The Legend of Winstone Blackhat

by Tanya Moir

  Winstone waited a while and then he picked up his bucket and walked over to the cage beside the rock tor and squatted on his heels in the grass and looked at the trap. There was a can of something oily and fishy in there and he poked at it with a speargrass stem but the can didn’t move and then he saw the wire. He stuck the speargrass stem through the mouth of the trap and nothing happened and he sat a while and looked at the trap some more.

  There was a metal plate jutting out of the floor of the trap in front of the can and Winstone fed the speargrass stem between the mesh in the side of the trap and touched the plate and the door of the trap sprang shut but not that hard. He looked and looked and he could see nothing to snap a cat’s neck or its spine and it came to him that the trap was just a holding cell and not a place of execution. The killing would come later. He wondered how they’d do it. Bullet or bash. Lethal injection. Maybe drop the cage in the dam. There was a lot of choice when it came to killing a cat. Or maybe they’d get busy and forget about it and it’d just die bit by bit with its belly caving against its ribs waiting every day for them to come.

  Winstone stood up and walked down the slope and sprang the other two traps and when he turned around the kitten had both paws through the side of the rock tor trap trying to get at the can of food and he realised what he’d taught it.

  Leave that, he said.

  The kitten did not. Winstone stood and watched and as he watched the kitten circled the trap and tried the other side.

  No, he said. Leave it.

  But the kitten took no more notice of him than the wind and while it was busy trying to find a way into the trap he walked down to the dam and filled his bucket and carried it back up the slope and by that stage the kitten was on top of the trap fishing down for the food in the can. Winstone tipped a good dollop of cold dam water over the kitten’s back and it leapt and shivered and shook and looked at him with more hate in its eyes than you’d think could fit inside a kitten.

  It’s for your own good, he said.

  The kitten hissed at him and slunk off and Winstone followed it to the trap beside the Red Hut and they proceeded in that way for some time until the kitten’s fur was plastered to its pink hide and Winstone’s bucket was empty and they looked at each other and the kitten sat down and began to lick its fur.

  Now don’t you go trying it, he said, when I’m not here, and then he had an idea and leaving the kitten washing itself he went back and reset all three traps and he took himself off out of sight and pretended to hunt for crawlies.

  When he came back the kitten was caught in the rock tor trap and so busy scoffing cat food it hadn’t even noticed. It noticed Winstone and his bucket, though. As soon as the kitten saw him coming it spun and tried to shoot out of the cage and its ears went flat as it realised that it couldn’t. It knew it was in trouble then, you could tell, and it started to ricochet around the cage like a crazy thing but Winstone had no mercy. He let it have the whole bucket this time and it crouched there dripping and scowling at him and he made it wait a while. When he opened the door the kitten shot out and disappeared in a wet kitten blur and he wondered if he’d see it again and he thought that he probably wouldn’t, leastways not if the kitten saw him first and he looked at the empty range and the empty traps and the empty bucket.

  There wasn’t much light left in the day and the wind was falling away and just the odd gust of it blowing through hard on the kicked up heels of the sun. Winstone picked up his bucket and walked back to the Green Camo Hut and circled it and climbed under the dinghy and took the net and then he went down to the water and hunted crawlies for real this time and he caught a big old boy with pincers the size of his thumb and after he’d looked at the pincers for a while and tested them with a speargrass stem he tipped the old crawly back into the dam because it was too big to Zippo.

  In the fireplace behind the Sliding Door Hut out of the remnants of wind he Zippoed the rest of the crawlies he’d caught and the sun falling through some unseen gap in the world shone up through the grass and feathered every stem. The kitten came stepping slow through the grass with the sun picking out its paws and its belly fur and the span of its whiskers like fishing line and Winstone watched the kitten stop short at the sight of the trap still set and waiting at the edge of the grass and raise a paw and change its course and it came on to him in a wide circle.

