I’m sitting in the Macquarie Lanes Diner as usual with one of my regulars, Otto. Otto is good because he’s twice a month, a fair price, and there’s never any fighting about it. He doesn’t want to do those games the others like to do, he doesn’t want to pretend he’s getting something from me for free, and he doesn’t offer to pay me double if he can hit me in the face while we’re doing it. Sometimes, with no reason to it, the pre-stuffed envelope of ten-dollar notes is more than the price we agreed at the start six months ago. All he wants to do is talk for a couple of hours and then he wants one bit of sex, either a blowie or a normal. He pays me enough that I don’t have to work the rest of the night, which is the real prize. Afterwards he buys me my tea in the diner and he eats too, not like the bleeding hearts who take me for food and order for me, way too much, and then sit there watching, making me feel like a disgusting pig while they sip at a beer, or a black coffee if they’re the Christian type. I’ve got thin at the Hedland. It makes me feel neater, easier to pack away.
Otto’s wife left him, he tells me, ‘like a pig prancing out of a pen’.
He owns a sheep station close to Marble Bar, a few hours’ drive from the Hedland. ‘It’s a beaut spot,’ he says. ‘Green in the winter, good watering hole to swim in in the summer. Course, I try and be self-sufficient, as much as possible — a bit of grow-your-own — heck, there’s enough space!’ he says, and chuckles. I imagine it, the fat woolly sheep, the rows of carrots and strawberries sprouting out of the ground. The fruit trees. I think up a tyre-swing and hang it over the watering hole, imagine ducks landing there on their way over. The sound of frogs at night. ‘Just me an’ the missus out there,’ he laughs. ‘That’s Kelly, me dog — she’s like a sister to me.’ He takes out his wallet and shows me a picture of her, she’s got beady eyes and sharp ears. ‘Not one of those sheep’d put a foot wrong while she’s in charge, wouldn’t no bastard fox take a go either. She’d rip the skin off ’em.’ Otto dips four chips in sauce and puts them all in at once. He enjoys the food at the diner because, he says, ‘Can’t cook for buggery. Carole used to do all that, eggs, snags, chops — the whole piece. I’m more of a corned beef and beans cook. Fuckin’ awful.’
With Otto I always order the calamari with a salad. The salad is the type with grated carrot and beetroot, not the type you see in the picture on the menu with the prickly-looking green leaves and tiny tomatoes and cucumber, but it’s all the same to me. Important, I know, to have a salad, it’s what me and Karen have when we eat together on off-nights.
When other people order for me, like they either worry I’d be too shy or too greedy, they always get me the beefburger and chips. They don’t think for a moment I might be a vegetarian, as if I’d be allowed to have those choices.
Tonight I have the fruit for afters, which is tinned, but it’s still good for you. Good for your skin, I think to myself every time, as if the welts on my back might heal over if I only have enough vitamins.
Because of the issue of space in Otto’s cab, and also because of the dark, he’s never seen my back. Because he never tells me Turn over, it has never been an issue. Sometimes we feel like friends. Today was blowie day, but not one of those punch-down-the-throat ones people are so fond of. I appreciate this because it can make the next one a real piece of hard work, it can bring tears to your eyes just swallowing.
I finish my calamari and my plate is beet-stained and greasy, and I have a beer, because you want something to cut through the feeling in your throat, even if it’s from a nice bloke like Otto. And then he fixes me with a beady eye, and he says, ‘Listen, pet, I’ve got a proposition.’
I leave a message for Karen, because she’s out when I run home to pack a bag. It’ll probably just be a week, Just a short break to see if I like the idea. I leave Karen money for the rent for the next month just in case — that’s Otto’s idea and he gives the money to me in twenties. He insists on leaving more than the rent costs, ‘So she knows I’m for real,’ he says. I tell Karen in the note that I’ll call the phone in the hall if I stay longer, and she can come and visit. I know she’ll understand, it’s what she’s after herself — to be out.
19
When I stopped at the top field on the way back home, I was missing a sheep. I counted and recounted five times and came up short. I searched the perimeter fence and the drainage ditch and there was no sign. The fence was solid. It was like something had swooped down and lifted her off.
I cut at a section of bramble that had got tangled around the nose and upper jaw of an old ewe. She was from my first lot, mature when she came to me. I was surprised the last time she managed a pregnancy, but this year she remained uninflated.
I forced open her jaw and cut the bramble out. It had made deep welts around her snout and done who knows what inside her mouth. She rolled her eyes away from me and towards the rest of the flock, struggling between my thighs until I let her go. The mud had made it in through the holes in my boots, and the old ewe bustled off without a glance behind her, without even the slightest air of being grateful that I had taken the thorns out of her face.
‘Screw you then!’ I shouted at her, and she stopped walking but didn’t turn back to look at me. I kicked the gate closed behind me and took a short cut up through the row of blackthorn and came out at the foot of the downs with the wind at my back. It pushed behind me and I ran in my clunking boots up the slope with flint and chalk loosening under my steps and with rabbits darting in and out of the brambles to my side. At the top I sweated and caught my breath while I inspected the southern sweep of the fields. Nothing moved other than the treetops. I turned to look out at the mainland and sat down to light a cigarette. I watched the car ferry crossing the water, a small white shoebox, and beyond that, the mainland waiting like a crocodile with all those people on its back.
To the west, the concrete wall of the island’s prison came out of the woods, and in a few places the Military Road was visible. Soon, once spring came in, the road would be invisible, the prison gone.
A movement caught my eye past the blackthorn at the foot of the slope. I stood up hoping to see my lost sheep, but it was Lloyd, digging. I watched for a while, his great sweeping movements, letting the spade take its own weight as it cut through the heavy wet ground. Dog lay next to him, watching, his head on his paws. Lloyd had his back to me. He was singing something, I caught a note on the wind. He looked right with a shovel, alone in the pit of the hill.