Spinner (10 page)

Below him, his uncle's bed was empty and unused. There was an odd sound somewhere, like screaming, but not like
any screaming David knew.

He put on his boots and moved up towards the end of the carriage, pushing past other passengers who asked, ‘What's happened?', ‘What's wrong?' The door at the end was open, revealing an orange glow outside. And still the distant screaming, low and pained and fearful.

Lanterns were moving outside. More shouts. David jumped down onto the rough ground next to the tracks.

There was a cattle train with half its carriages overturned. A fire. Cows were wandering and calling. Some limped. Some were down. Most were bleeding. Men ran, lanterns swaying and shuddering. The fire was billowing halfway down the carriages, like a big yellow flower. A driver from David's train had attached a canvas hose behind the steam engine. Men were filling buckets with water from it. Everyone was shouting.

Jack Tanner reared up out of the smashed wood of the guard's van with a man over his shoulders and staggered over wreckage. ‘Doctor! We need medics here.'

Then David saw where the screams were coming from. There were cows trapped in the shattered cattle trucks. The wooden planking had splintered in places, stabbing and spearing them. Many looked dead. Others were gashed or had stakes of wood sticking out from their stomachs, their flanks, their faces. Other cows, David saw, were not dead, nor even wounded, but still trapped and struggling. Their eyes were huge and open, reflecting the approaching fire.

David thought he saw his uncle on the other side of that carriage, pulling down a broken piece of wood so the cows could escape. A lantern swayed.

‘Dynamite!' someone called.

Up ahead some of the cattle train was still on the tracks,
including the engines. Men were trying to unshackle the fallen carriages to get the upright ones away. Men were throwing buckets of water on the fire, then running back to the passenger train to refill them. A man came out of a wagon with a wooden box. ‘Get out, there's dynamite.' Men backed away. ‘Get it out of there.' Jack Tanner, his derby gone, jumped up into the dynamite wagon.

David saw another carriage near the fire. The cattle in there were stomping their hooves in puddles of blood as they tried to back away. They whimpered. They called. David grabbed onto the side of the wagon and hauled himself up at the gate. The metal pin holding it closed was already warm.

‘Get out. Get out,' yelled someone.

David was trying to pull the pin up, but his long fingers were awkward with this kind of fiddly work and the pin kept falling back down into the slot.

‘The dynamite's gunna go.'

‘Run!'

David pulled the pin out and threw it to the ground. But the gate stayed closed. He grabbed it with both hands, and pushed hard against the side with his feet. The gate swung out and he held on, riding it away. Then just as it reached the end of its arc, he let go. But one of those long stupid fingers of his caught on something. The third finger of his right hand jammed, and took the whole weight of David's body for a moment before it came free.

He fell to the ground as the cattle poured out of the wagon. The first hit the ground, breaking its forelegs. It floundered and collapsed, as others jumped down on top running off into the night.

A hand grabbed his shoulder. It was Jack Tanner. ‘This is
no place for a boy.'

‘The cattle. Got to get them away.'

‘You get back. Now!' He shoved David hard towards their train.

David staggered a few steps but looked back to see Tanner go to the cow that had jumped first. It struggled uselessly. Jack Tanner had a pistol. He fired into its head.

Then the dynamite exploded. The wagon holding it disappeared in white light, followed by a dull, short whumph. It and half the next wagon were gone. The air shook and puffed alive for a moment. Burning bits of wood fell from the sky.

David was on his knees. He could see Mrs Miller, standing in a white nightgown off to the other side of the track. It was darker there but the firelight showed her trying to pull at a sitting man. David climbed between two carriages and went to them.

‘Michael please,' said the lady, dragging at his uncle's shoulder.

Michael sat in the dirt, with a cow, its head in his lap. ‘And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall. By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.' Michael stroked the cow's cheek. It lay, unmoving, but with an eye open, carefully watching the man. Michael looked off at one of the rifle shots. ‘Shoot straight and kill them all,' he said without emotion.

Mrs Miller looked to David. She was frightened.