  When the kitten reached him he had a cooked crawly ready for it and he held it out in his hand and the kitten took the crawly between its kitten teeth and crouched down with its paws tucked under neat and began to eat it. Winstone watched the kitten splinter the crawly head and lick out the brains and he wondered what other things he could teach the kitten to do. Sit lie down roll over play dead. The kitten finished the crawly and looked up at him narrow-eyed.

  Freeze, he said.

  The kitten didn’t move. Winstone gave it his crawly head and waited until the kitten was done. Then he pointed his fingers at it.

  Bang, he said.

  The kitten closed its eyes.

  THE JAWS OF THE TRAP glinted in the failing sun and the colours of weathered steel were in the banded sky above and in the shadowed face of the Kid as he sat on his heels looking down upon it. The mountain lion’s yellow eyes watched the Kid. Its mouth was open and he could hear its short breaths and see the curl of its tongue and the heave of its heart below its hide.

  Watch yourself, Cooper said.

  But the mountain lion was no more than a few months old and what fight had been in it was gone and it had no will to run or even hide. The Kid worked the spring of the trap with his gloved hand and released it and opened the trap and took out the cat’s paw and the mountain lion laid its yellow head down in the weeds and its eyes fell shut and its breath scraped over the rasp of its tongue and blew dry craters in the dust.

  Gimme some water, the Kid said.

  Water, Cooper said.

  Yeah, said the Kid, and he held out his hand and caught the canteen as it flew from the spot in the sage aways off where Cooper stood holding the horses. The Kid pushed the stopper out with his thumb and tilted the canteen and ran a line of water over the mountain lion’s muzzle into the dust but the cat did not open its eyes or lift its head and it did not drink. The Kid laid his hand to the cat’s jaw and pulled up its lip and Cooper said, Goddammit Kid, and the Kid poured again into the animal’s mouth and its tongue moved and sucked and its breath grew easy.

  An just what are you plannin to do with it now? Cooper said.

  Leave it be I guess.

  Leave it be.

  The leg aint broke, the Kid said.

  You caint let a thing like that be, Cooper said. What about them ranchers back there? It aint safe.

  The Kid looked at the mountain lion. How old you reckon it is? he said.

  Old enough.

  Maybe we take it off aways. Take it with us over the pass where there aint no more farms.

  You fixin to start a circus, Kid?

  You know I aint.

  You caint tame a thing like that, Cooper said. An you caint trust it. It’s a killer is all.

  It aint even grown, the Kid said. Maybe it won’t kill nothin.

  It don’t know nothin but killin, Kid. It gotta kill or it dies.

  Maybe it don’t.

  Kid, you don’t kill it now quick and clean you’re just leavin it for somebody else to do slow and dirty.

  I aint got no stomach for killin a thing that aint done nothin yet.

  You aint got no stomach, Cooper repeated slow.

  It aint hurt nothin or nobody.

  You goin to wait till the hurtin is good and done, Cooper said. I guess then you goin to come ridin back and hunt it clear over the range till you shoot it down.

  The Kid was still looking at the cat and still it had not opened its eyes and the Kid took off his hat and laid it across his bent knee and studied the stains upon it. Quick and clean, the Kid said, but he did not rise.

  It’s goin to die anyway, Cooper said. You�
�re just makin it easy.

  The Kid knocked the dust from his hat and stood and set the hat on his head and took a step back and felt for his pistol and stood looking down and the sun slipping over the lip of the range took with it what colour had remained in the day and the Kid stood and looked some more in the growing grey.

  You want me to use the rifle, Cooper said.

  The Kid nodded once.

  You come on over here, Cooper said, and hold these horses.

  The horses shifted their feet in the cold grey dust and the Kid held their reins in his clenched glove and there was metal in his eyes and in the sky behind him.

  You aint got to worry about no mountain lion tonight, he said.

  A single shot ripped the dusk and the Kid started and blinked as if feeling the rifle’s recoil against his shoulder.

