Only Killers and Thieves(19)

“What’s he come for really?” Tommy wondered aloud.

“To help, was what it sounded like,” Billy said. “Wasting his bloody time.”

“Don’t tell me you’ll take his side.”

“His side’s our side, or would be, if Daddy wasn’t so set against him.”

When they reached the house Mother hugged them, looked them over, cradled their cheeks in her palm. As if they’d been away forever, not a week on their own land.

“Well? How was it? You have fun?”

“Yeah, fine,” Billy answered. “Same as always. Drought’s got ’em, though.”

“Tommy? You okay?”

He nodded. “How long’s he been here?”

She stepped back and fussed a little with her apron, her hair. “An hour. I wasn’t expecting him. Don’t think your father will have been either.”

“That other one gives me the jips,” Mary called, throwing up her hand to try and make Red jump.

“He do anything?” Tommy asked.

“No, no, nothing,” Mother said. “John just talks and talks, and Raymond hardly ever speaks. Now, I’ve got a bath drawn. Which of you wants the first turn?”

Billy ran straight around the back of the house, to where the bath was kept. Mother tilted her head sympathetically at Tommy, but he shrugged and went over to the steps and sat down. He was used to going second. That had been the order all his life. Mother followed Billy, and Mary came and sat beside Tommy on the steps, as the dogs slouched away toward the kennels and the chance of water and food.

“You stink,” Mary said, sniffing him. “I mean really, really stink.”

“You should smell my bloody boots.”

He made as if to remove them, but she squealed and grappled his arm. They settled and both watched Sullivan and Father still talking by the yards.

“Did he say much about anything? While they were waiting?”

“Not really. I kept out the way. Ma gave him lunch, the best of what we had.”

“Nothing about Daddy, or the cattle, the sales?”

“Nope.”

“Or what happened with me and Billy? Those blackfellas? Noone?”

“I was waiting for it but he never did. It was all proper kind of talk.”

The conversation was winding up. Locke was already mounted, and Sullivan was backing away, still talking, though too distant for Tommy to hear.

Tommy said, “I never knew his name was Raymond.”

“I know. I’d have thought something harder. And dumber. Like Dirk, or Rock.”

“Rock Locke,” Tommy said, and they fell against each other laughing again. Mary recoiled at the smell, laughing all the harder, while in the distance Father stood alone beside the cattle yards, watching the dust trails of two horses peel into the scrub.





8



Father and Arthur would be gone a week, droving the cattle to the saleyards in Lawton, and behind them they left a lightness like the aftermath of a storm. Everyone was happier. The children shared chores without fuss or complaint, Mother hummed and sang songs while she worked. Before meals she gave thanks instead of prayers filled with want, and as they ate their potatoes and the last scrapings of beef they talked excitedly about life after the sales. They’d all seen the cattle but were each just as bad: planning and plotting like a make-believe game. The new stock they’d invest in, the repairs they could do, the men they’d put on and the luxuries they would be able to afford, if only for a little while. After three days of such talk Mother’s mind was made up: she would take the dray to Bewley, she announced, fill the pantry before Father returned. Give him some reward for all his hard work.

“I’ll come with you,” Billy told her. “Help load it all, drive the dray.”

She shook her head. “I need you here with Mary.”

“But I’m the oldest.”

“Which is why I need you to stay.”

So Tommy squeezed himself into the suit he and Billy shared, once owned by a dead uncle neither of them had met, and waited with Jess and the dray in the yard by the steps, Billy and Mary waiting with him, chirping about Bewley and the favors they wanted bringing back. A new hat for Mary. Lollies from the store. A rubber band from Song’s Hardware, so Billy could make a shanghai.

They quit when Mother came through the door. She was wearing her blue-and-white church dress, pinched at the waist with a ruffle of ankle-length skirts. She had pinned up her hair and powdered her cheeks, and none of them had seen her so pretty in a long time. A little gasp escaped Mary, and both boys stared, until Billy asked, “Is it proper, going out like that with Daddy away?”

“Oh, give over, Billy,” she told him, coming down the steps. She kissed him and Mary, climbed into the dray, Tommy followed her up. They shuffled into position on the wooden bench, Tommy took up the reins, clicked Jess on, and the dust-clogged wheels turned. The dray juddered forward. The axle creaked. Mother gave a jaunty wave, and Billy and Mary stood watching as they rode toward the sunrise and the long dirt road heading east.

*

It was midday when the few low buildings that made up the township first appeared on the plain. All alone in that amber scrubland, trembling in the haze. The dray rattled along toward them, Mother holding her hat against the wind, Tommy squinting into the glare, both of them grimacing at the ride. There was no give in the axle. Every rock and divot jarred through the bench. Before them the road stretched straight and narrow, little more than a horse track beaten through the bush, but the only road Bewley had. It ran through the center of town and continued east for hundreds of miles, supposedly to the mountains, then the coast and an ocean so big it covered half the earth. Tommy could hardly imagine it. But then the same could be said of the interior, which no man had ever crossed; must have been the size of an ocean at least. The thought made him woozy: the scale of it all, what lay out there, the world. One day, maybe. One day he might see some of it, leave these scrubs behind. It didn’t seem possible. In his fourteen years, Bewley was the farthest from their boundary that Tommy had ever been.