by Tanya Moir
They’d all followed him out – Winstone, Bodun, Marlene – and Bic turned to them and said, That’s what happens to cunts that don’t do as they’re told, and then he walked away. There were bits of dog everywhere and Bodun had this look on his face like it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen and when Winstone looked across at Marlene there was a stream of pee running down her leg and into her pink gumboot.
Then the bus came and Marlene stank so badly no one would sit beside her and coming home it was even worse and when they got back almost all of Ginger was gone and a week later they moved to Clintoch because there was no more work for Bic at the McCutcheons’.
Winstone didn’t want a dog any more after that.
Now, in the entrance to the cave, the new dog wasn’t going anywhere. Winstone’s hoodie was though. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it stir, very gently, and creep left.
It’s okay, he said. Good dog.
The dog cocked its head.
Behind it there was more barking and mooing. The shouts got angrier. The dog stopped panting and listened hard. It stared at Winstone for a second more and then it pulled out and vanished. Winstone heard its racing breath as it crashed through the long grass and up the slope and then it was barking fit to split the sky.
Slowly, Winstone drew up his knees. He felt as if he was running himself but he kept very still and took some breaths and waited until his spine went loose and all the noise outside was clearer than the blood whooshing in his head. He could smell the cattle, hear them passing all around, sniffing, snuffling grass and air, the swish of their feet, the copious splitter-splat of their shit as it hit the ground.
He waited what felt like a very long time. When there was no more shouting or barking and hadn’t been for a while, he reached out and picked up the stick he kept for stirring noodles and poking things with and very carefully he lifted up a corner of his hoodie.
He barely saw what ran out. A flash of grey approaching light speed. It ricocheted off the side of the tarp and shot out of the cave like exactly what it was, a little scaredy cat with the fear of God on its pink skin and no idea where it was going.
EAST
John Wayne played a little baby guitar and sang. On his horse. He didn’t mean to be funny. It’s what people had to do before there were iPods.
His early films didn’t make a lot of sense. The black and white pictures were fuzzy and jumped about and everyone seemed to be talking through a sock so you could barely make out what they were saying. The sound effects were wrong too. Someone had to say if there was a storm outside because what you could hear just sounded like somebody waving a bendy bit of cardboard and John Wayne’s face was brilliant white and he looked like a vampire.
He wasn’t though. He always did the right thing. Protected the weak. The women and kids and old men. After a while, as soon as John Wayne rode into shot with his big white face and his big white hat, Winstone would start to feel warm and loose and he’d try to keep his eyes open but he never could, all those muffled voices and clip-clopping coconut hooves were a lullaby, and it didn’t matter if he drifted off because he already knew how the film would end, that no one you cared about was going to get hurt and everything would be okay.
Zane’s couch looked like it was made of scuffed brown leather, but close up it was furry and soft and smelled of hardly anything, just shampoo and soap and the good kind of smoke from the log-burner in the corner. Two years later the Jacksons’ couch would be just as comfortable, but Winstone never went to sleep on that. He’d grown up by then, and he couldn’t relax just like that, not knowing what things cost.
Hey, Zane said, when Winstone woke up just in time to see The End roll up. You want another toastie?
Winstone always did.
Can we watch another one?
It’s getting late. Your dad know you’re here?
No.
It made Winstone’s skin itch, people calling Bic that, but he didn’t tell Zane. It was one of those things that only got worse if you tried to say.
Will he be worried?
Winstone didn’t think so.
When he climbed in through his bedroom window that evening he found Marlene already asleep in his bed halfway down under the covers. He pulled her up and she burrowed into him like a baby mussel into a rock, all pointy and hairy and smelly and damp, and when he woke up in the morning they were both soaking wet. There wasn’t time to clean anything up and no choice but to get dressed and get on the bus and pretend not to hear when people said Hasketts! like it was something you needed to duck, or most probably get a shot for, and Winstone sat in the stink of himself, alone, just one row behind Marlene even though he was three years ahead, and watched the paddocks and fences go by.
That was the day Zane first offered him a shower. Winstone had used the toilet at Zane’s house before, but that was in a narrow room of its own so gleaming and neat and fresh it seemed a shame to use it to piss in. He’d never been in the real bathroom. It was like something on TV.
There were big brown tiles that looked stony and cold but they weren’t, he could feel them through the holes in his socks, warm as toast, and they went on and on up the walls and the bath, and there were a lot of shiny steel things and a mirror with lights and a white square sink with no legs hanging on the wall. Zane flicked a switch and a heater blew down the back of Winstone’s neck and suddenly he was almost too hot with all his clothes on.
It took a lot of steps to get to the bathtub and he looked inside it and was confused when Zane said, Hey how about that shower mate, because all he could see were two taps and a spout and then he heard the water start up and he turned and there was a shower all by itself and he hadn’t seen it because it was made of glass like a telephone booth or a bus-stop.
Give me your clothes. We’ll give them a wash.
Winstone took off his trackies and hoodie and T-shirt and socks, and he pushed his underpants in between with his toe so Zane wouldn’t have to touch them.
