The Mary Smokes Boys (17 page)

He laid his rifle on the ground and tied one of the fox’s hind legs to a branch with a cutting of wire. He took his skinning knife from his bag and pushed the blade in above the left foot and cut across to the right. He skinned the fox and scraped the fat and gristle and stretched the skin higher up in the tree and threw the carcass to the birds.

They stayed in light timber another hour and the sun rose without trace of another fox or dog.

They walked high into rock ridges where no one ever walked and Eccleston untied a trap. He dug a hole with his hand. He rubbed his hands with eucalypt and kerosene leaves to disguise his scent. He kept an old shirt in his shoulder bag that he tied around his head so no drops of sweat fell on the trap. He bandaged the jaws of the trap with calico and dropped strychnine in between the folds. Then he placed a sheet of newspaper over the plate and hinges so the jaws would not jam on the soil. He set, laid and buried the trap but for a short chain and heavy metal drag. Then he went about setting the rest of the line.

“I’d rather shoot em than trap em,” he said. “But we started too late and moved too slow.”

Grey wondered if there was a note of resentment in the words. But Eccleston buckled up his shoulder bag with no particular expression on his face.

Resentment would have pushed Grey now, pushed him to ask about last night. Instead he kept silent. Anyway, it was for Eccleston to speak. Grey felt if he started it here and now he would likely burst into tears that reason could not account for, maybe even hit the boy who stood beside him. Eccleston must speak first if there was anything to say; otherwise they were finished. And they could never be as they were. But perhaps

Eccleston had nothing to tell him after all. Perhaps Grey was losing himself.

On the walk back, Grey sighted a dog in a fringe of cypress. They followed the dog along a dry creek bed but lost track of it. They sat down on an exposed tree root. Eccleston pulled back the bolt of his rifle to check the breech. He switched the safety and lay the rifle down beside him. He took Grey’s water pouch up over his head and squeezed the bladder and let the water jet then trickle into his mouth. He handed the pouch back to Grey. Then he stared at his boots.

“You’re my brother, Grey. My one true brother. But I wonder if you love me like I love you.”

“What the hell’s that mean, Ook?”

Eccleston stared at him and said nothing.

“Have it your way.”

Eccleston laughed charily.

“You know you and Irene and the boys, but especially you and Irene, you’re all I have in the world. I’m a broke half-caste who used to work horses and now shoots dogs.” He spat. “You’re a good man, Grey. But you don’t know everything.”

“What the hell are you talkin about, Ook?”

“Maybe nothin.”

“Don’t tell me that then tell me it’s nothin. You’re like a bloody child sometimes.”

Eccleston nodded and rolled and lit a cigarette. Just then there was a cracking of twigs and the dog broke cover.

Eccleston slammed forward the bolt of his rifle and knelt on the floor of the wood. He pulled the rifle fast into his shoulder but the dog was already gone into the thick timber where they could not follow.

 

IN THE AFTERNOON Eccleston took his rifle and crossed Mary Smokes Creek and walked across Tanner’s north country to Possum’s humpy. He saw the bodytruck in the yard for the first time since the night of the horses. Possum must have borrowed
it again from one or other of his cousins, who all claimed part ownership. The registration plates were gone.

Possum sat on the floor of the humpy with a bottle of whisky, watching a small television set. The boys had given him a hundred dollars of the horse money.

“And this is what you did with it?”

Possum grinned and pointed at the picture that rolled over and over like a reel of film.

Eccleston laughed and sat down on Possum’s sour mattress.

“Let’s go hunt some dogs.”

“Why?”

“I need some money. You got any?’ Eccleston smiled.

Possum shook his head.

“Cause you bin buyin whitefella things.”

Possum grinned.

Eccleston looked on the floor and saw old pizza and hamburger boxes from Mary Smokes café.

“You bin eatin flash whitefella tucker too.”

“If a bloke only et bush tucker e’d die.”

“And now your money’s gone.”

Possum nodded.

