After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,116
clothes. They had a way of licking their lips with their hot little pink tongues that made it look as if they were smelling the air. Every so often a few of them would make off to the nearest shop. It was a day’s trip away and the idea of going seemed dreadful. The thought of those naked beardless faces, of the chatter and the sidelong looks. Because the shop was a gas servo the food they came back with was of a type. A lot of chips, chocolate bars and beer. Sacks of cigarettes, coffee and a loaf of bread each to eat fresh. One evening someone turned up with a clutch of rabbits, which were gutted and skinned, and roasted on a stick over the fire. Among the scrap and cigarette butts of the yard was the sound of low talking, the crack of beers being opened and the smell of burning rabbit hair.
There was an old mirror in the toilet, with most of the reflection taken out of it. The toilet itself wasn’t often used by anyone – you had to get water to pour it down and it was a waste. Someone had chalked the word LADIES on the door. Most of that sort of thing took place out behind the scrub and wattle, and it was a better set-up altogether than going into that dark and stinking room. But he went in there anyway because he remembered the mirror. He knew the beard was there, could feel it peeling its way through the skin of his face, but it was still a shock. It was long rather than wide, because he hadn’t shaped it like the rest of them. It hadn’t grown so long that it got in his way yet, but it was still long, and parts of it were white. He hadn’t expected it and he sat on the loo seat for a moment to take in the time that had passed. His eyes were lost underneath his eyebrows, which had gone feral, his shoulders were like cow skin and lean, just the sinew showing. His lips were blood bitten and dark, and just like the rest of the men, when he licked his lips his tongue was surprisingly pink and quick.
Out in a dry field close to midnight Leon felt the pull of home like a bite on a reel. He was drunk, had spent the afternoon drinking and shooting cans with Colin or Jarred, had even joined in at lazily trying to pick off a chook. The chook was having none of it, and after Leon had taken two lackadaisical shots it had simply walked off round the back of the house and sat smugly in front of the diesel barrel.
The plan hatched when night had fallen and the last of the damp potato chips had been snaffled between them. The idea of rabbits again made Klyde fart dirtily in disgust. Red meat was what was called for. They piled into the back of a Ute and hooned off into the desert, Klyde now and again switching off the headlights, setting them adrift in the cold black air. Leon imagined he was near the sea and that the bellows and grindings of the truck and its passengers were the sounds of water attacking the land, and the high yells of the men were seagulls and plovers.
When they came to a stop they had come up alongside a fence. The headlights were switched on and he could make out the dense square of a cow, her eyes round and green and glowing.
A quiet came over the truck, like boys looking through a window at a girl changing, they hushed each other, nudged and crowded around Klyde, who held the gun.
Another cow, smaller, presumably the cow’s calf, came to stare at the headlights. They wouldn’t shoot a cow with its calf. Those were hunting rules. Give the young a chance. Leon carried on thinking this, as Klyde hopped off the Ute, levelling his gun at the cow, thinking, This is a joke, he’s pissing about, watching because he was certain it would stop, watching Klyde walk towards the animal, aiming as he went, watching the light of the cow’s eye glow, the flickering of her worried ears, her raised eyebrows, the safety clicked off.
The cow’s child gave a soft low moo and before the moo had ended, a shot rang out and the small cow leapt, all feet off the ground, tail straight