Good man. Zane held the glass door out and Winstone got into the shower. I’ll bring you a towel.
The water was coming out so heavy and fast Winstone thought he might drown but only a little bit went up his nose and after that it felt good, running down, and he looked but he couldn’t see any soap, so he just stood there watching the water run down the drain and after quite a lot of it had, he got out and dried himself and wrapped himself up in the big white towel like a cloak and went across the hall to the lounge and sat beside Zane on the brown sofa.
Zane looked at him a bit funny. Then he sniffed, and smiled, and said, I think you missed a spot mate. Come on. And he put his hands on Winstone’s shoulders and joke-marched him back across the hall and took away his towel and turned the shower back on.
Did you use this?
Winstone looked at the bottle and shook his head and Zane showed him how to squeeze the shower gel – just a little bit – onto the sponge and lather it up on himself and through his hair and all the extra bits he needed to wash, armpits and earholes, between his toes and his legs and under his balls and even the end of his dick and the water came down all over him and didn’t run out and no bits of him stuck out and got cold and nothing floated back up the plughole and nobody shouted or banged on the door and it was quite a revelation.
Okay, said Zane, that’ll do, and he had a fresh towel waiting huge and heavy and thick and warm and he helped Winstone lift it up to dry his hair. Better?
Yes. Winstone felt pink and peeled and new and under the towel his skin smelled good like Zane’s.
Here’s a dry one.
Winstone wrapped the new towel round his shoulders and held it up so it didn’t drag on the floor and he followed Zane out and into the lounge and curled up in the cushions on the sofa. Zane made hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows in and put on The Man From Utah and when Winstone woke up there was a blanket over him and it was dark outside.
His clothes were folded up on the chair by the fire. Winstone went over a
nd put them on and they hardly felt like his clothes at all – they were still Haskett-coloured, but soft and dry and warm and a little tight and they smelled like Zane’s towels.
You want a lift home?
No.
Just some of the way. To the end of the road. You say when.
Okay.
Put your seatbelt on, Zane said when they got in the car, and he drove down Winstone’s road until the houses and street lights and tarseal ran out, and then Winstone said stop and Zane did. He turned the headlights off and Winstone undid his seatbelt and climbed out into the dark and shut the door and started walking.
He was pretty sure that John Wayne couldn’t ride in the dark – not here, anyway, without that big old American moon that made everything blue and bright as day – so he was a commando on a night raid creeping down the verge, and it felt good to know that his unit was back there in the Humvee ready to call in a strike if he got into trouble. But even without any back-up at all, Winstone wouldn’t have been afraid.
He liked being out in the night alone, under the cover of darkness. He always had. Even when he was a little kid, right back when his mum lived at home, when the shouting and banging and breaking got loud, he’d take the blanket off his bed and climb out the window with it and walk through the paddock to the old rusty car with no wheels or windows or doors and the grass growing up and he’d drive it until he got sleepy again and then he’d roll himself up on the back seat. If the moon was out, he could count the sheep. It was very peaceful.
It was only six hundred metres or so from Zane’s car to the gate, and although there wasn’t a moon that night Winstone had his night-vision goggles on and even when a possum hissed at him from the top of a power pole he kept a cool head and held his fire and made the distance. He cut across country, slipping through two fences to come at his house from the side, and he squatted under the bedroom window, listening, and then he climbed up on the sill and slid up the sash. This was the trickiest part, because the window was heavy and had to be propped and it was hard to do without making a noise, but it was okay this time, because he could see through the glass that Bodun’s bed was empty too.
When Winstone slid into his own and found it worse than cold and the smell came up, he remembered about the sheets. But it was too late to do something about them by then, not without being seen, so he just rolled over and tried to stay right on the edge of the bed away from the damp patch.
He must have slept pretty well, because the next thing he knew Bic was yelling at him to get his hand out of his pants and his covers were gone and Bodun was there pulling up his school shorts and the bedroom lights were on. Winstone rolled over and rubbed his eyes where they hurt from the light.
Oh for fuck’s sake, Bic said. How long’s it been like that? Clean up your mess you filthy little bugger.
He smacked Winstone over the back of the head so his teeth snapped together, but not that hard, and Bodun looked over and smirked and Bic said, Yeah? Like you never pissed yourself, and he smacked Bodun around the ear and it looked harder. Winstone’s stomach flipped, but Bic just sniffed and said Jesus Christ and walked out and all Bodun did was call Winstone a cunt and give him a Chinese burn. That was the upside to smelling bad – people weren’t so keen to touch you.
That afternoon after school Winstone didn’t walk over to Zane’s, he just got the bus home with Marlene so he could deal with his sheets before Bic got back from work. He got the sheets off the bed and into the washing machine, and actually it wasn’t as hard as he’d thought, once he’d found the powder that people used on TV and a bucket to stand on so he could see what it said to do on the buttons. Then he took the bucket and what was left of the yellow soap and he found a cloth underneath the dirty plates in the kitchen sink and started on the mattress. Marlene came in and sat in a pile of Bodun’s clothes on the floor and after she’d watched for a while she went away and found a cloth of her own and helped him.
