by Tanya Moir
EAST
You had to know when to stop. It was called a cut and it meant getting rid of the stuff you didn’t want people to see and according to Zane and Evert’s Guide to American Film it was the second most important part of making a movie. Shooting it was first, and his last summer in Clintoch Winstone and Zane did a lot of that, but no matter how fine the weather was they never shot in daylight.
Zane said it should be dark because all the best scenes in cowboy movies were dark and before they started he’d pull the curtains tight and turn on the lamps and he showed Winstone the name for what they were doing there in the movie book. Day for night. They were turning afternoons at Addison Road into Wild West American nights and Zane said if they had more equipment they could turn the sky black and the whole world blue and the sun would become the moon but as it was they could only do the inside of his place.
Outside the summer came and went and people in Addison Road mowed their lawns and the bitumen softened around the chips in the seal and inside Winstone played a number of roles but the one he liked best was director. When it was his turn to direct he got to tell Zane what to do. Zane’s video camera had an LCD screen but Zane said it was better to look through the eyepiece and Winstone agreed because that way he saw the scene he was making and nothing else and the world was a rectangle edged in black and he got to say what went in it. If he didn’t like how the coffee table looked he just had to turn his head or step to the left or zoom in and it was gone like it never existed and even if you fell over it later on you could edit that bit out and no one had to know.
Cut, he could say and turn the camera off and Zane had to stop what he was doing and go back to being himself. Then they’d look at each other and laugh and Winstone got to decide if they went for another take or stopped for a craft service break and it was a shame not all of life was like that.
Generally, Winstone didn’t mind staying in the house all the time because Zane had a new 52-inch plasma TV and things looked better on that than they did outside. Clintoch didn’t have much in the way of a range. Its sierras were low and where not scruffily green and studded with gorse they were piled with logging rubbish. Its paddocks of clumpy grass did not gleam in the sun and neither did its horses. The old limeworks was the closest thing to a canyon they had and a disused mine and a desert as well and there was no river down there behind the HAZARD signs but brown puddles of varying depths sprouting slime and water boatmen.
But still, there were times Winstone thought he’d like to see that big old American moon in the Clintoch sky. Zane said he couldn’t promise him that but one night they could go outside and they did and they filmed Cowboys and Rustlers.
Zane was chief rustler and Winstone had shot him and he was on the ground being dead. Zane hadn’t wanted to ruin the lawn so instead of a campfire they’d lit the portable gas barbecue and they’d put some cheese sizzlers on it to set the mood and the smell and the smoke of the sizzlers drifted over the garden and through the fence and past the closed curtains of neighbours the filming couldn’t disturb because they had hitched up their caravan and gone and Zane was feeding their cat so he knew they wouldn’t be back until Monday.
The sizzlers smelled good, but Zane’s nose didn’t even twitch. Winstone held the camera as steady as he could and moved in for a close-up. He could see the places where the bones of Zane’s skull stretched his skin and they were white in the moon and he could make out no glint of Zane’s eyes in the darkness of their sockets.
Winstone thought about Zane being dead and he was surprised at how little he felt about that. He thought about the dead sheep melting slowly into the ground behind the shelterbelt on Boundary Road and the time he’d seen a maggot fall out of its nose and he couldn’t zoom in because of the dark but he got down on his knees on the lawn beside Zane’s head and he filled the frame with Zane’s face and it felt funny to be looking at Zane like that without Zane looking back and he wondered if that was how Zane felt looking through the lens at him in all the scenes when Winstone was captured and tied up and blindfolded and waiting to be rescued.
He didn’t say cut. But Zane opened his eyes anyway and for a second he looked a bit frightened to find the camera right there at the end of his nose and then he smiled and said put that down for a bit. Winstone turned the camera off and looked at the whole of Zane’s face and Zane had the sort of look Marlene sometimes got when she was coming up out of a dream and Zane raised his outstretched arm from the ground where it had fallen when he got shot and Winstone lay down and curled into Zane’s shoulder. They didn’t say anything or do anything, they just lay and looked at the stars coming out above the shrubs and the smoke and the neighbours’ tin roof and the grass was cool and springy under their backs and they might have gone to sleep right there on the lawn except the sausages were burning.
