Raw

Cover

Copyright

Imprint Page

Dedication

Title Page

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Epilogue

By the Same Author

Biography

Busted, Brett panicked.

He snatched the loot from the cash register as the darkness of the bottle shop exploded with the red and blue lights of a police car wailing down the street. He stuffed anything he could — coins, notes, smokes — into his pockets then groped blindly behind him.
Smash!
Half the shelf's stock shattered onto the floor! He swore. All that alcohol gone to waste! If he hadn't tripped the alarm, he might have scored some big bucks for all that. Forget it. He grabbed three bottles then ran to the back door. Locked! He shook it madly but it wouldn't move. The siren grew louder and louder as he picked at the door with fumbling fingers then triumphantly yanked it open with an angry boom. He'd lost one bottle in the attempt but he'd got what he came for.

Brett jumped off the landing into the laneway. He ran east thinking it was safe. Wrong! The pigs!

The patrol car skidded into the dark laneway, wild and mean. Its headlights snared Brett and he dropped the last two bottles to leap for the fence. With a grunt, he pulled himself up and over as the police braked underneath him. Voices started shouting but Brett was gone. He darted down a garden path, a dog yapping at his heels. A house light blinked on but it was too late. Up and over another fence and he was free.

Or so he thought.

The cops pounced. The driver gunned the car from an adjoining street and crashed over a corner to hunt the sixteen-year-old down. Tyres squealed as Brett and the pigs both raced along the road. A second later, the teenager's lead came to an end. The car attacked, swinging left to cut him off. Too predictable. Brett leapt onto the bonnet and landed on the other side. Screaming, the cop driving it hit the horn as Brett sprinted away to the safety of a nearby park.

The patrol car sped along the empty street, the park's trees barring it from chasing Brett further. Its radio was loud and scrambled like the thoughts running through his head. Was that —? Yes! Another
siren screamed from the south. If the cops weren't mad before, boy, were they now.

He bolted through the playground and past the swings, looking for a way out. On his left was a shop wall. On the right the cops. No good. He charged forward to jump another fence instead.

The drop was too deep. His ankle gave way and he tumbled to the uneven ground. He knew he was in trouble the second he hit. He tried to stand but screamed in pain. His bones felt like they'd been ripped from their skin. Nursing his leg, he knew it was useless. There was no way he'd escape now.

Car doors slammed shut and cops rushed from everywhere. They caught him with their torches hiding behind a shed. He made one last hobble for safety but the pigs grabbed him and threw him hard against a wall.

‘Don't move!' they shouted, jabbing their guns forward, ‘or you're dead!'

BANG!

Startled, Brett jolted awake. He clutched his stomach expecting to find a bullet but found he was still alive. The pain in his ankle had gone but his ears throbbed with the echo of what sounded like a gunshot. He blinked back sleep and looked round. A cloud of thin, black smoke trailed the rattling paddy wagon. A backfire! A stupid little backfire had scared him. He felt relieved, collapsed against the jagged squares of the metal cage and swallowed. He'd survived.

But for how long?

It was at least forty degrees inside the wagon. His throat was dry and his face, back, shirt and jeans were swamped with sweat. The black canvas covering the cage trapped the heat blazing outside.
There were no windows and only a peep-hole on each side of the door. Brett desperately needed some fresh air and a drink soon. Asking the cops up front in their air-conditioned cabin was hopeless. They'd already said no. Twice.

He rolled his eyes to the left and stared out one of the peep-holes. Nothing had changed. All he saw was the endless dirt road that kept rolling on and on. Shutting them again, he didn't know where he was and didn't want to. He'd given up trying to find out hours ago when he realised one unknown town was as unknown as the next.

This was his tenth hour on the road now. He and the two cops had set out from Sydney at four in the morning to avoid the midday heat but a blow-out in the middle of Nowheresville had cost them that lead. The pigs had forgotten to bring a spare wheel and one of them had to thumb a ride back into the nearest town to find a mechanic. There hadn't been a house or farm in sight.

It was the only time he'd been let out of this cage the whole trip. Oh sure the cops had stopped to buy drinks or food or go to the dunnies along the way, but not him. He had to stay in the cage for everyone to gawk at. The blow-out had saved him though. Standing by the road after a much needed leak, he
smoked his first cigarette for the day and drank selfishly from the remaining cop's water bottle. The pig had given them to him not out of sympathy but out of necessity. He didn't want to spend hours filling out forms about a dead kid.

Brett was hanging for a cancer stick. Even though it was forty degrees, he wanted that one last freedom. The cops took his pack of 16s shortly after they busted him for that break-and-enter and only gave it back after the trial. The packet was now in his bag and his bag was in the custody of the cops up front. He'd get his gear only when they reached their destination — The Farm.

It sounded like a pushover. Just Old McDonald and a couple of geese. It didn't have the kind of threatening name other juvenile detention centres had. But its name was all that Brett knew about where he was headed. That, and it being west of Mungindi — a country town split in half by the Queensland-New South Wales border — eight hundred to nine hundred k's from home. Like every juvenile detention centre, it aimed to turn troublemakers like himself into model citizens. Brett snorted. As if.

