The Shepherd's Hut

  You went through my stuff ?

  I did. And I’m not sorry for it. How long do you think you can live out here on a dozen bullets and ten pounds of salt?

  I’m not here forever. Not eight years, that’s for sure. This is temporary.

  This is the month of May, Jaxie. On what you have, you won’t see June.

  I didn’t like the way the old man was talking. And he still seemed to think I was planning to set up permanent. But it hit something touchy when he said I wouldn’t make it till June because I planned to be close enough to Lee by then to text her and get us out.

  Well, I said. I’m not gunna sit on me arse and start talking to meself. I’ve got somewhere to get to.

  From here? Afoot?

  I can do it. But it won’t be all on foot.

  Good God, son, where’s close enough you can even entertain the notion?

  Mount Magnet, I said.

  Ah, he said. It’s a place, then? I had Magnet figured for a horse.

  I sat there with this awful empty feeling because in two seconds I’d told him everything. Christ, even Lee didn’t know what me plans were and I’d blabbed them to the first person I met. But then it sunk in that Fintan MacGillis didn’t even know where Magnet was.

  I only need a few weeks, I said.

  I see.

  So I’m orright.

  Rightso, he said poking up the fire again. But think on this, Jaxie. What kind of shape d’you want to be in when you get there?

  I shrugged. Who cares? What’s it matter?

  You’re staying on Mount Magnet?

  It’s a town, not a mountain.

  You’re safe there, then? You’ll stay?

  Fuck no. We’re outta there.

  So you’re meeting someone?

  You don’t need to know any more than that, I said, wild at him and me both.

  Well, you and this person you’re running away with —

  Just shut up about that.

  Even if she’s not a girl – and I’ll bet a year’s tea and flour she is – she’ll not likely get far with a fella too starved and weak to move quickly, and too dirty-looking to pass as a civilized individual. You’ll arrive looking like the Wild Man of Borneo. Have you thought of that, now?

  I tell you, I could have punched the sneaky old prick in the throat. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t because I’m such a good bloke I wouldn’t knock an old-age pensioner on his arse when he deserved it. It was what he said. How I’d be after a few more weeks of living out there on me own, how I’d look by then. What it’d be like trying to hitch a lift on the highway. What Lee’d make of me turning up looking rough and stinking like a bushpig. When I got there we might only have a moment or two and she’d have to make her mind up right there and then. Course I always believed in me heart she’d come with me. But what if I didn’t seem like me anymore, what if I looked scary and feral, what if she suddenly wasn’t sure? Would you go on the road with some mad-eyed cunt with shit in his hair and blood up his arms?

  I dug me toes in the dirt and bit on the tin cup. And Fintan MacGillis, the bastard, he felt me thinking, it was like he saw right into me.

  Lad, he said. All I’m saying is, don’t you want to give yourself the best possible chance?

  And that was what done it. How I came to stay. I didn’t decide right that minute but slowly, while we sat there talking and had another brew. He wasn’t even asking me to stop with him anymore, he was offering to give me all these supplies to keep me going, stuff I knew I was gunna have to hump back out to the diggings in stages. It’d take me days if I took half of what he reckoned I needed. I’d be wearing meself out carting cans and bags and drums when I could use those same days hunting from here and working on me plan. Except for salt I had no way of keeping meat at the prospector’s shack. And I’d be much closer to the highway back there, more likely to have people come sniffing about. Here, with the water trap, you didn’t need to hunt so hard. A box and a half of shells would go a lot further. And there’d be two of us to keep a look out, two sets of hands to get stuff done with. I still wasn’t sure about the old priest but I knew he was right.

  So I come straight out with it. Said if he didn’t mind I’d stay after all. See how it went. He looked so happy I couldn’t hardly stand it. And he gobbed on so much he didn’t even hear me reasons why.

  It was only today I saw he might have made sure them bloody binoculars stayed behind. I know he always hoped I’d stop and keep him company. He just didn’t know what that was gunna cost him.

  Thing is I still had me doubts.