Hours later, walking the last stretch of Boundary Road with Zane’s car behind him in the last of the dark and the sky already threatening dawn, a scene came into Winstone’s mind for no reason that he could see and in it Zane was the one all tied up and afraid and alone and in need of some cowboy in a white hat to come along and save him.
Back in his own bed he scrunched down and texted safe from the greater darkness underneath the covers. Zane texted smiley face back and Winstone thought of him turning the car around and driving back to Addison Road and walking into his house and how quiet it would be.
Get your hand off your dick, yelled Bic not very long afterwards and it came as a double surprise since it was Saturday.
You too, Bic said and he whipped the covers off Bodun’s bed as well and Winstone bet Bodun was thanking Christ he was there because he hadn’t been when Winstone got home and Winstone could smell the Woodies coming out of his pores. Luckily for Bodun they were coming out of Bic’s too.
Start getting your shit packed up, Bic said. We’re moving.
WEST
ABOVE THE CANYON grey spread over the world and raised the sky and the wind cut it to a shine. Below was dusted with shadow and gritty with cold and there was no warmth in the palomino’s yellow flank and no warmth in the face of the Kid as he leaned there cinching up his saddle.
Take me with you, Mary Ellen said.
You don’t want to go where I’m goin.
Why not?
Aint nothin there but the end.
The end of what?
Most everthin I guess.
I got money, Mary Ellen said. And I can ride. I won’t slow you down. Next town we come to I’ll buy me a horse.
It aint that.
Then why?
You aint got no business comin with me, the Kid said. And I aint got no business lettin you come. It aint right.
Meanin I belong at home with my paw.
I don’t know about that, the Kid said. But you sure as hell don’t belong to me.
I could, Mary Ellen said, couldn’t I?
I got no right to take you.
I’m askin you to.
That’s because you don’t understand what it is you’re askin.
We could go some place else, she said. Another way, together.
You don’t understand.
Cooper told me you’re huntin someone.
The Kid said nothing.
What is it he did?
He took somethin, the Kid said. Somethin he didn’t have any right to.
And when you find him, she said. What do you aim to do then?
Well I guess I’m aimin to make things right.
You think you can do that.
My aim’s pretty good.
Don’t make me go back.
Mary Ellen, he said. I won’t make you go any place. But if you’re willin to ride behind me I’d be pleased to take you back as far as the Granville road.
And if I’m not?
Then I’ll be sorry.
I’m sorry already.
The Kid held his hand down to her. Will you ride with me a step?
She took his hand and he gave her his stirru
p and she swung up and for a mile or two the Kid rode in Mary Ellen’s arms with the warmth of her against his back and her cheek resting on his shoulder.
It was starting to rain. From the rocks behind the cattle fence Winstone watched the Red Hut people pack up Alicia’s car and the clunk of the car doors as they opened and closed hung soft in the rain and he thought about leaving and how it had felt and how it would feel and how it was feeling for Alicia.
Out west the sky was lit up and dappled grey and the rain gave shape to the wind and circled with it like flocks of birds raised out of the grass.
Alicia wasn’t watching the sky. She was already in the back seat of the car buckled in and hunched over something in her lap and Winstone bet it was Angry Birds. She hadn’t gone back to look for the kitten.
Ron who didn’t seem so much like Lorne Greene now that Winstone knew his name came out with another supermarket bag and rearranged the back of the Subaru a bit to find a place to put it. Alicia’s dad walked around and rearranged it some more and then he reached up and closed the hatch and the two men bowed their heads and stood there looking at it Alicia’s dad with one hand on the glass while the rain pocked the dust and the rocks began to darken.
