The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (11 page)

That’s what I said, said Ron. Thing is she’s not too keen on you shooting that either.

The wind gusted around the rocks.

She up from town? Jacko said.

Headed back tomorrow, said Ron.

Erroll’s not up this weekend is he? Jacko said after a while.

No, Ron said. It wouldn’t be theirs.

I’ve told him, said Jacko. He’s a bloody idiot bringing that cat up here.

They’ve got a bell on it, Ron said.

Nobody spoke for a while.

Could’ve been a feral she saw, Jacko said.

Yeah, said Ron. Could’ve been.

I’ll have a word to Grizz, Jacko said. Tell him he might want to put out some traps.

Wind’s coming round, said Ron.

Yeah, Jacko said.

You headed back down?

May as well. Jacko gave a long stretching yawn and followed it up with a belch. I was having shit-all luck shooting the bugger anyway.

The next Winstone heard of him was a whistle from away down the slope and Winstone rocked backwards and forwards
counting the times and got to thirty and pissed quietly into the rocks and when he’d finished he closed his eyes and breathed in and out and felt as good as he’d felt in a while and maybe ever.

He looked out and Ron was already out of sight and Jacko was halfway down the hill with the dogs behind him. Winstone waited a bit longer but not too long in case Alicia came back to see if the kitten was okay. Then he climbed up and through the rocks and crawled out on the other side and looked around him. All clear. He started to scramble commando-style towards the edge of the tor but there was a speargrass clump in the way and he had to get up. Slowly he raised his head above the last rock.

The air split. Fifteen metres ahead of him on the open slope a rabbit twisted out of the grass and screwed left and that was the last thing it did. The crack of the shotgun was still rolling around the range and Winstone hadn’t finished working out if he was alive and the dogs were already there. The wind snapped west and pushed down the smell of green meat. Winstone turned around and crawled back into his hole.

THE KID LAY
on his back on the cot looking up at the jailhouse window. The sky was picked clean by the wind and in the square of night he could see there were stars and they looked ragged and unfriendly. He could hear the wind in the yard outside and the wind up under the eaves and a loose shutter bang against a wall in no particular rhythm. The shutter banged and a dog barked up and a voice yelled out at the dog to hush and the shutter banged again and whatever else might be happening in Granville that night the wind blew clear away.

A gust came in through the office door and the sheriff followed it in and bolted the door behind him. He took off his
hat and laid it down on the desk and wiped the sting of the wind from his face with his bandana. Phew, he said. It’s blowin tonight.

Hey sheriff, the Kid said.

What is it son?

You know if somebody fed my horse?

I daresay they did. Johnsons’ll take good care of him, don’t you worry.

Maybe you could check, the Kid said.

Well maybe I could. Maybe next time I go out I might swing by there.

I’d appreciate that.

The sheriff walked over to the stove and took a rag from the nail above the stove and wrapped it around the pot and poured himself a cup of coffee. You know, he said, Judge Givens’ boys are out there combing the country for your friend. I don’t suppose you could tell me where to find him.

What friend? the Kid said.

The sheriff sipped his coffee. The one you were roomin with son. The one everbody in town saw you ride in with.

He aint a friend, the Kid said. Just a man I met on the road is all. Figured since we was both stoppin off we may as well share expenses.

That right, the sheriff said. Well maybe he aint that good of a friend. He sure did make himself scarce pretty fast. Then again I caint say as I blame him.

The Kid sat up on the cot and picked at the toe of his boot. What does the judge want with him anyway? He aint done a thing to nobody.

Same way you aint?

The Kid was silent.

Well I guess Eli’s concerned for his character, the sheriff said. The judge don’t like the company he keeps.

The sheriff looked over the rim of his coffee cup at the Kid and his cheeks glowed with the wind and the stove and the light of the lamp on the desk and the light of the lamp glinted in his eye. Behind him the Kid’s six-shooter hung on the wall.

Bang bang bang went the door but the knock upon it was light and sweet and the sheriff put down his coffee without alarm. He crossed the office and stood square in front of the door and looked through the peephole into the dark and the wind and then he slid back the bolt and opened the door.

Miss Mary Ellen, the sheriff said and he stood aside to let her in. Your daddy know you’re here?

No, Cooper said and his gun barrel gleamed in the dark below her jaw. Miss Mary Ellen’s with me tonight.

She stepped in through the door neck stretched and eyes darting back like a spooked-up horse.

Easy now, Cooper said and he kicked the door to behind them.

I’m guessin we found your friend, the sheriff said to the Kid, but he didn’t take his eyes off the gun on Mary Ellen.

Drop your weapon, Cooper said.

The sheriff unbuckled his gun belt and let it fall to the floor. Cooper inclined his head to the left and the sheriff slid the belt that way with his foot and whether by accident or device the belt stopped midway between them. It lay there on the boards with the leather caught up in itself and the pearl grips of the sheriff’s twin Colts glowing yellow and red in the lamplight.

