Cate had decided to put the ute to good use. There were mountains of stuff throughout the house that had been breeding since the late eighties, and most of it had to go. She could probably just take loads to the tip, and the rest she figured she could get past Ida by donating it to the needy. She’d have a good go tomorrow. Right now, she was hungry for actual food; cake was all very well, but she needed something more substantial. She made her way to the little kitchen and put bread in the toaster and rummaged for the Vegemite.
When it was ready, she went out to the weathered verandah lovingly decorated by Mac, pulled up an old plastic chair, and surveyed the garden. She’d have loved a coffee, but it was pointless to dwell. She wondered what the girls were up to. Maybe they had been shopping in Claremont and now they were off to Cottesloe for dinner. Saskia and Madonna loved the beach. Every time Cate went over to the workshop her phone pinged with a message from the girls letting her know she was missing out on another sunset over the sea, or a new cocktail at The Beach Club. It made her smile, but in many ways it felt like they were in a foreign country.
The garden had seen better days. It was rough and straggly; half of it needed a hard pruning, which she didn’t know how to do, and the other half needed pulling out, which she could work out, if necessary, but which didn’t fill her with joy. She resolved to water it occasionally and to see where that took her. She watched the sheds for movement and wondered what Henry was up to. Probably enjoying his water views. The water tank at the side of the house was looking quite old. When she had finished eating she wandered around it, tapping experimentally to see where the water reached. It was low. Maybe that was her next job. She could hear Ida calling her, so she went back inside, stepping over a couple of old sheep bones and spider-infested boots next to the back door on the way.
‘I’ve found some photos I thought you might like to see,’ Ida said, when she was inside.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Cate replied and settled in to look through old memories. It was nice to see her dad looking so happy as a kid, and there were pictures of her mum, as well. Cate had never thought of herself as a country girl because she really wasn’t. Yet here she was in a photo, sitting in an empty sheep feeder, her face plump and grimy, grinning at the camera, oblivious to her straw-blonde hair sticking straight out of her head, tousled by the dusty wind as her uncle towed her along with the ute. Uncle Jack was taller than she remembered. He had long limbs and dark-brown forearms, and a dusty grey akubra that was smashed down low over his face. He was nothing like her father. He was gentler, and he moved slowly, as she recalled, getting to each and every job in turn. Working long days when she had already grown tired and wandered home to eat cake in the farmhouse with Ida. Her memories were brief though. Impressions, mostly, and it surprised her that she retained even those. She had thought little of the farm, and her parents had shown the same lack of interest. This was another world to her; a foreign place in many ways from the fast and glittering life she had invented for herself. As she glanced out of the window she could still see the same paddocks that were captured in the pictures, and her aunt was still there, sitting next to her, and she began to wonder why she had stayed away so long. She remained engrossed in the past until early evening fell, and she could hear Mac whining at the back door.
‘What does Mac want? He never comes inside,’ Cate muttered, and went to the front of the house. She opened the door and shrieked. Hanging in front of her was a clutch of dead rabbits, all hooked by the back legs onto a piece of wire that had been fashioned into a macabre hanger.
‘What the freaking hell is this?’ she yelled. ‘There are CORPSES on the front verandah!’ She looked around. ‘Fucking hell!’
Her aunt came out. ‘Cate. Language.’ She looked calmly at the bunnies, who gazed back at her with their all-seeing dead rabbity eyes. ‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘Someone’s left us dinner.’
Cate slowly turned to her in amazement. ‘This doesn’t – I don’t know – disturb you in any way?’
Ida looked confused. ‘No. Why would it? The rabbits are dead, dear, and they were vegetarians before they died.’ She reached out to touch a furry stomach. ‘Delicious.’ She looked at Cate sideways. ‘Now, who do you think might have left these here for us?’
Cate rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it’s too high for Mac.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘Henry.’
Ida beamed. He was turning out to be a great swagman; she was in heaven. ‘You’d better go thank him, dear. These will be a real treat.’
Cate strode off towards the sheds. ‘Then why don’t you thank him?’ she muttered to no one in particular.
Mac, always happy for an excuse to tag along, followed, his gentle panting measuring the steps to Henry through the warm evening air. He wasn’t in his kitchen or in his room. He wasn’t at the workshop or in the machinery shed. This was getting too hard, and Cate could think of a few things she’d rather be doing than talking to Beardy Weirdy Henry. Hey, that rhymed. Weirdy Beardy. She played with it a few times in her mind until she turned the corner and saw the hole in his back.
