Wake In Fright (9 page)

‘Come in, be ready in a minute.’

There was some disturbance outside as the men got out of the car and resisted the efforts of the dog to follow them. Then they were in the hut, big, boisterous, booming, showing no effects at all of the previous night’s debauch. But then they probably hadn’t debauched as much as Grant had.

‘Hi, John!’ they said, ‘Feeling lousy, eh?’ and ‘Take a hair of the dog, boy, a hair of the dog,’ and ‘Come on, Doc, shake a leg.’

Tydon had opened a homemade cupboard and taken out a very efficient-looking rifle.

‘We’ve got a gun for you, John,’ said the miners. ‘It hasn’t been used in five years so it might blow your head off.’

‘Ha. Ha.’

‘Come on, Doc, let’s get out of here.’

And they were out of the hut, climbing into a big American car. Most of the population of Bundanyabba seemed to affect big American cars, of varying vintage.

Opening the rear door Grant found himself looking into the face of an enormous greyhound. It filled most of the back
of the car and its legs overflowed into the front and out of the window. Its great slobbering tongue was everywhere, and it dribbled.

But Grant rather liked the yellow and fawn beast—it was the first living thing he had seen in Bundanyabba that seemed reasonably uncomplicated and was certain not to talk to him.

He pushed into the bony and yielding tangle of dog and found himself room on the back seat. Joe, or Dick, he wasn’t sure which, pushed in beside him. Tydon got in the front and the other miner took the wheel.

They were on their way, four men and a dog, stewing together.

When you travel by road in the west you travel with a cohort of dust which streams up from your tyres and rolls away in a disintegrating funnel, defining the currents of air your vehicle sets in motion. And somehow a lot of dust comes in the windows and settles in your hair and your clothes and most of all in your eyes and throat.

And the heat is unthinkable, no matter how widely the windows are open, and the sweat streams off your body and into your socks, and if there are a number of people in the car their body stenches mingle disagreeably.

So it was with Grant and Tydon and Joe and Dick and the
yellow and fawn dog, except that the dog did not sweat, but its mouth gaped hideously and it panted stertorously and its tongue lolled out and it dribbled and it smelt; Lord how it smelt!

The miner drove fast on the rudimentary road, bouncing high on the ruts and slewing fiercely in the drifts of soft dust.

The western roads are cut with causeways built in the hope of channelling whatever rain falls into some useful direction. These cannot be seen in the flat country until you’re almost on them. And if you’re travelling at sixty miles an hour you don’t have time to slow down before you hit them and the front wheels of your car shoot briefly into the air and the car lands with a crash two feet down, then shoots up the other side and crashes on to the level of the road again.

It plays hell with the springs and Grant thought he was going to die every time it happened and every time the big dog’s body bounced limply to the roof of the car and flopped down again, mostly on Grant.

A dim acceptance of the fact that this whole situation was near farce was no consolation as he shrank into the seat between the dog and the miner.

He felt himself in the impossible position of a man with an overwhelming problem to solve, but lacking the neural energy even to make an attempt to solve it. Some time he
had to think about getting to Sydney, or doing something, but not now, not just now.

‘We’d better have a drink at Yindee,’ said the miner driving the car.

‘It’ll be dark if we do, Dick,’ said the miner sitting beside Grant, from which Grant deduced that he must be Joe.

‘So what?’

‘So we want to have a go with the dog.’

‘We’ll see something before we hit Yindee.’

‘All right.’

Grant felt obliged to add something to the conversation.

‘Where,’ he said, ‘is Yindee?’

‘About sixty miles out of The Yabba,’ said Joe.

Grant wondered whether it was Joe or Dick he had upset by his interlude with Janette last night. Tydon had named one of them, hadn’t he? Anyhow, neither seemed at all put out today.

‘How do you feel after last night?’ said Joe, startling Grant a little.

‘Bloody.’

‘Hit it a bit hard, eh?’

‘Much too hard.’

‘Cheer up, a few drinks’ll put you on your feet.’

Grant looked forward cheerlessly to the few drinks at
Yindee. Even one round would halve his capital resources, two would pauperise him.

