SEVENTEEN

I looked round and Liz was there, smiling too. Even though she didn’t know what it all meant, I thought it was kind of nice of her to try and join in.

We watched the road-train driver, this real nice guy called Bob, maneuver the wagons into position at the far end of the yards. He looked like a multicolored bear. His beard was really big and it was dyed blue. Then he’d got this long, curly hair on his head, which was so thick, it was a bit like black fleece. His arms were covered in tattoos of everything from spiders’ webs and goblins to naked women and pictures of VB beer.

As Bob slotted the trailers into the right place, Jack Black wandered out of the heat like a scorpion. Seeing the Pommie, Bobbie, and Emily there, Jack pointed at them with his chin and said, “What’s this? Reinforcements?”

Reg laughed and explained who everyone was. Jack remembered Bobbie from the last muster, but he’d never met the Pommie before, so he tipped his hat at her—polite. She smiled back. Jack looked at the sky and said, “Too hot.” Reg nodded and everyone knew it was time to get down to business.

The Pommie didn’t know how the drafting worked. I explained that after we’d mustered the cattle into the yards, drafting was what we called it when we decided which ones we wanted to truck—in other words send to the slaughterhouse—and the ones we wanted to keep, which meant they went back out into the desert.

It was a pretty dangerous job, in some ways. If you didn’t pay attention you could get into all sorts of trouble, but we worked as a team and that meant we did our own jobs and kept an eye out for everyone else, to make sure it went smoothly.

It was simple really. It started with a sliding gate, which moved up and down like a guillotine, at the far end of the yard. That was where Ed Barron was working. He sat on top of the fence like a great big jabiru waiting for Reg to give him the signal to lift the gate up and let a handful of cattle out of the main yard into the smaller one. That was where Reg was waiting for them.

The cattle were happy to get out of the main yard, so they rushed through that gate as soon as it was open, thinking they were going back to the desert. Each time Ed opened the gate, he had to be careful not to let too many cattle through at a time—that would be dangerous for Reg on the other side.

Once they were in the next, smaller yard, Reg would walk round them like a ringmaster. He did that to get a good look, so he could decide which ones to turn loose, and which ones to truck. The Pommie reckoned Reg was like a cattle god. I dunno about that, but it was pretty amazing to see him work. The cattle could charge you, try to stab you with their horns, or just crush you against the fence panels. They were pissed off and scared—you couldn’t blame them really. Because of that, Reg needed eyes in the back of his head. He was clever with cattle. It was like he could read their minds.

I was watching Reg work that yard. One minute he was busy walking round and round, deciding which cow to pick out for trucking, and the next he leaped up at the fence, with more bounce than a big red. When I looked I saw he’d just missed having his leg stabbed by a Hereford’s horns. No one else had seen it coming, not even Dad. Reg was real fit and strong. He held his cattle prod like a musketeer’s sword and when he made a run and jump for the fence, he held it high in the air.

The first one Reg picked out for trucking was a young Hereford bull. He separated it from the others with his cattle prod and herded it toward another gate where Dad was waiting. Once the bull was near the gate, Dad slid the metal panel up to let it through. The sound of metal scraping on metal didn’t stop that bull. It ran straight past those weird sounds into the narrow race, toward the road train. The bull’s horns were too wide for the race though, so they hammered against the metal fence panels as he ran through. It was a horrid sound. It made the Pommie wince, but it was nothing compared to the face she pulled later when a cow got scared and ran so fast down the race that it knocked a horn clean off. When the Pommie looked down and saw that old bit of horn, like a bloody ice-cream cone, I thought she was going to puke. I kicked it away and she pretended not to notice, like she was thinking about something far away, out into the desert.

A bit farther down the race from Dad, Jack was waiting at the next gate. That one was usually kept open, but it was there for safety, so if there was a problem, Jack could shut it, and stop too many cattle going through to the road train.

I was working in the section of the race after Jack’s gate, with Elliot. We had to tag each of the cattle before they were trucked. Elliot straddled the top of the race and leaned down to tag the cows with sticky labels as they came through. He shouted out each number and I wrote it down. Those bits of paper went with the cattle to the slaughterhouse. Next to each number I wrote a description, like Hereford bull. That way, everything was in order. Once we’d tagged each one, Elliot opened our gate and let them through to the next section, where Rick was waiting for them. His job was to make sure they went up the metal gangway onto the road train without any problems. Bob, the driver, was waiting on the trailer to load the cattle. He was a real nice guy, but I thought the cattle might look at him with all his tattoos and be even more scared.

After Reg had picked out the cattle to be trucked, he herded the ones that were left into another yard where Lloyd and Spike were working. It had troughs of water in it, so the cattle could have a drink and calm down, before we let them back into the desert. If Dad thought any of the cattle in there needed castrating or branding, he let Lloyd and Spike know and they’d sort it out—that was their job.

The noise from the cattle braying, the sound of their hooves on the metal gangway up to the trailer, and the hammering of their horns on the fence panels, was deafening. At times it felt so loud that it made the ground shake. I could feel it in my chest. Above all that noise we had to make ourselves heard: Elliot had to make sure I could hear each cow’s tag number; Reg had to tell Ed when to let the next lot of cattle into the yard; Bob had to let Rick know when to let the next one onto the trailer. It was like we were all working inside a machine—an engine, ticking over nicely, so it wouldn’t overheat.

