Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

With a machete he took the tails and threw them into the tarp on the back of the ute. It took the better part of an hour to do this and to drag the carcases into a heap away from the water. Old Wentworth, the cocky, could do what he liked with them.

He wondered for a while about going on to a dam and setting up there, because it was early yet, but he felt sluggish and lazy, and after all it was Friday night and he’d had a gutful.

He finished up his smoke. Now he could hear them all out in the wheat again, trampling, eating, swishing through. Lord, they were eating up the country! People told him that further south, and right across to Sydney it was the rabbits they were knee deep in, and emus too. It was like the Egyptian flamin plagues. They’d started dynamiting them, laying baits. Some blokes, even one over by Bruce Rock, were making double money by selling the meat for petfood. But you needed to have partners for that, and Quick was glad to be alone. He got skins most places, but some cockies, like Wentworth, paid enough on private bounty, roo for roo, that it was only necessary to take tails. He took shire bounty on foxes most green months and did all kinds of skins some time or another, but this time of year he was just culling.

He listened to the sound of a bird nearby, a sort of gasping noise at the edge of the wheat. He’d never heard it before in all the time he’d been living out like this, five nights a week. Bill was standing firm all of a sudden, and whining under his breath. Quick held the dog’s head and felt the damp, loose flesh beneath his jaw. The bird noise was a little cough out there now. He took up the rifle and cocked it.

It’s orright, boy. Looks like I missed one, that’s all. Poor bugger’s out there chokin.

It was a good fifty yards out across the roo-battered fence to the edge of the crop. Out of the spotlight now, Quick could only follow the outlines and contours of things, but he could see plain enough where the wheat was moving. A long way out, on the faintest rise, he could see the heads of other roos grazing in the quiet. Once he saw the wheat moving, he strode out beyond the spot and took the safety catch back.

He felt the hind legs in his chest before he even saw the darkness of it rearing, paws out, and within a second all he could see was the Southern Cross up there, clear as a road sign above the tight blonde heads of wheat. There was the cracking echo of the three-oh as it fell to the ground beside him — or was it the crack of his head on a stone? — and in the quiet aftewards there was the slow, strangling sound of the animal only an arm’s length away. The whining of the dog above. The sound of blood marching across him, establishing a beachhead on his chest.

After a while, the kangaroo died and gave out a stinking evacuative snort. Bill turned circles. Time proceeded. The light from the spotty on the ute began to fade as the battery juiced out. Quick watched the Southern Cross melt into the great maw of darkness.

Light comes across the sky, a great St Elmo’s fire of a thing, turning and twisting till it fishtails towards the earth and is gone.

Quick feels the blood setting like Aquadhere in his nose. He wonders where the light went. If he can’t walk he’ll die out here. That’s a dead ute, now. In a moment he’ll have to try. No use putting it off. Bound to be able to walk.

Out of the slumber of giants he comes, and there in the waking world with the Southern Cross hanging over him is his brother Fish rowing a box across the top of the wheat.

Quick pushes the sound against his teeth. Fish?

HARVEY ORANGES says the box. The oars are tomato stakes. Fish’s body is silver with flight.

Fish?

Carn.

Quick stares. The box comes to a halt a few feet out from him and Fish is leaning out, causing it to rock precariously. It’s floating up there. I’m under it, thinks Quick, I’m under water, under something. God Almighty, I’m gonna drown.

Carn, says Fish. He lowers his hand.

Quick lies still. That’s not his brother that’s a man. That’s a man’s arm.

Carn, Quick. Let’s go fishin.

Fish?

Yeah?

Am I orright?

Fish widens his eyes a moment, then closes them to let out a long crackling laugh. Quick squints at the sound of it, cowering. When the laugh is all emptied out, Fish rests his chin on the gunwale of the fruit box, looks down dreamily.

Carn, Quick.

Quick looks up, uncertain.

Carn, Quick.

I can’t.

The dog is whining, turning circles.

Quick?

I can’t, I can’t !

Ya love me?

Yes! Yeah, Fish. Quick struggles to keep the panicky weeping out of his throat. But, I just can’t move.

Fish is looking at the dog now. Bill looks back, agitated.

Where you goin, Fish?

Fish leans down, slouching the box over till you’d expect the sound of water or night sky sloshing into it and arms the dog up into the box. Quick feels a bead of saliva fall on his brow.

You goin home, Fish?

The Big Country.

The box rights itself again and Bill barks in excitement as it pulls away a little. Fish holds the dog between his knees. He’s too damn big for a fruit box. He looks bloody stupid, that’s what, a man rowing a crate. Across the wheat. Across the still waters of the sunburnt crop wherein lies Quick Lamb breathing without help, with the Southern Cross hanging above, rippling now, badly seen, beyond the surface.

He took my bloody dog.

Goanna Oil

Old Wentworth found him unconscious under a mound of boisterous flies in the afternoon, roasting like a pig at a party.

Yer bloody lucky a man wuz goin by on the orf chance! the old farmer shouted over the sound of the FJ whose gear box was shot to bits already. Yer woulda died sure as shit I reckon.

Quick watched the gravel ahead. The dog was gone, but the three-oh was beside him. He wasn’t sure about himself at all. He went to sleep.

Late at night he woke headsore and stiff under a sheet on a cot. He looked about. It was Wentworth’s place. They’d lately turned the verandah on the shady side into a sort of sleepout with flyscreens and an old chest of drawers with boyish graffiti scratched into it. It was a cool evening, though Quick could feel the heat radiating from his skin. His chest was taped and there was a bandage across his nose. He could hear them talking in there, Wentworth and his missus. And the girl, their daughter. They’d had the doctor out, he knew. Well, that took care of the week’s pay, the quack and the board they’d charge him. Wentworth had been the one to give him his first shooting job, a break alright, but the old boy was a mean bastard, tight as a noose. He didn’t give anything away, not even kindness. But I’m orright, thought Quick, I’m orright, and he sank back into a blank, overheated sleep.

Quick woke again and there was Wentworth’s daughter, Lucy. She was rubbing his blistered skin with goanna oil. He’d never really spoken to her before in all his coming and going from the homestead, and here she was, smelling of horse, her hair a dirty blonde colour, her jodphurs feasting on her.

Is that really your name? she said. Quick Lamb?

Yeah, he said as she slipped a finger into his bellybutton.

Because you’re fast? Her hands were ducking and diving under the waistband of his shorts.

Nah. No.

Quick had never been rubbed by a girl before. He’d never even kissed a girl. At school he was too sad and slow for romance. And now he looked at the short and bottley Lucy Wentworth and knew he wasn’t interested even now, but he couldn’t bring himself to object about her slipping her grabbers into his boxers.