The Farm was to be his new home for the next three months thanks to his trial, which had gone
badly. He was expecting at worst community service or an eight o'clock curfew. The courts in the past had always been soft on him and let him off with a warning: ‘We forgive you, Brett. Run along and be a good boy'. But not this time. The children's court had a new magistrate. She flipped through page after page of Brett Anthony Dalton's rap sheet then given him the longest lecture of his life. When she'd finished he thought that that was going to be it. But apparently the magistrate didn't like his “sincerity” and sentenced him to three months at this farm.

‘Make no mistake, Brett,' she warned before the cops dragged him out back into a holding cell, ‘this is your last chance. If you end up in another court — it's jail.'

His mum and dad said goodbye before he left. They'd been sitting in the back of the courtroom watching everything in familiar silence. He wished they hadn't. He was kind of angry that they'd shown up. After the trial, they didn't say much either. Just “Take care” and “Phone us”. His mum didn't even cry. His dad was angry, of course. The old man always had that stony look on his face that hid his disappointment. “Bye” was more than Brett expected him to say.

Brett wiped the sweat off his face and tried not to
think of home. It was hundreds of kilometres away now. He wouldn't be going back anytime soon. He tried to think of pools and beaches and icy drinks. Anything to wash away this heat.

He got his first look at Mungindi about two-thirty. It was worse than he expected. A small town of less than a thousand people, it had died about twenty years ago but no one had told the locals. The main street was stretched with about a dozen verandahed shops, while the rest were lined with scores of raised single-storey houses capped with corrugated roofs. A handful of couples and farmers travelled past in their dusty utes, trucks and station wagons, but not in any rush. A teenage mother and father pushed their child along a footpath in a stroller — the only young people Brett could spot. To the right, two lost travellers looked over the bank of a twisting river called the Barwon that marked the state border, before their friend came back with the right directions.

Having arrived, Brett now understood why he'd been sent here. His life was to be sucked out of him just like the town's had.

After an impromptu U-turn, the wagon roared along an empty road. Twenty minutes later, the cops indicated left and Brett lunged over to the opposite
side of the cage to peep through a small hole in the black canvas. A makeshift road, worn away by car and truck tyres over many years, twisted a good two kilometres past fenced paddocks before it ended at The Farm.

The uninspiring sight was far from the prison he'd imagined. He was expecting at least a concentration camp patrolled by Dobermans and gun-toting guards. It was, however, little more than a large country house. At the end of the driveway, a federation-style homestead occupied the centre of the property. Behind it was a bigger, squarish U-shaped building made of concrete. About two hundred metres away was a large corrugated iron shed, radio tower, wooden stable and the timber skeleton of a new building under construction. Next to these was an oval stockyard ringed by a fence of stripped tree trunks with ten or so men in jeans, dusty shirts, boots and big broad hats unloading a stubborn brumby from a horse trailer. Further outwards was a playing field with a cricket pitch in the middle and football goal posts on either end. And surrounding everything were paddocks filled with horses and cattle standing under gums.

Brett's heart beat faster as the wagon slowed to a stop. The cabin's doors slammed shut and he
heard voices. He tried to check out who they belonged to. The cops. And two others: a man and a woman.

The man looked like an old cowboy or one of those guys who used to go droving cattle — a stockman, Brett thought they were called. His blue checked shirt and shabby jeans — almost faded white and smeared with dirt and engine oil — hid a robust figure despite his age. A brown moustache drooped from his top lip and a beat-up hat kept his wrinkled face shadowed from the sun. He was about three centimetres shorter than Brett at one hundred-and-seventy centimetres and aged in his fifties. He didn't smile.

The woman did, though. Wired with grey, her copper hair curled over the shoulders of a green dress. Her face was relaxed and smooth and friendly — unlike the man's. She also was in her fifties but nowhere near as sun-dried as him. She was one hundred-and-sixty and slightly overweight. She was the first to shake hands with the police officers, who politely took off their hats.

‘G'day, Mary. Sam,' Senior Constable Gallagher said. ‘Great day for a storm.'

‘Pity there's not one due for another couple of weeks,' the old stockman said in a rough voice,
lifting his hat and wiping his brow as if the mere mention of the weather brought on a sweat.

‘Mary. Sam,' the second cop, Constable Nelson, repeated. ‘How are you today?'

‘Fine, thank you,' Mary said. ‘I thought you blokes must've decided to look after the new boy yourself when you didn't arrive on time.'

Boy? Brett was no
boy
. He was sixteen!

‘Yer, we had a blow-out near Narrabri. Pete here had to hitch back into town and find us a spare.'

‘So how
is
the boy?'

‘He caused a bit of trouble at the beginning but we sorted him out. If it's okay by you, we'll hand him over and head back home.'

‘You're going already?' Mary asked.