Alicia’s mother hugged the old woman and got in the car and Alicia’s dad took Ron’s hand and they slapped each other’s shoulders. Everybody waved apart from Alicia. Then the Subaru bumped silently over the grass and for a while it was coming straight for the rocks but Winstone couldn’t see Alicia for the front seats and the Subaru turned onto the damped-down dust and he didn’t see her and never saw her again and he couldn’t tell if Alicia had looked back because of all the luggage.
The cattle grid rang and the Subaru eased over the rim of the range and was gone and the grey hung heavy and undisturbed and in front of the Red Hut the old woman and Ron stood in the rain.
When Winstone went back in the evening the old woman and Ron had gone too and the windows and door of the Red Hut were covered up with plywood. He couldn’t see Jacko’s ute anywhere and there hadn’t been shots for a while. Winstone watched the huts until it seemed that anything going to move would have done so by then and the only takers were shadows and clouds and the sun running west and the water in the dam.
He came down from the rocks and climbed the fence and crossed the road and walked past the Red Hut and around its bay and up the slope to the tor where he’d spent the previous day and he saw a used cartridge shell on the ground and picked it up and put it in his pocket. The dead rabbit was nothing, not even bones. Not even a stain on the ground. Some white fluff caught in the tussock maybe. It could have been thistledown. Winstone threw the cartridge away.
Halfway up the tor he found a can of tuna. The can was open and tucked up about as high as a girl could reach and he thought about who else might have put it there and there was no one but Alicia. She’d gone back for the kitten after all.
Winstone squatted and looked at the can. Some flies had found it as well and they rose around Winstone’s ears and from the looks of things they’d been there all day and he was the first thing to disturb them. He left the can there in case the kitten wasn’t fussy although it had better be quick and he made a mental note to come back the following day and see how the maggots were doing.
When he got back to the cave the kitten was there. He found it asleep in a pile of his clothes just as it had been the previous night when he finally made it home. When it heard him the kitten opened its eyes and glared and drew back its lips but it was more of a yawn than a hiss and it didn’t go anywhere. Winstone looked at the kitten and wondered whether it had really been napping there for hours like it was trying to make out or if it was messing with him and had tailed him everywhere and just slipped in before him.
It wasn’t raining outside but it was cold and Winstone had had enough of the day so he got the gas burner out and made them chicken noodles. The kitten edged out of its nest and ate its share from the billy lid and Winstone watched the noodle ends hang from the kitten’s mouth and wondered how big the maggots had got and whether they’d taste much different.
He was glad Jacko’s dogs had finished all of the rabbit off even though it had meant he’d been stuck there waiting most of the day and he hadn’t liked the crunching.
EAST
Leaving Clintoch was easy. Bic loaded the Commodore and pulled out and drove up the road to Rahui Bridge and crossed it and it wasn’t much of a river or much of a bridge and not much change on the other side. The curtains in the new house were green. Winstone stuck the cowboy paper over the hole in the bedroom wall and so as not to rip the corners he put new tape over the top of the old and the flakes of paint that had come with it from Clintoch.
Zane said Rahui Bridge would be okay and in the beginning it was. It was at the far end of the same school bus run and after the Hasketts’ house the run turned in and cut a big loop around not very much before it came back out on the Clintoch road. The spot where it did was only a couple of k’s down from the house and it might have been quicker to walk but Winstone liked getting on first when the bus wasn’t steamed up with kids but empty and cold and clean and nobody was looking. He liked watching the other kids get on because they couldn’t look back. Those were the rules, they had to keep their eyes down. By the time the bus was on Boundary Road heading past the old house with the only sign of Hasketts the shape of the Commodore in the cut-back lawn it was full of kids looking but the bus didn’t stop any more and there was nothing to see and the driver kept his foot down.