  I was the old man’s guest and so I knew I probably wasn’t the one should be dishing out rules, but I told him from the start I was only camping at his place. Outside. I was gunna keep all my stuff separate and that meant having me own rifle close. Also it had to be clear I was only there for a bit. And there was no way I was ever sleeping under the same roof as him. No offence, I said, but I’m not taking any chances. And he said yes, yes, of course and by all means. Though he said I shouldn’t get paranoid and I told him straight up I wasn’t the druggy type. And for some reason he thought that was funny, the dozy old knob.

  Anyway we figured it out more or less. I set meself up just back from his clearing in a clump of gimlets. It was somewhere he could see me and I could see him, fair’s fair. He lent me a piece of heavy tarp and I strung it up for shade and in case it rained, but it never did while I was there. I had the swag he give me with a sheet and blanket and even a pillow. And a coupla milk crates and a plastic box with a lid to keep the crawlers out. There was a torch in the hut but not many batteries so he give me some candles and a pineapple tin he cut down for a reflector and windbreak. I didn’t need any cooking irons because we figured it was best to eat together, less waste. I could go me own way during the day though we should tell each other what we was up to so there was no accidents with guns. For a safety signal I had that shithawk screech to call down on him so he knew it was me coming, and in the end all he had for an answer was singing The Wild Colonial Boy which is a fucking joke, I know, but we reckoned it’d probably work. Anyone else singing for no reason it’d look suss, but him being Irish that wouldn’t count.

  Hard to say if we was neighbours now or housemates. Probably neither one. He said we were friends but I said if he ever tried anything friendly on me I’d shoot his cock off. Still, we had to trust each other somehow so I told him I believed he wasn’t a pedo, even if in me guts I wasn’t so sure. And he said he was certain and sanguine I wasn’t a murderer but I expect he wasn’t rock solid on that neither. Truth is, it suited me to keep him wondering.

  And it sort of worked, our arrangement. Before I couldna seen the sense in it. But two of us getting meat and wood, two of us keeping a look out, it was more efficient than one bloke faffing about on his own. And it wasn’t we had anything in common exactly but we was another human to talk to. Though there was a rule about gobbing off as well. We would never say nothing about each other to anyone else. Both of us swore on that. What happened at the hut stayed at the hut. And that meant it was safer we didn’t know much worth telling.

  So I didn’t say I was from Monkton. But it wouldn’t of mattered, the old bugger didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know Monkton from Meekatharra or Melbourne. It was like the priests brung him here in a fucking spud sack. He didn’t know shit about Australia or anything in it but he copped on quick and you had to be careful what you let slip. I guess we was both pretty cagey at first. Then it was easy to be careful, like second nature. Fintan said it was just good manners. He called it observing the rule. He had this way of talking that was fairly safe because what he said usually meant nothing much anyway. It was all blardy fucking blah, me boy, blardy fucking blah.

  First few days we done a stocktake, he called it. Pulled all the shit off his shelves and out of his drums and counted it up. He figured if it didn’t rain too much and the goats stayed thirsty the two of us could last well into the new year. When I told him it wouldn??
?t be two of us still here in the new year he give me the deaf treatment but I knew he heard me.

  It was two whole days before he give me a knife he had spare. It was an old boner, a Dexter with a wood handle and a fairish edge, and when I got it on a stone for half an hour it come up way better than fair. I spose that was when I knew he trusted me. I could of killed him at a distance with the Browning, done it any time of day. But most people’re more scared of getting cut than shot. What’s worse than the idea of having your throat slashed while you’re asleep in your bed? So a bloke with a good knife on him, that’s someone you gotta trust day and night, and there I was, camped outside his door, with him hard of hearing and me young and quick and dangerous. Yeah, I could of messed him up with the old butterknife I arrived with but he knew as good as me that Dexter would rip a man’s throat open in a second. Maybe I’m making too big a thing out of it. Just seemed to me when he give me that boning knife it sealed the deal between us.