He should not have come on this trip, but he could hardly have stayed in the hut. Tydon seemed to expect him to stay there indefinitely, but he hadn’t put it in so many words.

Dear God, the air in this car was foul.

Abruptly the car stopped dead and the funnel of dust which had been trailing behind caught up and enveloped it.

‘Down there,’ said Dick, and pointed.

The country slid away a little to the left, forming a minutely shallow valley about a mile wide which, in a gentler land, might have been split by a stream. Running parallel with the road about a quarter of a mile away a low line of shrub formed a swathe across the otherwise bare earth.

On the other side of the scrub Grant could see a mob of about twenty kangaroos.

The dog had seen them too, or smelt them, and was slavering around the window, thrusting its hindquarters into Grant’s face, lashing him with its tail.

Joe reached across and opened the door.

The dog vaulted from the car and hurtled towards the kangaroos, moving in unbelievably long bounds, floating, touching the ground, bouncing up, floating…its formerly ungainly limbs co-ordinated into a magnificent motivating principle.

The kangaroos watched it impassively until it was about two hundred yards from them. Then they turned and leaped away, stiffly erect, propelling themselves with thrusts of their giant hind legs so that they looked like so many mechanical toys, except that at the height of their leap their tails streamed out behind them and their bodies leaned forward so that they speared through the air like abstractions of flight.

Grant forgot even his hangover as he watched the hunter springing after the kangaroos as they crossed the plain like the shadows of aircraft.

The mob rose in a wave over one of the occasional fences that appear inexplicably in the plain country, but two baulked and turned along the fence towards the road.

Immediately the motor of the car roared, the gear slammed in and Dick drove diagonally off the road, cutting across the flight of the two kangaroos.

There was not much difference between the road and the open country, but there were boulders on the plain and Dick performed mighty deeds with the car, keeping it at fifty miles an hour, swerving hard when he reached the fence and driving straight down to the kangaroos.

The dog anticipated the manoeuvre and turned diagonally out from the fence.

The kangaroos sighted the car and they too turned out
from the fence, heading back to the patch of scrub. And now the kangaroos and the dog were travelling in two lines which would soon meet.

Tydon had his rifle out now and was firing through the window. Joe was trying to aim across Grant’s shoulder, and still the car bounced over the ground at fifty miles an hour.

The men were shouting, the motor was roaring, the sharp smell of gunpowder drowned all the other smells in the car.

The dog pulled down one of the kangaroos in a tangled heap about fifty yards from the fence. The other kangaroo paused for a moment when its mate fell and Grant could see it watching the slaughter, immobile, expressionless.Then it streaked back towards the fence again.

But the car was between it and the fence.

Dick, yelling madly now, drove straight at the kangaroo, pressing down the accelerator, driving as no sane man would do, crashing over stones, through low scrub, wrecking the mudguards on the remnants of trees, and still the kangaroo came on, unharmed by the fusillade of bullets which Tydon was pumping out the window.

Grant clung to the seat, fascinated, watching through the windscreen the fluctuating approach of the kangaroo. Up it went and down, then up, up, and down, a wild grey figure bearing down on them as though in passionless attack.

It turned ten yards from the car, but Dick, quite mad now, pulled the car around and ran the animal down.

It disappeared quite suddenly under the bonnet.

A thud, the car lifted, skidded, rocketed almost over on to its side, righted itself and stopped.

Grant looked out of the rear window as the others tumbled out. A grey bundle was flopping about in the dust behind the car.

Following the others over to the broken mess, Grant saw Dick draw a long-bladed knife from a sheath at his side, kneel down, and cut the animal’s throat. It died then.

‘It’s not worth cutting up,’ said Dick.The kangaroo had split open and trailed entrails for a dozen yards. Its body was so shattered that bones stood out from the skin every few inches, white and glistening.

Joe and Dick started off to look at the damage to the car, but Tydon lingered, took out his own knife and neatly castrated the carcass.

Grant watched the incident blankly and Joe said:’Doc eats ‘em, reckons they’re the best part of the ‘roo.’

Grant thought wanly of the hash that Tydon had given him that afternoon.