“Come on,” said Eccleston, standing up. “I set traps this mornin. I’ll give you half a what’s in em. Get your shotgun and a decent knife.”

“Gun’s in the truck,” said Possum.

They walked behind the humpy and Possum climbed up into the cabin and reached behind the seat.

Eccleston rolled a cigarette and leant on the deck. He looked through the rails and saw halters tied inside. He saw dried horse dung.

“Pos.”

“Yep.”

The black man leapt out of the cabin with his shotgun.

“There’s horse shit in the back a this truck!”

Possum furrowed his brow and nodded.

“You didn’t clean the deck after we took the horses?”

“Nuh.”

“And you left the halters tied ere?”

Possum looked embarrassed like a child.

“I left the number plates in a hole in the hills,” he said. “Ownin halters don’t mean nothin.”

Eccleston looked away and spat.

“Where’s this truck bin?”

“Lockyer for a couple a weeks. Then ere.”

“How many blackfellas who know Tanner have you had ere since then?”

“Dunno. Few fellas from Cherbourg one night. But I don’t reckon they know Tanner.”

“Most of em have worked for im at one time or other. And Tanner knows you don’t haul nothin anymore but whisky’n blackfellas’ old furniture.” Eccleston looked across the rolling country to the south. “Has Tanner bin round ere to hire you since that night?”

Possum thrust out his bottom lip and shook his head.

“E hired you?”

“No,” Eccleston said. “Not once. And he’s got unbroken horses too, and cattle to pull down from the hills.” He sighed and wondered what that meant. At least Tanner had not been round in person and seen the truck. “Do you remember who you sold the horse to–the big one?’

Possum nodded.

“Like I said. Same as I sold all of em.”

“Was e a dealer ord e keep im?”

Possum shrugged.

“Dunno, Ook. But I erd im say somethin about Ma Ma Creek.”

“You reckon you could find im if you had to?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

Eccleston sighed and put his cigarette under his heel. He looked again to the south. “Get me a hose, Pos.”

IT WAS THE NIGHT OF THE TIGER SCRUB CHARITY DANCE and Irene walked to the truck barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hands. Grey noted her blue-painted fingernails. Amy Minh’s Yunnanese mother had given her a high-collared
qipao
that she had worn herself thirty years ago in another country. The woman felt sorry for the girl who had no mother and was always with men and boys and had no pretty things.

Tiger Scrub lay to the northwest of Mary Smokes, twelve miles off the Valley Highway. It was not a town, but a cattle-grazing district. One small yellow hall beside a schoolhouse was all that marked it out from the surrounding country that was poisoned and ringbarked so dead trees stood pale and twisted on the hills.

 

THEY LEFT THE truck on the gravel in front of the hall. They came up the stairs where a small brother and sister sat playing and already dirty-faced. The children smiled roguishly up at Irene and she mussed the boy’s hair. The smell of varnished floorboards came wafting from inside along with the pretty, waltz-time music of a band.

The hall was powered, but the only electric lights were on the stairs and in the kitchen and above the hole-in-the-wall bar. Kerosene lamps sat on the tables and their light burnished the walls. The band played on a raised platform in the corner before a space for dancing where no one danced.

Grey looked over the crowd. The season’s three showgirl entrants were selling raffle tickets. The boys were there. All but Eccleston. Irene spotted some of her schoolmates through a doorway on the back veranda and went to meet them.

Grey sat down next to Thiebaud on a bench along the wall.

“Where’s Ook?”

“Who knows.” Then Thiebaud smiled. “Few out-a-towners here tonight. Look at her!”

He nodded in the direction of a girl in a slim-fitting red dress at a nearby table.

“Old Reg Swan’s granddaughter. That’s her parents she’s with. She’s all right, eh?”

Grey nodded.

“Why don’t you go talk to her? You used to fence for old Reg, didn’t you?”

“That was years ago.”

Grey glanced again at the girl.

“I think I might have met her once.”

“There’s your ticket!”