  Come on, Winstone said. He looked at the kitten asleep in the grass and up at the sky still lit by the vanished sun pale and brittle as a bird’s egg. He touched the kitten’s flank where the stripes turned to spots in the thick yellow fur and the kitten opened its eyes and its mouth and yawned.

  Let’s get out of here, Winstone said.

  The kitten got up and stretched and tagged after him up the slope and it stopped at a great distance and waited as Winstone sprang the trap at the edge of the grass and the trap beside the Red Hut and after they’d crossed the white dust road and the cattle fence it went off about its own business.

  EAST

  The right thing to do was always the thing you didn’t want to do at all. Winstone learned that from Bonanza. So he couldn’t stay at Zane’s from after school until the small hours of the morning. He had to go home in between. Every night he made sure he was back at his house from the start of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? until the ten o’clock news so that if Bic came in he’d see Winstone right away and never even have a chance to wonder where he’d got to. It hadn’t mattered where Winstone was when he had nowhere to be but things were different now that he did, and Winstone was very afraid that Bic would find out about Zane’s and take it away from him or ruin it the way Bic ruined lawns and walls and TV sets and Ginger.

  Besides, there was Marlene. There was only so long she could be by herself before she got into trouble, cut her hand on the can-opener or started a fire or boiled pot noodles in the jug. It paid to find Marlene something to eat before she went looking for it herself.

  One particular night, a night in July, about a month after the Hasketts had moved to the house in Rahui Bridge, the night in question as it came to be known, Winstone had made tomato sauce sandwiches, three for Marlene and two for him since he’d already had chocolate eclairs and chips and a steak and cheese pie at Zane’s place. Marlene had wanted her sandwiches toasted so he’d turned the grill on and then gone back into the lounge to watch the end of Killer Roads.

  It was cold, so they’d lit the rubbish in the fireplace and Marlene had liked the flames so much he’d gone out to the shed and found some wood and chopped it up and he had the cruddy old burner making a pretty good blaze. The light of it was jumping all over the walls which was maybe why he didn’t notice the headlights outside or if he did he just thought the flash of them through the holes in the curtains had come from the TV where the action was coming thick and fast. A big painted truck had one wheel over a precipice just out there in space a million miles up and if the driver got out maybe that would tip it over. Winstone was trying to decide if he wanted the truck to fall and he thought so long as the driver jumped first it would be pretty cool to see it tumble and smash and whether it went end over end or side to side and how many times it did and whether it would explode when it finally hit the bottom.

  When he heard Marlene scream he thought she’d burnt herself on the grill and he wondered if she could wait and he thought about just yelling out to her to run it under cold water. The truck was about to go and the music was getting loud but he could still hear Marlene’s high-pitched little girly cries so he did the right thing and got up off the floor and went into the kitchen to see and it wasn’t until he did that he even realised Bic was home.

  The kitchen looked like a paintball range. There was tomato sauce up the walls and over the cupboard doors and Winstone thought hard about who’d had the bottle last because whoever it was hadn’t put the top back on it right. Bic was holding the open bottle of sauce in one hand and Marlene’s arm in the other and he was shaking her hard and she was trying to pull away from him which made him shake her harder. What did I tell you, he said all down in her face and it was worse than a yell, what did I say? Fucken leave shit alone. He whacked the bottle into her legs and dropped it and made a grab for her hair but she panicked and twisted away and that’s when Winstone knew it was going to be bad because he could see how scared she was, and when Marlene got scared her brain didn’t work and she forgot about the rules which were never fight back never raise your arm or duck or try to get away.

  Don’t you fucken run away from me, Bic said and he got a good grip this time. I’ll tell you when you can fucken go.

  Bic wasn’t looking at him, Bic didn’t even know he was there. Winstone’s hand closed around the phone in his pocket.

  Why can’t you do as you’re fucken told?

  Marlene’s eyes were rolling about in her head and a streamer of snot flew out of her nose and got stuck across her eyebrow.