Coming home if Winstone timed it right he could slide into his seat and get his head down and disappear and he didn’t have to stand up in front of anybody except a Year Three kid who was scared of Bodun and the Blake twins who couldn’t say anything because Bic was working for their old man so they weren’t allowed. But Winstone didn’t often get the bus home because most days after school he walked over to Zane’s and Bodun mostly got picked up by his mates so it was just Marlene going home on the bus and Winstone didn’t know how it was for her by herself but he figured it must be okay because she never asked where he was or said anything about it.
One day a dull black car followed Winstone up to the top of College Road and as he tried not to look at it the back window wound down and Bodun stuck his head out.
Where you going? Bodun said.
Nowhere.
Get in.
No.
I said get in.
Winstone had to run then. He cut the corner across the reserve and hid up in the dairy on the main road and pretended to look at the magazines but not the dirty ones and through the gaps in the posters on the dairy windows he could see Bodun waiting for him outside. Winstone looked back and the dairy owner was watching him and watching Bodun and the black car and he thought the dairy owner was going to call the cops but instead he took Winstone through the back and let him out the side door and Winstone never did find out what Bodun had wanted him for. Experiments, most likely.
Because of all that it was late when he got to Zane’s and Zane was on the internet but he got off right away when Winstone came in and made them toasties with spaghetti and cheese.
What do you want to do? Zane said, and Winstone wanted to watch Django Unchained and Zane said no because it was too violent. So they watched A Fistful of Dollars instead and Winstone hadn’t seen that one before and Zane explained how it was called a spaghetti western on account of it really being shot in Spain and not Mexico like it was pretending to be and then he drove Winstone home.
Rahui Bridge was a lot further to drive than Boundary Road but neither of them minded. They listened to Zane’s music all the way there and later that night when Zane picked Winstone up again from the clump of willows beside the bridge and they drove back they listened to it some more.
Zane didn’t want to see any more violent stuff so he put Rawhide on and they watched that big herd of skinny cattle stir up real American dust and it was hard to understand how Rowdy Yates could have turned into Clin
t Eastwood. Winstone looked at Rowdy laughing with all his mates and he wondered what he’d done to end up with nothing, not even a name, and not a single cowboy to ride beside him.
The next morning Winstone stood on the verge waiting for the school bus and Marlene stood beside him crusty with snot and Bodun stood off aways pretending not to be there with his hands down deep in his pockets. He seemed to have forgotten the day before and Winstone didn’t remind him.
WEST
It only took a few minutes to set the cat traps. The ute pulled up alongside the Red Hut on a day of metal skies blown through and brittle with wind. It was late for spending the day at the huts and early for spending the night and not a time when people came to the range and Winstone caught out in the open between the Green Camo Hut and the Sliding Door Hut got quite a surprise and for a moment or two he thought the ute had come for him. He was on his way to the dam for a crawly hunt because down in the gully they were getting harder to find and when he saw the ute crest the ridge he had no choice but to hit the tussock and hope that the driver had been too busy looking at the road to notice him and his bucket.
He could see through the grass and he watched the driver shove the door of the ute out against the wind and get out and swear and zip up his jacket and get back inside and the wind shoved the door to again and flattened its slam and when the man got out for the second time, bracing the door with his knee, he had a beanie pulled over his ears.
Winstone wondered why he didn’t just park up facing the other way but the man walked around the ute and in its shelter opened the canopy door and then Winstone saw the cages.
The trapper got three cages out and walked over and laid one cage close against the foundations of the Red Hut where the rubbish tin used to go and another where the long brown grass turned short and green and goose shitty at the edge of the beach and a third at the base of Alicia’s rock tor. Winstone didn’t know who the trapper was but he was well informed. When the trapper was done he stood and looked around as if to fix the spot where he stood in his memory or maybe hoping the cats would come out and give themselves up and save him the trouble of returning. Then he got back in his ute and drove off leaving the range to the wind and the sky.