‘Shh, shh, matey. Let it go. Just let it go, and slip into the warm water. Like a swim, they say. Like swimming in a warm bit of river, floating.' Michael talked gently, soothing. ‘Good news, mate. You're all here. All your bits and pieces all together. In heaven, you'll be you. That's a comfort, surely.'

David could see blood covering the cow's stomach. Its
chest moved slowly. Barely.

‘Please,' said Mrs Miller, ‘he's talking crazy.'

Michael ignored her, talking only to the dying cow. ‘Bugger the poetry, buddy. That's what the yanks call their mates. Buddy. I'll find your hands, Ernie. I promise, I'll look around in the mud here and I'll find them sure. Be somewhere near my toe, I reckon. I'll tell 'em you went easy. I'll tell them, you died quick, with no pain. They'll like that, won't they. Clean it up to make them feel better. Be a medal in this. Someone better send a bloody medal home.'

‘Please Michael, come away. You're frightening me.'

David couldn't speak. He stood with Mrs Miller watching.

‘I can see down into your eyes, all the way, to the other side. Pain. It's like hot, melting metal being pushed into the smithy's water, like lightning frozen into the sky. Watch. Watch. There. It's going now, mate. I can see it going. I'm not lying. I'm watching the pain go. It's already miles away and flying. Just drift, mate. Just relax and let go and float away. Good lad.'

David looked down into the cow's eye as the pain seeped away. A moment later, you could see the life go too, just as his uncle had described it. Like a match blown out.

Michael started to laugh. It was happy and light and awful in the gore and fire by the train tracks.

Jack Tanner stepped from nowhere, his pistol in his hand.

‘No,' called David, thinking in that instant that Tanner might actually use the gun on Michael.

But Tanner stepped forward, slapping Michael hard with an open hand.

Mrs Miller gave a small gasp. Michael's head jolted back
from the blow. He seemed to wake and look around.

‘Pull yourself together, man.'

Tanner walked off, as Michael looked down at the dead cow a moment. He seemed confused and surprised and stupid all at once, as though trying to remember something. Then he looked around at David and Mrs Miller. ‘Don't need to pull myself anywhere, man. I have Liz here.' He reached up towards her, trying to smile. His nose was bleeding a little from Tanner's blow. His cheeks were wet. ‘Oh, Lizzie, I need to lie on those wonderful breasts and forget about this head I've got on.'

He grabbed at her nightgown, and she jumped back. ‘No,' she gasped. ‘No, Michael. Not now.' There was a smudge of blood on the nightgown where Michael had grabbed. She turned to David. ‘We only just met. Fun like. I can't ... No.' Then she got angry with Michael. ‘And you have no right to expect it.' She started to walk back towards their train, but then she ran. There were other women gathered back there, watching her with fear.

David looked back the other way. There was only one carriage still burning. Men with buckets ran dark against the fire. The dynamite had exploded a gap in the train. There was less moaning from the cows, and fewer gun shots. The accident had taken on a calm and order.

‘Stupid old cow,' said Michael, as he patted the dead thing on his lap. ‘Help us up would you old bean? My leg seems to have gone to sleep.'

David pulled at his uncle up.

‘You know,' said Michael, ‘you look a lot like your father sometimes.'

He limped badly as David led him back towards the train. Someone gasped as they saw how much blood was on him.

A voice said, ‘Was it bad?'

‘Is anyone hurt?' said another.

David helped his uncle lie down in the sleeper and stayed with him.

He looked at his finger, which hurt, and saw it swelling. He could barely wriggle any of his fingers on his bowling hand. He pushed it under his left armpit where the warmth settled the pain a little.

He looked to his uncle who was laying in his bloody clothes with his eyes closed. ‘Is that the war you were talking about? Out there, Uncle Mike?'

‘Did I have a bit of a turn, mate?'

David didn't answer.

‘Say some silly things?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Scary things?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But we had a train crash and there was fire and hurt cattle?'

David waited. His uncle wasn't smiling. He still had his eyes closed. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Well, that must mean I scared off Mrs Miller then eh.'