We’d settled into our rhythm pretty well. Everything was going OK until I heard hooves kicking against the inside of the trailer like a jungle drum. Then there was shouting and we all stopped what we were doing and looked. Rick and Bob were struggling with a stubborn bull inside. It was so hot, I could feel the sweat trickling down my neck into the small of my back.

Jack shouted, “Wo! Wo! Wo!” So we all knew not to let any more through to the road train. But then a heifer ran so fast down the race to get away from Reg in the yard, it had run into an older cow in front. The younger one piggybacked the cow until it collapsed.

There was nothing Jack could do. He couldn’t let his cattle through into our section because we already had two cows waiting to go through onto the trailer. We couldn’t let them go because that would be real dangerous for the fellas inside the trailer. I felt sick. Jack looked back and forth at the squashed cow and the stupid heifer on top. Seeing the stress on the cow’s face, as it heaved under the weight of the other one, he used his prod to try to get the heifer off her. The cattle couldn’t turn round in the race, it was too narrow. You could sometimes get them to back up, but it wasn’t easy. I could hear Jack muttering under his breath. He looked worried.

Reg had the measure of things and had jumped out of the yard and was running past the race toward the truck. He jumped over the fence and ran into the trailer as the drumming inside got louder.

No one spoke. We waited and listened to the bucking bronco inside the trailer and the odd call from Rick to Bob and back again. The cattle held in the race were all quiet except for the two in Jack’s section. The bottom one was making a kind of rasping sound as it gasped for air under the weight of the heifer. The heifer seemed to be screaming. Dumb animal—it didn’t have anything to scream about. It was the other one that was being crushed. I looked back at the trailer and said, “Come on, fellas,” under my breath, hoping they’d sort it out so we could let the others go and free the crushed one in Jack’s section. I looked over at the Pommie and Emily. Emily was standing, staring at the road train and the Pommie was staring at the cattle in Jack’s section. She was kind of biting her lip, like she wasn’t sure about something.

We all stood still, adjusting our hats and wiping away the sweat from our foreheads. Then the drumming inside the trailer stopped and Reg appeared with Rick. Reg gave Elliot a thumbs up to let the next one through. He looked a little redder than he had when he went into the trailer—but that was all.

The two cows in Jack’s section of the race were a bit like tired old boxers by then. Too exhausted to spar with each other. We let the ones we’d tagged go through to Rick and Bob to be loaded onto the trailer. Once they’d gone we shut the gate and Jack opened his. The heifer scrambled forward, digging her hooves into the other one’s back. Once she’d come through to our section, Jack shut the gate again. Reg bent down next to him like you do when you’re looking under a ute. He wanted to find out why the older cow was refusing to budge.

Once we’d tagged the flighty heifer and let her go through to the truck, Jack opened his gate again, to try to persuade the cow to get up. Both he and Reg used their prods to try and startle her into action. They gave her a quick poke in the rump, but she looked lifeless, except for this slow panting noise she’d started to make. Reg looked at Dad. He grimaced and said, “I don’t like the look of this one, Derek.” Dad jumped down off the fence and came round the side to take a closer look. He shook his head and Jack closed his gate again.

They unhitched the part of the fencing that the cow was leaning against, while Elliot went to get a bull catcher. Dad walked to his ute. He moved like he meant it. When Jack tried to lift the fence panel away, scraping it through the dirt, the cow’s body followed until she’d slumped onto her side. One of her hind legs, wonky and broken, flopped out from under her. We all winced at that. “Jesus,” Reg said, under his breath.

Dad came back with his gun. He loaded the rifle and in one movement he raised it to his shoulder, took aim and fired at the cow’s head. There was a moment’s silence after the gunshot, like we’d got the whole desert’s attention. The cow’s body finally relaxed and became still. Jack bent down to examine her broken hind leg. He held it in his big hands. His fingers were so thick with calluses, it looked like he was wearing gloves. He rubbed his hands up and down the thin skin that covered the broken bones; touching it real carefully, like a doctor who didn’t want to hurt a patient. He was looking down at the cow, so all I could see was the top of his wide hat, which shook from side to side like a wagging tail. “That’s bad,” he said quietly.

Elliot put a chain round the cow and Emily jumped down from the back of the ute where she’d been sitting with Bobbie. Seeing her suddenly at his side, it was like Dad’s anger at losing a cow had dried up. “You surfing, Em?” he asked, and she smiled that big, stupid grin she uses when she wants something. As Elliot waited with the bull-catcher’s engine running, Emily climbed onto the dead cow’s body, leaving dusty orange boot prints on its fur. She found her balance on the cow’s round belly and waved at Elliot to let him know she was ready. As he set off, she stretched her arms out and pretended to surf. Her face looked real serious, a bit like the look she had when I tried to teach her how to tie her shoelaces. As Elliot dragged the cow slowly away it swept a sad-looking mark into the desert.

Emily hadn’t done much cow surfing before—she was just learning. She hadn’t got the hang of it properly, so when she didn’t bend her knees enough, her arms swung upwards. She did her best to stay balanced, but then her boots began to slide on the cow’s short fur. As she fell, her head went backward into the cow’s mound of a belly and it knocked her hat forward so she couldn’t see. Then she slipped into the dirt with a jolt as the cow continued on the dust wave without her. I shut my eyes and waited for her to start to blub like the other times, but she didn’t cry. She lay on the ground laughing. Dad went to pick her up and hoisted her onto his shoulders, like a champion, even though she’d fallen off.

Everyone forgot about the dead cow then, except for the Pommie. She was just stood there, staring, as it disappeared into the spinifex. Her mouth was turned down, like she’d smelled something rotten.