Dad said Liz had to take Dingo to the carcass dump. I dunno why, but I said I’d do it. It meant unhooking the hide so I could lift the dead calf into the back of the Old Rover. Dad said I should take Dingo to the dump first because he didn’t want a diseased carcass in the station yard any longer than was necessary.
That night, when I got back, it was too dark to go to the tip with the hide, so I went to check on Buzz. Liz was there with him in the calf pen. I wondered what she was doing. I could tell she’d been crying. She tried to hide her face from me. I didn’t know what to do. I asked her if she was OK. She nodded the back of her head at me. Buzz was trying to butt us, like he wanted to play. He could be a real handful if he wasn’t the centre of attention.
I wanted to explain that sometimes it’s kinder to kill an injured animal than to try to help it, but it came out as, ‘Dingo would have died anyway.’ It was like I’d hit her with the words. She turned on me with her wet cheeks and hissed, ‘How would you like it if they shot Buzz?’
I didn’t see that coming and it made me stand back a bit. Buzz’s ears went flat, like he’d heard what she’d said. ‘I wouldn’t let them,’ I said, half at her, and half to Buzz. She stared back at me and then looked down at the ground, like she knew what I’d said was right. Then she quietly said she wanted to go home. My stomach flipped then – I didn’t want her to go. She said she wished she’d never come to Australia and that she hated it on the station with no one to talk to. I felt bad. I remembered how worried I was when Buzz ran off – I’d felt sick. I guess the Pommie must have felt something like that about Dingo too.
The Pommie looked up at the sky and said how fat our stars were. She thought they were like pebbles. She said the cities’ skies have this skin of pollution over them, and because the desert doesn’t have that, or any street lights, the stars look brighter. I didn’t know if that was true, but I’ve thought about it from time to time since then and I reckon it makes sense. The Pommie said we had different stars to England, on account of Australia being in the southern hemisphere. She said we look out on a different part of the galaxy, or something. I’d never heard that before. She also said our seasons were backwards, so when we’re having our summer, in England it’s winter. That made me think about Jonny. I wondered if there was a northern and a southern hemisphere in heaven, and if he had to stay in ours, or if he could roam around like the seasons.
I asked Liz if she had any brothers or sisters. She didn’t – not really. Just a step-sister who she said she hated. Her mum and dad were divorced. Had been for years. They sent her to boarding school, then university and after her exams she came out to Australia – just for something to do.
We fastened Buzz and the calves in for the night then walked to the house together. She looked at the post in the yard, where Lloyd had tied Dingo, but she didn’t stop. Then out of nowhere she said, ‘By the time this muster’s over, you’ll be an uncle.’ I dunno why she said that. Then she shrugged and said she’d never be an aunty. Uncle Danny – I hadn’t thought of that before.
The next morning after smoko, Bobbie reckoned I should take the hide to the tip. She said it was starting to cause a stink. I said I’d have to miss a bit of school, but I guess right then, getting rid of the bad smell was more important to Bobbie than my education. I wasn’t complaining.
The hide did stink a bit and it seemed to be twice as heavy as it had been the day before. Maybe because of all the flies on it. As I hooked it onto the Old Rover, the Pommie showed up. I said what I was doing and that Bobbie had asked me to do it – just in case she thought I was wagging. She didn’t question it though. So I asked her if she wanted to come to the tip with me. She said she would because she’d never been before. I was surprised she wanted to come, especially with the hide. The Pommie stared at the blood that had gone brown and hard on my hands and under my fingernails. Then she looked at the hide folded like a hairy hanky behind us. She didn’t say it was disgusting or anything, though. As we went along, the wind blew her hair back off her face and I noticed she’d closed her eyes. She looked different – kind of peaceful. I dunno how long I’d been watching her for, but I hit a rock at the side of the road, and that kind of reminded me to look where I was going. It kind of woke Liz up too. So we chatted about the muster and how it was only about ten days until things would get under way.
When we got to the tip, I think she liked it. While I unhooked the hide, she had a little wander along to look at all our old rubbish. It was just the normal stuff: old fridges; an armchair; a chest without any drawers; a pile of magazines and newspapers; broken pots and pans; Emily’s old buggy; the Christmas wrapping paper, which was torn and faded; old tin cans; rags; cardboard boxes, which had gone mushy and deformed in the rains and then baked hard by the sun again. Nothing special.
When I started the Old Rover I shouted for her to get in. She looked like I’d interrupted her. She came over and smiled at me, then said the tip was like a museum to my family. I didn’t get it. I thought museums were places where important things were kept. But then I realised what she meant. She handed me a card with a picture of a cricket bat on the front. I didn’t recognise it, but when I looked inside, it felt like happiness and sadness were fighting over me. It said: To danny. happy 7th birthday. From jonny.
I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure if it was mine, or if it belonged to the desert. The Pommie looked at me and said, ‘Should I have left it?’ I shook my head and a tear fell off my face, onto my bloody hands, smudging the grubby card with blood. I was busy running my thumb over Jonny’s words, trying to remember him giving me the card.
