Only Killers and Thieves(5)

Tommy lurched out of the bucket, gasping, jerking his head around. The yard behind him was empty. There was laughter from inside the house. Mary’s voice, light and playful, some jibe at Billy’s expense. Tommy pushed himself to standing and collected his hat. Water ran from his hairline, dribbled off his chin. He kicked over the bucket, the dirty puddle seeping into the soil, then he walked around the side of the house scuffing the wetness from his hair. He paused. In the north, beyond the cattle yards, three horses were coming in from the scrubs, lit by the fading sunlight in a rich and golden hue. Father, Joseph, and Arthur, the dogs trotting with them, a thin dust trail behind. Tommy took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. He walked up the steps and went inside.

*

They sat around the table, mopping potato stew with freshly baked bread, Mary bemoaning her brothers and the lack of meat in the meal. She was eleven years old but thought herself eighteen; round-faced, with her mother’s fair coloring, and little time for a woman’s lot. She’d been pestering Father to let her work the scrubs ever since she was able to ride. Now all she wanted was to go hunting, instead of staying home with her chores.

“And who would help me?” Mother asked her. “Or do I grow another hand?”

“These two galoots. Let them clean and sew and see to the chooks. We’d be eating a nice fat possum if you let me go out. Or a kangaroo.”

“There ain’t no roos,” Billy said. “Anyway, how would you get one back?”

“Drag it if I had to, but I wouldn’t have rode so far.”

“That was his idea,” Tommy told them. “I never wanted to go north.”

“Only to keep clear of the mob,” Billy protested. “No other reason than that.”

Father sat back in his chair, chewing, a faint smile on his lips. He moved with a cattleman’s stiffness, and like all cattlemen his eyes were narrowed in a near-permanent squint. He wore his beard short, his dark hair too, and the lines in his face looked chiseled from birth. Only a few years past forty, he had the weariness of a much older man. Like every day was a struggle. Which in truth it was.

Father folded his arms and looked between his children. He was sitting at the head of the table, framed by the last of the sunset in the open window behind. Enough daylight still that a candle could be saved, and no need for a fire just yet. There would be, soon enough, once the sun was fully down. The walls of the house were made of ill-fitting timber slabs and the roof was shingled in bark, and both let in draft and dust and rain, if ever rain fell. Only the original building had a floor: the main room and a bedroom off it, separated by a blue curtain door. Annexed out back was another bedroom, where all three children slept, and an open-air scullery had been tacked onto the northern side. The whole dwelling leaned like a drunk on his horse, steadfastly refusing to fall.

“Your sister has a point,” Father said finally. “You had any sense you wouldn’t have been up that way at all. You’re as likely to find something in the yard.”

“We did, though,” Billy said. “Maybe a dingo or emu, we wasn’t sure.”

“Well, they do look about the same,” Father said. Mother and Mary laughed.

“We couldn’t see it properly for the trees.”

“Oh, aye? And which trees were those, then?”

Billy fell quiet. Tommy lowered his eyes too. Father wiped his bread around his plate, leaned his elbow on the table, and tore off a corner with his teeth. He chewed lazily, waiting. Mary’s head jerked between her brothers like a bird hunting grubs.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” Billy snapped. “Just . . . trees.”

“The blue gums up Sullivan’s way?” Father asked, but Billy only shrugged. Father turned to Tommy. “You’ll have to answer for him. Your brother doesn’t seem to know where he’s been.”

Tommy felt Billy staring. “We thought there might be rabbits in the shade.”

Father leaned both elbows on the table, hunched over his bowl. “Might be a golden bloody goose for all I care, you stay away from Sullivan’s place, understand? You’ve the whole country to hunt in—why in hell d’you go up there?”

“’Cause they’re galoots, I already told you.”

“Enough, Mary,” Mother said.

“What’s your problem with him anyway?” Billy asked. “What’s he ever done to us?”

Father sniffed and sat upright. He popped the last of his bread in his mouth and said, chewing, “There is no problem. Just do as you’re bloody told. Bloke like that could shoot you if he caught you hunting on his land.”

“We weren’t on his land,” Billy said quickly.

“Close enough. Don’t hunt in them trees again.”

“They weren’t hunting, neither,” Mary said. “They were taking a nice long walk.”

She laughed and Billy pushed her. Mary squealed and ducked away. Mother grabbed both of their arms and told them to settle and eventually they went back to their meal. Tommy paid no attention. He was staring into his bowl, watching the stew creep through the crumb of his bread, grain by grain by grain. He lifted the bread to his mouth but it collapsed into mush in his bowl. He glanced up and found Father watching him; Father rolled his tongue, shook his head, looked away.