‘Afraid so. Constable Nelson and I have to be in court tomorrow afternoon.'

‘You can't drive from Sydney to Mungindi and back in a day.'

‘We'll stop at a hotel along the way, then finish the rest of the trip first thing in the morning.'

‘Nonsense. You're not going anywhere until you at least have some lunch.'

The cops turned to each other and grinned. Cops and food went together like pigs and slop. Brett snorted.

‘Mary, show Constable Nelson inside,' Sam said. ‘I'll be in in a minute with Constable Gallagher and the boy.'

The group split in two. Senior Constable Gallagher and the old stockman walked round back of the wagon as the others disappeared into the homestead. Brett slid to the front of the cage. There was no way he was going to leave it without a fight.

The bolt was thrown aside and the door pulled open. Sunlight filled the cage and Brett covered his eyes. The two men waited for him to clamber out but he didn't move. It was his final defiance. He wanted to go home.

‘C'mon, Dalton. Out you get,' the cop said, palming sweat from his chin.

Brett sat still.

‘Move it,' the constable repeated for what was obviously the final time.

Again, Brett didn't move.

Gallagher looked at Sam then sighed. He reached forward to haul Brett out but the stockman stopped him. The old man removed his hat, cleared his throat then said, ‘G'day Brett, I'm Sam,' and offered a leathery handshake.

Brett looked at the man's hand then rolled his eyes. Nice try. But no takers, grandad.

Sam pocketed his welcome then tried another approach. ‘You hungry, Brett? My wife, Mary, has lunch ready inside if you want some.'

Brett did, but he kept quiet.

‘Sorry to hear it,' the stockman said as a joke Brett was sure. He then turned to Gallagher and said, ‘Looks like it's only the four of us then. You better lock the door, constable.'

Gallagher shook his head and waited until Sam was right out of the way before closing it. The cage was shrouded with hot blackness again and Brett was alone. He swallowed long and dry. Then his stomach began to rumble.

‘Wait!' he called out. ‘I've changed my mind.'

The door swung open and Sam and Gallagher looked inside. The constable grabbed Brett this time and growled, ‘No more fooling round.'

Brett sauntered towards the homestead, his bag shouldered by the cop. His feet sizzled with pain on the hot gravel and a heatwave thick and heavy knocked him about. He didn't know which was worse: the cage, the weather or the flies. A zillion of them sensed sweaty flesh and made a mad rush for his face.

Sam led the way. ‘Are the cuffs still necessary, constable?' he asked.

‘Definitely. The last time a cop took them off at one of these places, the prisoner stole his van. And because I'm not keen on walking back to Sydney, they'll stay on the boy until Constable Nelson and I are ready to go.'

Brett shot Gallagher an angry stare but the cop ignored it.

Dragging his feet up the front steps, he followed Sam inside. Immediately, the cool swishing of a ceiling fan left him dumbstruck. He stood in the entrance, unwilling to move. And he wasn't the only one. Two cattle dogs — a blue and a grey — sat on the floor, their sad eyes staring upwards, pale pink tongues panting and tails occasionally thumping.

‘Hurry up, Dalton,' Gallagher growled again, closing the screen door behind him. Brett shuffled forward a few steps and the trio continued from the living room, down a hallway and towards the kitchen.

The homestead was Sam and Mary's house. It had that lived-in feel. Trinkets lined window shelves and well-worn chairs dressed with doilies sat in a loungeroom. A half-finished crossword in a women's magazine lay open on a coffee table next to several empty tea cups. A radio chatted to itself in the kitchen. And a row of boots and shoes were tucked
underneath a double bed made with only a sheet.

There wasn't anything worth pinching. Brett had looked. The clock on the mantelpiece and the radio were worth a few bucks, but that was all. There was no TV or video, which was strange. Apart from counting sheep and pushing over sleeping cows, he couldn't imagine there was much to do in a forgotten town like this one.

The trio entered the kitchen where Constable Nelson was helping Mary lay out some food on the small, round dinner table. Five places were set, including one for Brett. Tall glasses of water waited for everybody and he nearly charged for one.

He skolled the water in one hit before pouring a second and a third. The cool liquid spread throughout his body and he sighed. The meal was simple but appreciated too. Brett was allowed to help himself to anything on the table while the others small-talked. Cold devon and tomato sandwiches, fresh coleslaw and buttered pikelets sure beat the dry spuds, greasy gravy and small strips of gristly lamb the cops at the city lock-up had been feeding him. He wolfed everything down, certain that this would be his last good meal before the beans came out.

‘So why did they send you up here, Brett?' Mary asked suddenly.

Leaning over his plate mid-bite, he looked up and saw everyone staring at him. Senior Constable Gallagher elbowed him in the ribs and said, ‘Answer the lady.'

‘Er, because they reckon I broke into a bottle shop,' he replied, glaring at the cop.

‘
Reckon
?' Gallagher snorted. ‘A patrol found him with his hands and pockets full before he did a runner. And it wasn't the first time either, was it?'