After a while the Pommie asked me about Jonny. I guess she saw the look on my face because then she said I didn’t have to talk about it if I didn’t want to, she was just curious. That made me shrug and ask her what she wanted to know. She shrugged back at me, and said, ‘Anything.’ I guess I could have told her about Jonny’s cattle book and how he kept real good records in it about our herds. Or I could have told her about how Jonny was the best bowler his school had ever had – he won a cup for it. But I didn’t tell her those things. As I looked away, everything I remembered about the day of the accident fell out of my mouth. I’d never told anyone about it before.
It was the October school holidays, so Jonny and Sissy were at home. It was real hot, so I wanted to go to Clear Water Dam for a swim. Jonny wasn’t interested. He wanted to stay at home and work on his bowling. I didn’t get it. He’d been practising his bowling for ages – it was all he did. It wasn’t even as though I got to be in bat when he practised, he just wanted to bowl the balls at the wickets he’d drawn on the side of the shop, over and over again. He reckoned he needed to perfect his technique. He wanted to bowl a ball of the century just like Shane Warne had in the Ashes series a few months before. It was boring. Anyway, I went to Clear Water Dam on the motorbike on my own. I was gone a while, I guess. Time stands still when I think back to that day now.
When I got back to the station, I parked the motorbike and walked past the chooks; they seemed all flighty and strung out, but I didn’t think too much about it. I hopped up the steps to the back door and opened the fly screen as normal. I walked into the dining room. That’s when normal stopped. I knew straight away something bad had happened. It was weird. Everyone was in there – except Jonny, of course – but it wasn’t dinner time. No one was speaking. They were just kind of staring, but not at anything in particular. I didn’t know if I was allowed to ask what was going on, so I just stood there hoping someone would tell me what to do. It was Mum who told me to sit down. I walked to the seat next to her and put my wet swimming things on the table in front of me. I saw Mum’s hand on top of Dad’s. Their hands were just resting in front of them on the tablecloth – like they weren’t really theirs. Mum’s voice was smaller than normal when she said, ‘There’s been an accident.’ I listened and waited. It was like she didn’t know what to say next. My mind felt woolly and empty all at once. Like sounds weren’t real. Eventually Mum said, ‘It’s Jonny.’ As I looked round the table I knew it had to be him. He was the only one missing.
I stopped talking to the Pommie then and put the card into my shirt pocket – it felt real stiff against my chest. Liz asked, ‘What happened then?’ So I told her how I was too scared to ask Mum anything else. I stared at my swimming gear on the table in front of me for what felt like ages, wondering what to do. I didn’t dare look up. I kept thinking if I could just get up and go outside, I could come back in again and things would go back to normal. I dunno why, but I couldn’t move. I looked up and saw Jonny’s picture smiling back at me from the top of the piano on the other side of the table and somehow I knew he’d gone. Dad pulled his hand out from under Mum’s, his chair scraped back on the wooden floor and he stood up and went outside. He didn’t say anything. Not long after that Mum got up and went into their bedroom. I heard the door shut.
I looked across at Sissy and Emily on the other side of the table. Their faces were all weird, kind of blank or empty, or something, like they’d got stuck. I whispered to Sissy to ask what had happened to Jonny. I dunno why I whispered, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She started to cry – so Emily did too. In between all the tears, she got a few words out to explain everything. She said Dad had been in the yard, checking the generator. He thought he heard a scream, but he wasn’t sure because of the noise from the generator. I guess he just thought it was us kids messing around. A few minutes later one of the dogs went over to him with blood on her nose. Dad knew something was wrong then, for sure. He followed her round to the side of the house and that’s when he found Jonny and all the blood. He’d fallen off the house roof and landed on an old, metal fence post. Sissy said it went straight through him. By the time the flying doctor arrived, it was too late. Jonny had lost too much blood.
I needed to see where it had happened. I can’t remember getting up from the table and walking outside. But I must have. I just remember being at the side of the house where our bedroom windows are. On the ground there were all these flies, with the fence post sticking out of the middle of them. Seeing all the flies swarming over the ground like they did when we left the hide of a killer outside the cool room, made me wave my arms and legs around to try and scare them away. I wanted to get them off what was left of Jonny, I guess. I touched the fence post too. Just with my fingers at first, but then I kind of held it. It felt hot from the sun, but there wasn’t anything on it – it wasn’t sticky like I thought it would be. I dunno if someone had wiped it, or something.
The Pommie kind of squirmed in her seat then. I looked up and noticed her face was all twisted and she looked like she was going to cry. She turned away. Then I heard her say in this real quiet voice, ‘I’m so sorry, Danny … I had no idea …’ I felt like I didn’t have anything else to say then, so I started the engine and drove back to the station. We didn’t say anything on the way home. I tried not to think about Jonny, but my hands were trembling and they were real sweaty and kept slipping on the steering wheel. I dunno why, but that made me think about him even more.
When we got back, school had almost finished. The Pommie said that if I wanted, we could tell Bobbie we’d had engine problems with the Old Rover, and that’s why we were so late back. She did all the talking, so I didn’t have to say anything – I just nodded every now and then. Bobbie believed every word.