Tydon, meanwhile, slipped the scrotum into his pocket and they all walked over to the car then.

The radiator grille was dented slightly and there was a fairly deep curve in the bumper bar. Underneath they could see grey patches on the gearbox.

They all got back in and Dick drove across to where the greyhound was worrying the other carcass.

‘He’s a dead loss too,’ said Joe.

The kangaroo had apparently had some disease, its hindquarters and belly were a mass of black scabs.

Joe dragged the dog away and bundled it into the car. Now it smelt of blood and dead kangaroo.

It snuggled against Grant.

The vibrations in his head that Grant had noticed back in the hut had become a fierce drumming that pervaded his whole body. He felt unnaturally alert, as though he had constantly the physical reaction of having just been made aware of danger.

‘What was in the pill you gave me?’ he asked Tydon as they drove off.

‘Benzedrine and stuff,’ said Tydon, ‘want another?’

‘No thanks.’

One thing was certain now, thought Grant, once this hunting episode was over he would not return to Tydon’s hut.

The sexual mania he could bear; the heat had to be borne anyway; Tydon’s breath was noxious, but not impossible; the
man’s conversation was appalling, but probably sufferable for a time; but a diet of kangaroo’s testicles was altogether too much. He would set out to walk back to Sydney before he would stay with Tydon.

Joe rummaged on the floor of the car and came up with a twenty-two rifle.

‘This is yours,’ he said to Grant.

‘Oh, thanks.’ It seemed quite a reasonable weapon, a single shot with a much scarred stock, but apparently unmarked barrel.

Joe gave him a large handful of cartridges.

‘Plenty more here if you want them. Know how to use that?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ Grant worked the loading mechanism.

‘Done a bit of shooting?’

‘Oh, on the coast, a few rabbits now and then.’

The car shuddered and the dog rose to the roof and came down, banging its jaw on the barrel of the rifle.

‘Are all the roads around here like this?’

‘This isn’t bad. You ought to go out to Mundameer.’

‘Where are we going now?’

‘Place out from Yindee we know. We’ll get a lot of’roos there.’

‘Do we shoot in the dark?’

‘Spotlight. We’ve got a beaut.’

The sun was setting, dropping down below a cloudless horizon, glowing red through the dust haze low to the ground. To the east the plain melted into mauve and black.

The township of Yindee popped out of the darkening country quite suddenly. It was one lone, long, low hotel.

They pulled up right at the door, clumped over the inevitable wooden veranda and Dick called for four beers.

‘There’s a fox,’ said Joe.

In the fading light about fifty yards down the road they could see it, padding along on the dust, looking as though it was going somewhere.

Elaborately casual, Tydon, Joe and Dick walked back to the car. Grant followed them.

They took out their rifles. Grant took out his.

Three rifles cracked. Grant was still loading his.

The fox swung around and lolloped back down the road. Dust flicked up around it as the bullets landed. It turned at right angles and began to run across the road, and then it dropped its neck, slid a little way, kicked and lay still.

The greyhound was by now hysterical, but they did not let it out of the car.

It had been an extremely good, or lucky, shot that had brought down the fox in that light. Grant, who had got in
one shot, and rather thought he might have hit the fox, wanted to go and get it; but the others wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Mangy brute,’ said Joe, ‘not worth skinning. They never are out here.’

So the fox was left on the road and they all went into the bar where the publican, unmoved by the fusillade at his front door, had set up the beer.

Grant, who had been thinking a great deal about the paying for this beer, took out his ten-shilling note at the prompting of a furtive and unadmitted instinct, and tossed it on to the bar.

Joe picked it up and handed it back to him.

‘No one who’s broke buys beer on The Yabba, mate,’ he said; and, as that was what Grant had half expected or hoped would happen, he took back the note after suitable protest.

But he avoided looking at Tydon, who had begun to drink his beer already.

He must not drink too much, thought Grant, just enough, and then if he found somewhere to sleep tonight he would be in fit shape to find work, or something, tomorrow.

But how much was just enough? One beer was wonderful, so cool, so wet, so much desired by the dusty throat.