The point of Cooper’s pistol pressed into Mary Ellen’s throat and his finger was on the trigger. He had hold of her other arm behind her back and with Mary Ellen curved over his heart he moved into the room real slow. Pick it up, he said.

He let go of her arm and Mary Ellen bent her knees and sank to the floor and Cooper’s gun sank with her and kept her chin up and her back braced straight as a poker.

By the leather, Cooper said. Use both hands.

Mary Ellen picked up the belt. She held it there across her knees with a .45 hanging off to each side and Cooper told her to get up and she did and she still hadn’t looked at the Kid who stood watching the three of them go about their slow-motion play through the shadowed frame of his cell.

Cooper reached around her and took a gun from the holster with his left hand and opened the chamber and emptied it and reached for the other gun and emptied it too and the sheriff’s bullets rang on the boards at Cooper’s feet like so many nails in a coffin.

Throw him the keys, Cooper said, and the sheriff’s big iron key ring arced through the light and the dark and the Kid caught it neat as neat in one hand and in two seconds more he was free and standing at Cooper’s side and buckling on his gun belt.

The sheriff shook his head. Boys, he said, you better hope I catch you before Eli Givens does.

The Kid pulled out his gun and spun it around in his hand as if checking its character had not changed and then he held it on the sheriff. What do we do with him? he said to Coop. They looked at each other and they looked at the sheriff and they looked for a long time.

The palomino’s head tossed and the reins were in the Kid’s hand as he vaulted into the saddle. The Kid and Cooper hit the main street of Granville abreast and they rode it at a thunder. The wind snatched at their heels and their hats and the tumbleweeds raced and they outrode the weeds and the wind and the town and the grey was no less swift or sure of foot for the extra burden he was bearing.

On Granville’s empty street the sheriff’s door remained locked and the lamps in his office went on burning. In the yard behind the office the wind blew and the shutter banged. Inside,
the light of the lamps spilled over the floorboards undisturbed and beyond its circle the sheriff lay trussed and fuming behind the bars of his own cell.

Cooper’s hands reached up and closed around Mary Ellen’s waist and he lifted her down from his saddle. On the sandy floor of the canyon pale in the moonlight she stood looking at them with her chin held high and her hair was whipped and wild and her eyes were lost in shadow.

It’s okay, the Kid said. He stood square to Coop and his feet were spread and his right hand was braced at his thigh. You can let her go now Coop.

Go, said Coop and it wasn’t too dark to see him smile. Now what do you think Miss Mary E? Should I let you run back to your daddy?

Mary Ellen swept her hair back. What do I think? she said. Well Mr Cooper I guess I think it’s about time you and your friend stopped standin there and got us up a fire and some coffee.

Behind the Kid’s boots the fire sparked up the night and the crickets sang in the blue and he let the armload of wood he’d fetched tumble down and across the fire Cooper spoke and his voice was easy.

Well the Kid here bought it, Cooper said. Let’s hope your friend the sheriff did too.

The light of the fire shone in Mary Ellen’s brown hair. We got away didn’t we, she said.

We sure did, Cooper said and he tossed the dregs of his coffee into the embers. We sure did.

The Kid eased himself down onto the ground at Mary Ellen’s side and stretched out and propped himself up on his arm. Her hands were folded around her coffee cup and he watched them there. Weren’t you scared? he said.

No, she said and he looked up at her face and she was already
looking at him and it seemed like she might have been looking at him for a while but at that moment she turned away and spoke to Cooper across the fire. Well maybe I was a little scared, she said, in case Roy tried to shoot you.

That’s mighty kind of you, Cooper said.

Not really, Mary Ellen said. I figured he’d most likely hit me instead. But after we got Roy’s guns I was okay.

Cooper nodded. He tipped up the brim of his hat with his thumb and from that improved perspective took in the rocks around and the sky above them. You sure your daddy’s men won’t search for us here?

They don’t know this place, Mary Ellen said. We’re on old man Jackson’s land. Nobody rides up here on account of he’ll shoot em.

Well that makes me feel a whole lot better Miss Mary E, Cooper said.

I’ll take the first watch, the Kid said.

That seems fair, Cooper said, since you aint done nothin else all day. Be sure and do a better job of it than you did of goin to check on the horses.

He untied his saddle roll and shook his blanket out and settled under it with his head on the saddle and his boots to the fire and his hat down over his eyes.

Here, the Kid said, and he set the palomino’s saddle behind Mary Ellen and got out his blanket and gave it to her and as she took it her hand brushed his and she didn’t move it away.

You had to know when to stop. It was called a cut and it meant getting rid of the stuff you didn’t want people to see and according to Zane and
Evert’s Guide to American Film
it was the second most important part of making a movie. Shooting it was first, and his last summer in Clintoch Winstone and Zane did a lot of that, but no matter how fine the weather was they never shot in daylight.