  Jesus, Bic said, look at this mess, and he did, like that was the first he’d seen of it and now he knew why he was angry.

  Winstone didn’t even have to take the phone out. He knew where the buttons were.

  Bic let go of Marlene’s hair and shoved her backwards, maybe not that hard, but she was having some trouble standing up by now and she fell against the cupboard. Just get the fuck out, Bic said, and he kind of shook himself a bit and it looked like it was over. But Marlene didn’t get out. Maybe it was because her brain was all jumbled up or maybe she couldn’t believe her luck or maybe she thought she was cornered, but whatever it was she just froze up there on the floor with Bic looking down at her and Winstone’s emergency phone dialling out unheard from the darkness of his pocket.

  Get out, Bic repeated, very low.

  Marlene did try. She got herself into a sideways sort of sprinter’s crouch and she made a run for the door but she was just in her ankle socks and as she went past Bic she hit a patch of sauce and slipped and her feet made a big red smear across the floor.

  For fuck’s sake, said Bic and he was yelling this time, I said get out of it, and he took two steps over fast and bent down and grabbed Marlene and chucked her out of there like he was Bodun clearing the bedroom floor but Marlene was more than just an armful of smelly underpants and jeans and socks and she didn’t fly that way, hanging up in the air floating down, she went backwards straight and hit the bench like a stone. A lot of noises happened on top of each other all at once something breaking cups plates head bench splintering socks on the cupboard door a rattle a slide and a thump and Bic turned and that’s when he saw Winstone standing there with the red phone to his ear.

  Or maybe he didn’t. Winstone was never completely sure. Bic did look at him, and then he looked down at Marlene and his mouth was open like he still had something to say and Winstone looked at her too and now she did look a bit like a sock half caught up on the kitchen drawers.

  Hello, said his phone. Hello.

  And Bic left. He turned and walked right out the back door and Winstone saw the Commodore’s headlights heading backwards fast but all he could hear was a Powerball ad on TV and the voice in his ear. Hello?

  He took a couple of steps around Marlene while he waited for her to wake up and for the first time he noticed the open parcel of chips going cold on the bench and Bic must have been in a good mood when he got to the burger bar because there were onion rings and hotdogs.

  Hello?

  It’s Marlene, he said. She’s hurt the old man did it it’s bad this time I don’t know what to do. Come and get us. Hurry. Please.

 
Winstone squatted down on the floor in front of Marlene and touched her shoulder with his free hand and she opened her eyes and sat up and looked at him like he’d given her a fright.

  It’s okay, he said, you’re all right, and he thought it was going to be true.

  Then Marlene fell back again hard and she started to judder. She was banging her head on the cutlery drawer, boom, a hollow sound, sliding rattling forks and knives and spoons inside it. She was still looking at Winstone, straight into his eyes, and it looked like she was falling backwards down something narrow and deep, her arms and legs trying to catch a hold, and it wasn’t too late he could pull her back up if he just had the right thing to throw her.

  Tell me, he said into the phone, what to do.

  Hang up, Zane said. Hang up right now and call 111. Winstone, are you listening?

  What do I do? he said. I don’t know how to make it stop. He pressed the phone hard to his ear but Zane wasn’t there. There was nobody there.

  Marlene stopped scrabbling. Apart from the little twitch in her foot and the pool of pee spreading under her it looked like she’d gone back to sleep. It’s okay Lenie, he said, it’s okay now you’re all right.

  Dr Mike said she wasn’t really looking at him, it was just an illusion, she couldn’t see or hear or feel anything, no pain no fear, not a bit, but Dr Mike hadn’t been there and he didn’t know Marlene. When she opened her eyes again she looked for Winstone and it was no illusion or trick and he could see she thought he was going to help her. But he couldn’t hold her there with him, she was falling again a long way down grabbing and clutching with all she had and although she was only a little girl he wasn’t strong enough to pull her back or even catch her hand.