Next Winstone washed Marlene. He tried to make the shower nice like at Zane’s but with the spiders and mould in the corners and the smell everywhere it wasn’t the same. Hardly any water came up the plastic hose from the taps and what did sputtered hot and cold and the soap wouldn’t lather on Marlene’s skin and he dropped the bar on her foot more than once and she shrieked and shivered and kept sitting down on her bum in the greasy grey bath with the water mounting up to her hips and Winstone wasn’t sure she was getting any cleaner. He was just about to start on her hair when the hose on the hot tap fell off and the hot water burned her feet and cold poured all over her head and as he struggled to turn off the taps there was a terrible thumping at the back of the house like a terrorist raid or Armageddon.
Winstone left Marlene in the bathtub and ran. When he got to the kitchen he could see the washing machine coming for the laundry door like it was going to destroy them all and it was way bigger than him and he didn’t know how to stop it. It had made it halfway across the laundry floor when a terminal-sounding bang came from its insides and it rocked back onto its feet and sat there beeping at him like it wanted something or maybe was going to explode. Winstone sidled around it and before it could do anything else he climbed up into the laundry sink and turned it off at the wall.
Behind the machine was a puddle of water and a trailing hose that looked like it used to belong somewhere and all in all it looked pretty munted. Winstone was still squatting in the sink wondering if running away would help and how far he could get when he heard a car in the drive. Bodun walked in and said, For fuck’s sake, and he shoved the washing machine back up against the wall and hung the hose back over the side of the sink and rearranged the sheets inside the machine and turned it on and it worked just fine and then he walked out and the front door banged and Winstone climbed down and as usual he hadn’t the least idea where Bodun had come from or where he was going.
Wintun?
He turned round and there was Marlene in the kitchen doorway all streaky pink with drips from her hair running down her face and her stinky pants back on.
Is it okay?
It’s okay. Come on.
Winstone helped her get dry and sorted through the clothes on her bedroom floor for some cleaner pants and he thought about Zane’s bathroom and he was pretty sure that Zane wouldn’t mind if Marlene used it too. But the next day after school he didn’t ask, because Zane’s place was one thing that was his and sometimes he got tired of Marlene and all the things she needed.
WEST
The kitten was stuck in the bean tin. It had licked every last bit of rotten crawly juice from inside and now, no matter how much it backed up, its head stayed exactly where it was, deep inside the can.
The cattle circled around it. They’d been watching for a good half-hour when Winstone came along.
He’d been wondering where they’d got to. The cattle slept in the gully out of the worst of the wind, and every morning when Winstone got up he’d find them huddled round with their slobbery noses to the mouth of his cave, waiting for him to come out and roar at them and chase them. They’d scatter and run for the hills and then, when he’d turned his back, they’d drift down and regroup and watch him eat his breakfast. Sometimes after that he’d herd them a bit and fake-rope one or two until they got bored and went up to higher grazing. But this morning they hadn’t been there.
It wasn’t until Winstone went out for a pee that he spotted them away across the slope behind another tor, the one he used for storing his bait and other stinky stuff he hadn’t had time to burn or bury. There was a sharpish breeze blowing up the gully into his face and the cattle were so intent on whatever it was they were gathered around that at first they didn’t even notice Winstone coming. He was only a few metres away when a bullock finally threw up its head and saw him and snorted and rolled its eyes and they all turned on their heels and bucked and kicked and fled.
He was surprised to see his bean tin there at the centre of things, and even more surprised when it began to retreat across the slope o
f its own accord. In a moment more he understood the tin had a stripy tail and four legs and as it backed into a tussock Winstone took off his hoodie and threw it over the kitten and wrapped it up tight so it couldn’t scratch and picked it up and clamped it under his arm. He was scared the kitten’s head might come off so he didn’t pull, he just turned the tin very gently like taking the lid off a jar and after five turns it came free in his hand. For a second the kitten stayed stock still and blinking under his arm and then its mouth split open wide as a snake’s and it started to fight for all it was worth and Winstone dropped the hoodie and let it go. The hoodie heaved and the kitten shot out almost faster than he could see, streaking into the far distance like a small brown missile through the grass.
Winstone, watching a hawk bank and hover above its trail, hoped the kitten knew what it was doing. He picked up his hoodie and sniffed it and put it back on. Then he walked back to the cave and found a sheltered spot outside in the sun and made BBQ chicken noodles.
After breakfast he crossed the gully and scrambled up the east side and scouted the top of the ridge for a while. There was rain coming in from the north. Winstone watched the line of it closing across the valley. But for now there was nothing up there but rabbits and rocks and the wind in the grass between them.
He turned his back on the wind and picked up a speargrass stem and twirled it and walked for a while, keeping just below the crest of the ridge because a lot of cowboys, and Indians too, might have stayed alive if they hadn’t spent so much time silhouetted against the horizon. But above the gully he could see the roofs of the huts and the cattle grazing around the dam and there were no cars and no smoke above the chimneys and he stopped keeping low because what would he be up here, anyway, but one more lump on the sky?
