My first summer on the island, I’d cooked my tea on the beach, drunk beer wrapped in a blanket, listening to the waves break, watching the lights come on over on the mainland, while my eyes got used to the black sea with the moon tripping off it at the horizon. I had it in my head to do it the next summer, but the breaks between rain got smaller and sometimes there was a smell on the beach around dusk, something between burnt rubber and silage.
Dog ate a dead crab. I heard it being broken apart, turning to dust. A drizzle started and gave a silver fringe to his fur. He finished his crab and saw something in the dry grasses on the bank and pricked his ears. He moved up the slope, his legs bent at the knees, and disappeared over a dune, the back-kick of his leg picking up speed. While he was occupied, and so that he wouldn’t chase the bird out into the water and crunch her up too, I waded out a little way in my gumboots, which, it turned out, had a hole in each of them small enough to be invisible to the naked eye but large enough to let in frozen water, which chafed at my heels and then crept up my socks. I rolled the bird out of the newspaper and let her float into the sea. She tried to come back in a few times, but eventually after some encouragement she floated past the small breakers, her chest white and dry and her broken wing pointing upwards as she went further and further out and then sank, like the sea had swallowed her. I hummed the song from Titanic.
6
Outside Kambalda is a shearers’ pub which isn’t much more than a galvanised shed with a bar and tables made out of railway sleepers. They serve whisky in mugs and everything else is canned. You’re supposed to bring your own cooler, and I make a mental note to pick one up next time we see a shop, which could be weeks from now. I’m at the bar, turning a mug of whisky in my hands and taking longer than I should because a feeling’s come over me like I’m on the outside of myself, and how did I end up at this bar in the middle of a desert with the smell of a barbecue coming in through the open wall of the shed, and with all these men, not another woman in running distance, and how is it that this is a strange comfort, and how long will it last before something finds me again and I have to go somewhere else. One of the younger blokes, Connor, comes and slouches next to me.
‘You right?’ he says.
I nod.
He inspects the dirt underneath his fingernails, decides it’s right just the way it is and starts to roll a smoke. ‘Fitting in pretty good, for a chick.’ I look up. He points to his tobacco with his eyebrows raised.
‘Ta,’ I say and he takes out another paper to roll me one too. I have a friend.
‘So where were you before here?’ he asks, and a ripple goes through me.
‘I worked for my uncle on a station up north.’ I hate myself for the lie, not because it’s a lie but because it’s a stupid one and I should have been prepared.
‘Your uncle has a station? Where north?’
Don’t think about it or he’ll know you’ve made it up.
‘Marble Bar.’
‘Marble Bar? I know Marble Bar — maybe I’ve worked his station, what’s his name?’
I can feel now the sweat is beading on my upper lip and forehead. I fight to control the flush of my face.
‘He’s dead,’ I say. ‘He died, it was really bad.’
Connor grimaces. ‘Jeeze, sorry to hear it,’ he says, looking uncomfortable, but he opens his mouth and I know he still wants the name of the uncle, and so I cut in and a story comes out that has nothing to do with my brain.
‘He was trampled.’ Again Connor looks like he wants to ask a question, so I cut him off. ‘Sheep got spooked by a storm — went crazy.’ I am sure Connor’s never heard of a death by sheep-trampling; there’s a look on his face for a moment when he seems like he might think I’m joking with him and so to stop him, I say, ‘The head came clean off.’
Whether or not Connor believes me, his eyes are wide, and he has stopped trying to ask questions. Perhaps he thinks I am a mental case, which is fine. He raises his drink. ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Well, jeeze — these things are liable to happen to a bloke working out in these sorts of places. Sheep can be flighty bastards — got no loyalty, not like dogs.’ He hands me a roll-up and lights mine first then his. He clinks my mug softly with his can. ‘To Uncle…’ He leaves a gap for me to fill the name.
‘John.’ I say Dad’s name, a name that always seemed too fancy and European for him.
‘To Uncle John.’ And we drain our drinks and go and sit back at the table.
Clare is beasting the kid, calling him nicknames that don’t mean anything much but which make Bean go red in his pale cheeks, as if his real name wasn’t bad enough. Nippy Balls, Sour Tit, Pussy Willow. He won’t leave the kid alone, but it is pretty funny.
‘G’wan, Ball Ache,’ says Clare, ‘show us where your dick’s hidden.’ Clare pulls a stool up opposite me and gestures for Bean to sit. ‘Let’s see who wins a wrestle between you and Alice the Goon here.’ Mostly the men laugh, but not all of them. There’s a quiet moment when Bean and I look at each other. I would like for this not to happen, and when Bean sits opposite me with a look of drunken determination coming over him, it breezes through me that if I let him win, then maybe he’ll get less of a hard time. But I won’t do that, I know it as I settle my elbow on the table. Bean will have to fend for himself; he might be small and awkward, but I am a woman on a sheep station. We grip hands over the sleepers, position our elbows to everyone’s satisfaction, and money starts getting laid down. I catch Greg’s eye and he smiles at me, holds up twenty dollars. I see Bean’s white biceps bulge like a new potato, and there’s a countdown shouted by everyone. The kid’s face goes red and fierce, his lips pull back from his teeth, and it’s not a total pushover. There’s some strength in him, but mainly it’s the strength of fear, like those times you hear about kids lifting lorries off their parents. Our fists wobble in the centre, but soon Bean has used up his burst of self-belief, and his face sweats and he is tired and done. I start to push his arm down, and I see in his face the huge disappointment, he had thought this was his time to be hoicked onto the shoulders of the men, for his movie-self to be stronger than he looked, but once we are three-quarters of the way down, he has no way back up and I flatten him and everyone cheers and whoops, and Bean lays his head on his spent arm.
Later, when I am drunk, and Bean has been relegated back at the end of the table, where Denis now and again asks him a question and then doesn’t listen to the answer, Greg sits himself in front of me and puts up his massive arm. I laugh and he laughs and I put my arm up too, like we’re about to wrestle, but all we do is grip hands like that.
‘Strong lady,’ he says.
In the morning, I wake up in between Greg’s bear arms. I hold my breath and count to fifty. Okay, I say to myself, okay, and I check through my body from the feet up. All is warm and nothing hurts except the crick in my neck from lying on his shoulder. The smell of him, lanolin and whisky that has been sweated out of him in the night.