Zane said it should be dark because all the best scenes in cowboy movies were dark and before they started he’d pull the curtains tight and turn on the lamps and he showed Winstone the name for what they were doing there in the movie book. Day for night. They were turning afternoons at Addison Road into Wild West American nights and Zane said if they had more equipment they could turn the sky black and the whole world blue and the sun would become the moon but as it was they could only do the inside of his place.

Outside the summer came and went and people in Addison Road mowed their lawns and the bitumen softened around the chips in the seal and inside Winstone played a number of roles but the one he liked best was director. When it was his turn to direct he got to tell Zane what to do. Zane’s video camera had an LCD screen but Zane said it was better to look through the eyepiece and Winstone agreed because that way he saw
the scene he was making and nothing else and the world was a rectangle edged in black and he got to say what went in it. If he didn’t like how the coffee table looked he just had to turn his head or step to the left or zoom in and it was gone like it never existed and even if you fell over it later on you could edit that bit out and no one had to know.

Cut, he could say and turn the camera off and Zane had to stop what he was doing and go back to being himself. Then they’d look at each other and laugh and Winstone got to decide if they went for another take or stopped for a craft service break and it was a shame not all of life was like that.

Generally, Winstone didn’t mind staying in the house all the time because Zane had a new 52-inch plasma TV and things looked better on that than they did outside. Clintoch didn’t have much in the way of a range. Its sierras were low and where not scruffily green and studded with gorse they were piled with logging rubbish. Its paddocks of clumpy grass did not gleam in the sun and neither did its horses. The old limeworks was the closest thing to a canyon they had and a disused mine and a desert as well and there was no river down there behind the HAZARD signs but brown puddles of varying depths sprouting slime and water boatmen.

But still, there were times Winstone thought he’d like to see that big old American moon in the Clintoch sky. Zane said he couldn’t promise him that but one night they could go outside and they did and they filmed Cowboys and Rustlers.

Zane was chief rustler and Winstone had shot him and he was on the ground being dead. Zane hadn’t wanted to ruin the lawn so instead of a campfire they’d lit the portable gas barbecue and they’d put some cheese sizzlers on it to set the mood and the smell and the smoke of the sizzlers drifted over the garden and through the fence and past the closed curtains of neighbours
the filming couldn’t disturb because they had hitched up their caravan and gone and Zane was feeding their cat so he knew they wouldn’t be back until Monday.

The sizzlers smelled good, but Zane’s nose didn’t even twitch. Winstone held the camera as steady as he could and moved in for a close-up. He could see the places where the bones of Zane’s skull stretched his skin and they were white in the moon and he could make out no glint of Zane’s eyes in the darkness of their sockets.

Winstone thought about Zane being dead and he was surprised at how little he felt about that. He thought about the dead sheep melting slowly into the ground behind the shelterbelt on Boundary Road and the time he’d seen a maggot fall out of its nose and he couldn’t zoom in because of the dark but he got down on his knees on the lawn beside Zane’s head and he filled the frame with Zane’s face and it felt funny to be looking at Zane like that without Zane looking back and he wondered if that was how Zane felt looking through the lens at him in all the scenes when Winstone was captured and tied up and blindfolded and waiting to be rescued.

He didn’t say cut. But Zane opened his eyes anyway and for a second he looked a bit frightened to find the camera right there at the end of his nose and then he smiled and said put that down for a bit. Winstone turned the camera off and looked at the whole of Zane’s face and Zane had the sort of look Marlene sometimes got when she was coming up out of a dream and Zane raised his outstretched arm from the ground where it had fallen when he got shot and Winstone lay down and curled into Zane’s shoulder. They didn’t say anything or do anything, they just lay and looked at the stars coming out above the shrubs and the smoke and the neighbours’ tin roof and the grass was cool and springy under their backs and they might have gone to sleep
right there on the lawn except the sausages were burning.

Hours later, walking the last stretch of Boundary Road with Zane’s car behind him in the last of the dark and the sky already threatening dawn, a scene came into Winstone’s mind for no reason that he could see and in it Zane was the one all tied up and afraid and alone and in need of some cowboy in a white hat to come along and save him.

Back in his own bed he scrunched down and texted
safe
from the greater darkness underneath the covers. Zane texted smiley face back and Winstone thought of him turning the car around and driving back to Addison Road and walking into his house and how quiet it would be.

Get your hand off your dick, yelled Bic not very long afterwards and it came as a double surprise since it was Saturday.

You too, Bic said and he whipped the covers off Bodun’s bed as well and Winstone bet Bodun was thanking Christ he was there because he hadn’t been when Winstone got home and Winstone could smell the Woodies coming out of his pores. Luckily for Bodun they were coming out of Bic’s too.

Start getting your shit packed up, Bic said. We’re moving.