  There was always jobs to do at Fintan’s place. That was no odds to me, I’m not the lazy type. We oiled the mill best we could. To keep the water up to the trough and because the squeaks and clangs give me the shits even if he couldn’t hardly hear them. And there was wiring on the fence to twitch back after every madarse billy got himself snookered. For a bloke Fintan was pretty big on the cleaning and washing. He give me a toothbrush I didn’t even ask for. All that got on my tits at first but I got used to it. And he taught me how to cook damper and johnnycakes and whatnot. I always did more than me fair share carting firewood because he was old and gimpy. And a coupla times I went back into the ridge country and popped a roo to give us a break from goat. Fintan loved a bit of roo. He boiled the tails up nice for a stew. A few times I frenched him out a rack or two to do in the oven but mostly he liked to fry up a fillet with pepper and a tomato. Said it reminded him of beefsteak lunches at the Shelbourne, which is a pub in Ireland. He said you wouldn’t even know it was kangaroo. And I told him there’s plenty of meat tastes like beef when you need it to.

  The job I really hated was emptying the shitcan. Fintan said it used to be once a week on his own but with the both of us there it was something needed doing every third day and it was a cunt of a mission. His setup was really just a thunderbox with a drum you pulled out when it was half full and could still be carried. You had to hoist it onto the barrow and make sure you didn’t wait till it was too full or you’d tip turds everywhere on your trip to the junkyard. Jesus, that was a long walk. The flies sucking at you and rubbing their poopy feet up and down on you. Then you’d be chipping at the stony ground with the mattock and shovel and when the hole was dug you’d gag your ring out pouring it all in. Soup Day, Fintan called it. Sometimes I shat out in the wildywoods just to put off Soup Day one more morning. Fintan said he would of done the same only he was too old to get down and squat. Said he’d rather smell it every third day than fall in it every morning.

  Most nights we sat by the outside fire. He read a lot, Fintan MacGillis. The same books over and over. And he saved an hour or two to do it in the daylight so as not to waste kero or candles. But he knew some stuff by heart too. Poems and bits of the Bible and that and he said them to me pretty often by the fire after dark. At first I thought it was just to show off how much stuff he knew but then I saw it was because he was lonely, it was like he said these words up against the dark, like he’d been doing it before I come along and maybe even before he got himself into whatever fuckup put him there.

  He was from Ireland where it’s green and rainy and people believe in fairies. He said the Irish don’t believe in the church anymore and they had a right not to, but they still believe in the little people and the Eeyou. I never did figure out what the Eeyou is. And I think fairy talk is bollocks but he reckoned people had it deep in their bones and he wondered if maybe there wasn’t something to it after all, and not just in Ireland. People feel things you can’t always see, he said. And I got to admit to meself there’s a bit of truth in that because sometimes I know when I’m being watched. And there’s times I know when someone’s coming, though it’s only if I know them. Maybe that’s what Fintan was barking on about when I first met him, that some of us still got the animal in us.

  This is what I want to talk about with Lee when I see her. One of the things anyway. Because I know she gets shit like that. She’s got this cattle dog look sometimes. She’s up and going before you’ve made your move, she feels your mind getting there before you decide. And I guess that sounds like bullshit to most people but I reckon there’s something in it. I’ve had time to think it out. Not as long as the old man but time enough now.

  Fintan said he thought people were no more stupid believing in fairies than believing in the church. And even if I agreed with him, talk like that sounded pretty sour coming from a priest. But he had the shits with them blokes, that was clear.

  One afternoon I asked him about Confession, why he wouldn’t do it if it was such a big deal. I spose it bothered me. Like, you are something or you aren’t something, you should shit or get off the pot. And I really thought he’d laugh at me for saying that but he took it serious. It made him chew on his plastic teeth.

  That fella, he said, the one who comes here. It’s not as if he mourns the state of my soul, you know. You see, Jaxie, securing a confession would advance his own prospects. There are powers and principalities to appease, forces to curry favour with. The whole point of having me here is to make certain I confess to nobody else.