Raughrie Norman crossed the hall in front of the girl, glanced at her, and came and sat down on the other side of Thiebaud.

“She’s all right, hey Flagon?”

“Who?”

Thiebaud laughed.

“Why don’t you ever wear your glasses out?”

“Who, Grey?”

“The girl in red.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, she’s all right.”

Thiebaud laughed again.

“Don’t try’n fool me, Flagon. You can’t see a bloody thing from here. You’re probably lookin at her father.”

He put his arms around Raughrie Norman’s drooping shoulders and the boy giggled.

“Go to hell.”

“Her uncle looks all right from here too! Mind, I’m near drunk. You might be the better judge.”

“Go to hell,” Raughrie Norman giggled.

They were still laughing when Grey remembered very suddenly the thing he had forgotten and he felt a small hole–only the size of a marble–inside his stomach and he felt the breeze go through it though there was no breeze inside the hall.

“I’ll be back in a minute, boys.”

“Where you goin?’ Flagon asked.

“Nowhere.”

Directly he stepped onto the veranda the talking ceased. He glanced over the faces that looked up at him. There were four girls and two young boys he knew well enough. A boy shifted a stolen bottle behind a chair with his boot.

Irene smiled at her brother.

“What is it, Grey?”

He stood in silence, thinking of what to say.

“I was just wondering if you wanted something to eat.”

“Are they serving already?”

“Soon.”

She smiled and furrowed her brow.

“That’s all right. I can get it myself.”

He nodded and went back inside and sat down with Thiebaud and Flagon, feeling foolish and watching the front door while one by one the lamps went out and the room dimmed.

Thiebaud danced with most of the girls in turn. Raughrie Norman stayed faithful to the bench and the wall, looking around anxiously and tapping his feet in contemplation of a move that did not happen until dinner. Eventually Grey stood up and joined the line at the counter. The girl in the red dress lined up behind him. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. She stared at the chalkboard menu. She came beside him and stared so long and intently at the names of the three simple meals on offer that it was obvious she wanted to talk.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “the Women’s Committee have never killed anyone with their catering, at least not in my time.”

The girl smiled.

“You’re Grey North, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.” He was surprised she remembered him.

“I was at your house once with my grandfather.”

“Yes, I remember you too.”

He remembered her sitting in Reg Swan’s car when the old man had come trying to recover a saw Bill North had borrowed without asking and then forgotten to return. That was six years ago. This girl had probably been too young to remember the circumstances.

“I’m Madeline.”

He shook her hand. They each took a plate of fish and baked vegetables, and the girl took a bowl of bread and butter pudding.

“You can come sit with us if you like.”

He could only accept.

She sent him for two glasses of Stanthorpe merlot.

Through the meal he watched the door. He felt no desire to make conversation with the girl beside him. Reason told him that he should. That was what young men and women did: talk politely over food and wine. He wondered what was wrong with him. Where was Eccleston tonight? He began watching the door without knowing who he was watching for, Eccleston or some other …

His meal went cold.

He gave up watching. He felt ridiculous.

“So how long are you here for?’ he asked Madeline Swan.

“Only until tomorrow night.”

“Are you staying at Reg’s?”

“No. At a motel.”

He paused. He lost the thread of the conversation as a late arrival entered the hall. The vague shape of a young man transformed into that of a well-known old farmer.

“Which one?”

“The Pines.”

Grey sighed. He stood up suddenly.

“Listen, why don’t you and me get out of here and do something tonight?”

“Well … I … “

He had shocked her. He laughed at his audacity. Her easy manner of before was gone.

“I really should–”

“Forget it,” he said. “We’re backward this side of the hills. Forgive me.” He sat back in his chair. “I was going to hit you with a plank of two-by-four as you walked out, but I thought I’d be polite.” The girl did not take the joke at once. But Grey smiled and then everything was all right.

The meal was over. He excused himself and walked out onto the veranda and got a cigarette off Hart Bates. Bates did not talk and Grey leant on a post under a blue light and smoked in peace.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned quickly.