of branches snapping with the flight of an animal.

  My arse hasn’t eve
n hit the seat and Miro is driving off. Our shoulders slam together as the ute traverses and skids down the escarpment.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Across Miro’s eyebrow is a gash, the shape of a half-moon. ‘What’d you do?’

  ‘Me? I do nothing! Your rifle scope make this,’ Miro answers. ‘Your, your rifle scope not tight. Good pig for making salami. Now it gone.’

  ‘But you hit him.’

  ‘I miss!’ He shouts. ‘No more pig. No more salami.’

  ‘Will Sara be okay bailing up the hog? His leg’s still pretty bad.’

  ‘Sara has to finish job because your rifle no good.’

  Miro is one pissed-off hunter. I’m tempted to point out that perhaps the scope was loose because he’d pulled the rifle apart one too many times. But I refrain because I’m quietly relieved there’ll be no salami and more than that I’m worried about the stitches coming apart on Sara’s leg.

  At last we are back on the trail, driving along the edge of the bush. My eyes scan the openings between the trees where it seems the barks are coming from.

  ‘There!’ I call. I’m out and jogging towards them. The dogs are circling a boar who lies like a lump in the grass, pink froth bubbling from its mouth.

  I shout to Miro but he just sits in the ute like a slab of stone. ‘Miro!’ I shout again but he still doesn’t move. Now foam bubbles out of the hog’s snout like a shaken bottle of beer.

  ‘Miro! Get out here,’ I yell, striding back to the ute. ‘You hit him, all right, but he’s not dead. He’s suffering. For fuck’s sake put him out of his misery. That’s why we came down here, isn’t it? You know – don’t let the animal suffer, clean humane kill, all that hunter crap!’ I am standing there for what feels like forever. ‘Isn’t it?’ I shout again.

  Finally Miro turns to me. His gaze is out the window towards where the dying pig lies. ‘You do it,’ he murmurs. ‘I am tired, Demon.’