  And he lost me there but I could see his heart wasn’t in the priest game anymore. I asked him did he still believe in God. He said he wasn’t sure, not if God was the peevish schoolmaster he was raised on. But he thought about it day and night. How to believe, what to believe. Truth is I felt sorry for him. Out there at the edge of the lake, a lake with no water in it, he was just making do. He wasn’t even thinking of moving on. It wasn’t just them who had him parked in the middle of nowhere. He had himself surrounded. No future, nothing to hope for, nothing rock solid to hang onto. He had no family anymore and no friends. That was where we were the same, me and him. But I’ve got someone to love, someone to go to and he knew it. It was like the less I said about her the more he knew it. I never once told him about getting Lee to Darwin and maybe Queensland but plenty of times he said I had me whole life ahead of me and he was envious.

  Jaxie Clackton, he said, I stand in awe of you.

  He was probably half taking the piss but sometimes I reckon he wished he was me. And I spose that was fair enough. He was right to.

  Pretty soon I lost count of the days. But I knew from the moon when a month was up. Mostly we got along alright, me and Fintan, though it wasn’t easy. Some days that deaf old bastard really got on me fillings. Mainly because he wouldn’t shut up. It was like he just couldn’t. Didn’t matter if I was round or not, he talked to himself day and night. Sometimes if I give him the silent treatment he’d cop on and see he was giving me the shits but most of the time he didn’t even notice. And maybe it’s a priesty thing but I wouldna been there a week before he started bossing me round like I worked for him, like I was his nephew staying over for the holidays, and a coupla times I had to tell him to go and get himself fucked. Like, who did he think he was? Standing round in his poofy hat like the Sheriff of Pedo Creek. Then he got all pursy and red and said I was an uncultured ingrate. I said he was a knobjob and he called me a juvenile delinquent. But he never pulled a gun on me. And he never flogged me. So I figured I could put up with his stupid nonsense.

  There was one day I wondered if I’d been out in the bush on me own too long. If I was halfway tapped like Fintan. It was late and I was coming in from the ridge country north with a field-dressed euro on me back and feeling pretty decent. I stopped to rest a sec and take a sip and when I put down that little roo and sat on the stony shelf beside him the world went quiet. It was like the birds and insects suddenly held their breath, the sheoaks left off their windy sighing and all I could hear was me own breath. And
for a moment it was like some creature, some beast was about to come pushing and snorting through the scrub. The feeling was so strong I had hairs up and I put a shell in the spout of the .243 and got ready, looking every which way but seeing only rocks and mulga. I was burred up for action, for ages. It was the only time in all those months I was ever scared in the wildywoods. I took a knee and scoped an arc. Even thumbed the safety off. But nothing turned up.

  Except I thought I heard something. Like a motor. A vehicle changing gear. But that couldn’t be. There wasn’t any tracks up that way. I figured maybe it was a jet. But no plane makes that down-changing sound. I sat and listened a good while. And knew I was just spooking meself because the birds started up again. And I never heard another thing.

  So I guess another month went by. And we had our chores and routines, the stuff we liked and the things that browned us off. Fintan reckoned we was the original odd couple, a veritable David and Jonathan he said, like they was some chill dudes.

  Early on he give me some goo to put on me puffy eye. Offered to do it himself but I said let me do it myself. So he give me the ointment and the sticky plaster and I stuck it up like that for a week and it come down to normal.

  Left a nice old scar, but. Saw it in Fintan’s shaving mirror. It didn’t look real lovely, still doesn’t but there’s nothing I can do about it. The old man said I shoulda let him stitch it but I wouldn’t let him that close back then. He never come out and asked me how I got it but he wasn’t stupid, he had a pretty good idea.

  The only time I ever let Fintan touch me was months in. I wanted me head shaved and he was the one with the razor. I got half of it done meself before he said here, let me finish that properly. But it took forever for him to get it done. That blade shook in his hand. Because I did warn him. He knew I didn’t want handling by any man. And I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or had the hots. He said for pity’s sake, lad, stop your wriggling. Lee says I’m twitchy as a pound dog. So it wasn’t the quickest haircut I ever got. Still, far as I can tell Fintan did a decent job, though he said it was a shame to make meself look like a convict, even for love, even for my Joan of Arc.