FOUR

We were all eating dinner one night a few weeks later, when the phone rang. It was the cops. They’d found a baby camel and didn’t know what to do with it, so they’d phoned Dad to see if he had any ideas. Dad said he’d think about it and call them back. I dunno why, but as soon as I heard that, I shouted out that I’d have it. Dad raised his eyebrows and I thought I might be in trouble, but then he shrugged, looked at Mum, and said, “Well, it might be good for him—a new pet.” Mum shook her head and said, “No way—we have enough calves as it is. It’s a camel, not a toy.”

Dad followed her into the kitchen and they had what sounded a bit like a row about it. When Dad came back on his own, he sat down at the table and looked straight at me. He said that if we did get the camel, it would be my responsibility, so I had to think hard about it. I said I wanted the camel. He shook his head and said I hadn’t really thought about it, not properly. He reckoned it was a big commitment. Much bigger than the poddies. He said that if I didn’t train the camel it’d be dangerous and it would have to be shot. He said we would talk again in the morning.

As I lay in bed, I could hardly breathe. I was scared and excited all at once. I thought about what Jonny would do and wondered if he’d been watching from heaven—or maybe that’s just a story, like with the tooth fairy or Father Christmas. I dunno. The house creaked against the quiet. There was no one around, they were all in bed. I sat up and looked out of the window. It was real dark. There was no moon. I heard a cow somewhere in the distance as I threw off the doona and went into the dining room to touch Jonny’s picture. It was so late. As I looked at him I felt kind of happy, I guess. It had been ages since I’d felt happy about anything much. It was like I knew I was going to get the camel. Like it was already mine.

_____________

As we ate breakfast I waited for Dad to ask me about the camel. I waited and waited. He talked to Elliot about a borehole that needed checking, he told Mum to take his ute to work so he could fix the oil pipe on the Ford, he asked Lloyd if he would go to Gum Tree Dam and look at the water level. The whole time I sat and waited. Dad tipped what I knew would be his last mouthful of coffee down his throat. That meant he was about to leave the table and go to work. I wanted to say something, but before I could, Emily shouted out, “What about Danny’s camel?” I didn’t know whether to hit her or smile at her. Dad looked at Mum and then at me. He said it depended on what I thought and if I wanted the responsibility. I looked him in the eye and said I reckoned I could handle it.

Two days later, Bobbie let us all out of school early because the cops showed up with a horse trailer with that little camel inside. We knew they were coming, so all morning we’d been listening out for them. I reckon Bobbie had got real sick of it. She knew none of us really had our minds on her lesson.

Dad came out from one of the sheds and shook the cop’s hand. Then the cop lowered the tailgate and there was this gangly-looking thing inside. Its head was way too big for the rest of its body and its legs were too long and too thin—I dunno how it managed to stand up. Its eyes were enormous and when it opened its mouth I was surprised by the noise it made, it was more like a sheep. I heard the cop say to Dad, “It’s only a baby, but it kicks like a bastard.” I wasn’t scared. I took the rope, which was tied around its neck and fastened to a hook on the side. I unhooked it and carefully led him down the ramp. The cop said, “Be careful, son.” I reckoned he didn’t know what he was talking about, until the little camel reared up and nearly knocked my head off.

Dad grabbed the camel from me and kicked him real hard. He said I had to get a stick and flog him each time he reared up until I’d knocked it out of him. “You have to remember he’s real feral. You’ve got to show him who’s boss—you understand?” I nodded.

I was worried about putting the camel in with the poddies. I didn’t want him to hurt them. But Dad reckoned they’d be fine. Dad said he’d hold the camel while I went to get a bottle of milk to feed him. We gave him the same milk the calves had, except he drank it from an old pop bottle with a rubber teat on the end. It took a few goes to get him used to it, but I guess he was hungry, so he got the hang of it pretty fast.

The cop stayed for lunch. I didn’t want any food. I just wanted to stay at the calf pen with the camel, but Bobbie said I had to have something. While we ate, the cop told us how a road train had hit the baby camel’s mother on the Tanami Road. The camel had made a mess of the road train, and was in a pretty bad way. The driver had shot the camel and radioed the cops to report the accident. The cop said that when he got out there a baby camel had come out of the bush and was laid next to its mother’s carcass. The road-train driver said he hadn’t the heart to shoot it. Between then they managed to catch it. The cop thought the camel would have died of fright by the time he’d got it back to the little police station at Marlu Hill, but it didn’t, so he phoned Dad to see if we’d have it.

All through lunch Emily wanted to know what I was going to call the camel. I said I hadn’t thought of a name yet. She said I should call him Stuart or Christopher. I told her to rack off.

As soon as I’d finished off the beef sandwich Bobbie had made me, I said thanks to the cop for bringing the camel over and asked if I could get down from the table. Dad nodded and said I had to find a stick that was big enough for flogging a camel with before I went back in the calf pen. I was halfway down the steps into the yard, but I just caught the end of what he said before the fly screen on the back door slapped shut.

When I got to the calf pen, the poddies were ignoring the camel—like they knew he wasn’t the same as them. The camel was all on his own except for a big mob of flies hovering around his head like a cloud. I decided then his name was Buzz.

I said it out loud to him that I was going to call him Buzz. He looked me in the eye and bleated before he stretched down to the ground and chewed at a little tuft of grass. I took that as a sign he liked it too and smiled to myself. As he lifted his head back up to look at me, I reached out and scratched his ears. The fur on top of his head was softer than it looked, but his skull felt all hard and bony underneath it. After a minute he got a bit excited and kind of reared up, but I had the stick next to me and all I had to do was show him it and he quietened down again. I was glad about that. I didn’t want to hit him—not unless I had to, anyway.