It was healed now, but the scar seemed huge and angry. Who the hell had shot Henry? And where did he get that body? It wasn’t from trapping rabbits. He was seriously built, like he’d been working on it for a lifetime. He was in a pair of black stubbies, and he was showering under the hose at the back of the shearing shed, pouring the cool water over his fur and skin, a dark smattering of hair across his muscled chest and stomach, and an old bar of soap balancing on top of the tap. She was going to back away, but it was too late; Mac had announced her. Henry squatted down to pat him, and looked up to see Cate standing there like some kind of pervert. She blushed. Maybe it was just hot.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to —’
He turned quickly so the scar was out of her range of vision.
‘It’s fine,’ he muttered curtly, and reached for a large T-shirt, which he pulled over his huge wet frame.
Crap. Moses. Samson. Who knew? She looked at the ground, to remember why she had come.
‘Oh. Um, thanks for the dead animals. Aunty Ida is thrilled. I could’ve done with maybe pins in their eyes? Or little blood-soaked signs in their paws telling me I’m going to die horribly? They were gross, but I think they could’ve been a little more, I don’t know – disgusting?’
He kept looking at the ground too. She didn’t want to think about why he didn’t want to look at her face. Probably the hole in his back. What he didn’t know was that she could pretend like crazy. It was practically a permanent lifestyle choice at this point. She hadn’t seen anything. Bad or good. She wasn’t sure which was most disturbing.
‘They’re rabbits, Princess. What do you think they make roast lamb out of?’
‘I’m guessing not zombie bunnies.’
The beard twitched and he looked up, his face strange. Raw.
‘I was trapping them for dinner, and I thought you girls might like to have some of the locals.’
She winced. ‘Yeah, well, Aunty Ida is boiling up the cauldron as we speak, I expect.’
‘Have you skinned them?’
‘Oh yes, I have! Did I forget to wear the attractive hat I fashioned from their mangled fur?’
He ran his hands through his shaggy hair and down his beard, where water still glistened.
‘So you want me to show you how, Princess?’
She was looking at the way his shoulders moved when he spoke, so she missed the question.
‘What? Uh, I guess – okay.’
He looked inquiringly at her, shook his head one more time like a dog woken out of a deep sleep, and gestured for her to lead the way. She walked a few paces, then slowed, and they walked side by side to the house, while she imagined all the ways Henry had got shot.
‘Okay, so I’ve gutted them. Mac helped with disposal,’ Henry said.
Mac looked pleased with himself.
Cate’s nose wrinkled. She couldn’t help it. The rabbits still had faces.
He slapped a furry body in her hand, took one for himself and handed her a pocket knife. ‘Here. Now. Get your knife and nick through the fur in its back, about there.’ He guided her hand. ‘Now comes the good part.’ He smiled evilly. ‘Get a couple of fingers in both sides of your cut, and –’ he pulled the fur apart in a nightmare of skinny shiny pink flesh coming out of a fur sock –‘pull.’
Blerk. She pulled, and felt the fur tear and the slippery skin slide away.
Henry nodded in approval. ‘Now. Cut off the paws – no meat there – and the head.’ He held up his example. ‘Done.’
She followed suit. Once the head was gone, she felt better. Not great. Better.
He looked impressed. ‘Well done. I thought you’d bail, or sook.’
‘I don’t do that anymore,’ she muttered.
He considered her for a moment, and she clutched the rabbit’s jacket in her right hand and thought about how quickly the little creature had been robbed of its fur. Sometimes, she thought, as she stroked the soft dead pelt, you didn’t get as long as you’d imagined. The poor thing had been dashing across the dry paddocks a couple of hours ago, taking it all for granted. Life was unfair to rabbits, and to young women who thought the world was theirs.
Henry watched Cate’s hands, quietly, regarding them carefully as they touched the fur, and was still watching them when Ida swung open the squeaking flywire.
‘The great white hunter!’ she announced. ‘Well done! How did you learn to catch a rabbit, Henry?’
He turned quickly and smiled at her. ‘Old swaggie’s trick,’ he said with a wink at Cate.
Clever bastard.
Ida gestured to the small pile of meat.
‘Join us for tea. I’m showing Cate my rabbit recipe – “Depression Surprise”, my father used to call it.’
Henry shook his head, his eyes back on Cate’s hands. ‘No thanks. I’ll be off now. Enjoy the bunnies. They’re good lean meat.’ He was walking away, barefoot, like a wild man.
‘Hey, Henry!’
He turned reluctantly around. Cate stayed on the back step. ‘Feel free to use the bathroom sometime,’ she said. ‘Just knock so we know you’re coming.’
He shook his head again. ‘No thanks. I’m right.’
He was already walking away, and he was gone, into the night, taking Mac with him.