David didn't answer, but he did smile just a little.

‘But not you.'

‘You said things about Ernie—my dad.'

‘Naw, couldn't have. Wasn't there.'

‘Where?'

‘Where he was. Forget it. That's the best bet. Forget everything. The only way.'

His uncle lay there eyes still closed. David waited with him, intending to go out and watch the fire again, but he fell asleep.

In the morning, his uncle begged for brandy, and pushed some money at David.

David was hungry. Always hungry. He hoped there'd be a breakfast sitting. The train was still. No rocking. No click click click. There seemed less voices too. David hoped that Jack Tanner would be out looking over the wreck or still sleeping, from a long hard night of fire fighting and rescuing, but there he was in his spot at the first table of the buffet car, sitting in the seat, with his jacket off, his derby gone, and his face smudged in soot. He looked up to see David looking at him through the glass.

David opened the buffet door, and said, ‘I have to get brandy for my uncle.' David hoped his voice sounded fearless.

‘No one's stopping you, lad,' said Tanner. He looked down at his breakfast and speared some bacon.

David found a man in the bar car and explained about his uncle and was given a bottle of brandy in a paper bag. He took it back without looking at Tanner. Then he returned to the buffet car, going past Jack Tanner again without even looking at him. He went to a table at the other end of the car and asked a man in white who wasn't the Italian man for breakfast. When David asked for another breakfast, the man said, ‘Certainly, sir.' David ate that too.

After that, David came and went whenever he wanted, and he and Jack Tanner began to nod to each other. Sometimes Tanner would say, ‘Morning.' And David would reply the same. And it went like that: ‘Afternoon. Evening. Night.' There was no more glaring.

Apart from going for food, David stayed back with his Uncle Mike, who nursed the brandy, and ate a little himself. He eventually changed out of the stiff bloody clothes when
the flies came. He was like a man who had the flu and was waiting to feel better.

David asked him questions, and sometimes he answered them.

‘How did you hurt your foot?'

‘In the war.'

‘Why do people see it and call you names?'

‘Because, when some men couldn't take it any more, they took their .303s and aimed it at their toe and shot it off. Then they were injured, so they were allowed to go home. So, after a while the officers caught on and they thought a foot wound was a bit suspect. Some men called it a coward's ticket.'

After thinking about his uncle's answer for quite some time, David asked, ‘How did yours happen?'

‘What do you reckon?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Then I won't tell you.'

‘I reckon you didn't do it that way.'

‘You're just saying that, to see what I'll say.'

David lost track of time, one day often blending into another, and some seeming to disappear altogether. A bridge had been washed out hundreds of miles ahead so they couldn't be transferred on. Other trains from Perth were being held at Kalgoorlie until things were sorted here. They were stuck in between. They would be spending Christmas in the middle of the desert in the middle of Australia.

The track was being cleared, and repairs were being made where the dynamite had blown a hole in the tracks. Everyone explained that they were lucky only one box had blown and they'd got the rest out, or who knew what would
have been left of any of them. They ate a lot of beef in those first days, but had to bury the rest because of the stink. It was always hot and people tried to stay in the carriages. Mostly they got drunk.

David's finger turned blue and green, then black, but he still couldn't wriggle it.

Then it was Christmas Day, and they had roast for lunch and pudding which was brought in by a fixing crew on a little hand-pedalled rail car. There was a tree and people sang carols around a camp fire made of broken carriages. The days were searing and the nights freezing.

David's grandad didn't make much of a fuss about Christmas back on the farm. He said he'd lost the habit of it once David's mum was no longer organising. Besides, the farm jobs weren't going to take the time off.

David borrowed a knife from the train kitchen and made his uncle a letter opener out of some of the wood planking from the blown up dynamite wagon. He sharpened it on a huge flat rock back near the guard van. It had taken some time as he'd only had the use of one hand. His finger was being slow to get better. He'd keep forgetting to protect it and go and grab the rail to get back onto the train or catch it in his jacket and start it hurting all over.