There’s one swinging tonight, but only one; it’s all they could catch. In the stable I water the horses and I take my time about it.
I stop with Queenie. I want to cut the sores from her hoofs. She lifts them for me when I think it. I scrape pieces from her feet with the sharpest knife and check her shoes are all intact. When I’m finished I touch her side, gentle, and she puts her foot down. Horses trust me. I fold the knife and put it in its place on the beam above the horseshoes and the brands.
There’s a wind up, a chill from the south, and it moves the branches, but the sack hangs limply, as if it has been painted onto this picture. Painted blue from the moon, which is swelling to full like the gut of a dead kangaroo filling with maggots.
The moon will burst when its skin gets too thin and all the flies will spill out of it. They will come down out of the sky and crawl all over us. They try to get in at the mouth, the ears, the eyes. I can squint, dig my pinkies into my nostrils and my thumbs into my ears, but eventually I have to breathe.
The house is full of troopers and syrupy air smelling of port wine, fat and tobacco. There aren’t enough chairs so the troopers stand against the walls and my sisters seem to take up all the rest of the house. They seep out of it like honey poured into a sack. I want the men to leave so I can get in and embed myself in Mother’s lap and hear her say, Look at this boy to Father, the way she says about the sulky dogs.
But they won’t go until they catch them.
I want to paint the swinging sack out of the night but it peeks in at me from every gap and crack in the stable which is only a shack no better than a lean-to, and gives splinters wherever you put your hand.
I put my hands down on the horses. I lean into a neck that leans into a basin of water. I put my nose into the place the mane starts and smell horse-sweat like rotten straw. I stay there until Queenie finishes and lifts her head and then we lean against each other, saying nothing. Neither of us could speak even if we wanted to.
I could stay all night and sleep standing like these animals. When the stable is full there’s a space the right size for me. There are four of ours brought in tonight and the four the troopers came with. I’ve watered them all now. Tomorrow they’ll be taken out again, taken by those troopers and the two trackers who are resting on the porch on the other side of the house, tobacco for them and a little fat but no port wine.
I hear my father’s voice and I can’t stay. He says Alfie and just as loud Where is that idiot boy. They all know I know my name, but they think because I don’t speak I am deaf. I touch the horses in the loving way of a mothering mare, wiping my hand down over their eyes like their mothers licked them at birth. It calms them like it calms me to bury my face in my own mother’s skirts.
I step out of the stable and move toward the house. My feet as silent as my throat. I walk slowly across the dark dirt yard, looking at my quiet feet. I walk in my own blue shadow. If I don’t look up I won’t see it and it won’t be there.
But it is still there. When I reach the porch the tree creaks. The sack will be turning.
The trackers see me, they are watching. They’re only cigarette ends under hats in the shadow but I can feel their eyes on me. I go into the house, wanting to press myself into its warm honey.
Alfie will have watered your horses, he’s so good with them. Might have made a trooper himself, Mother tells the policeman with the white moustache. There is a space where they think about what I could have made if only. The moustache twitches but the lips don’t move. He’s troubled by me, so I give him my reassuring idiot smile. I know she means to tell them I am good, so I don’t mind that she talks like I’m not there. They all do this, and also to the horses.
Long day tomorrow, says Moustache, and tips the sweet red liquor into his mouth. The glass looks tiny in his hand. He pats the barrel of a rifle that leans against the wall like a stiffened snake.
*
The troopers sleep in my room. I sleep on the porch with the trackers and the dogs. Mother and Father offer their bed to the men but are refused. My sisters sleep in their own room. They file into bed like obedient children but I know they will dream of troopers riding, dream with their delicate honey-hands pressed between their legs. I’ve seen them like this before. They whimper gently in their sleep like dogs.
I can move as quietly as a snake in this house at night on my mute feet.
I slip into the hammock that’s hung on the stable side of the porch. I can hear the horses snort themselves to rest and the troopers snoring in a rhythm. I close my eyes and make myself still and small and shapeless.
The tree creaks. The tree creaks and the sack will be turning. The moon is bright over the edge of the roof. I can see the painted-in shadow of the hanging sack. I can hear the dogs breathe, alert, knowing they’ll be called to hunt. The tree creaks and sleep won’t come.
I slip out of the hammock and pad barefoot to the stable.
I walk from stall to stall and touch each of them on their eyes, and when I have seen that all are held fast by sleep, I stop and lean into Queenie and I take my knife from the beam. I return to the beginning of the line and start with the troopers’ horses.
I keep one hand over the horse’s eye. I press hard, expecting thick skin, but the knife slices easily through the soft place under the chin. I am calm and I stroke each of them like a mother and they do not bark with pain. Blood slips over my hand, warm and thick, warmer than my own. It smells good, like wet metal.
Queenie is last in line. When I reach her, I think I should just let her go. They will only catch her again. I look down the row of stalls, at the steam rising from the floor, and through it, through a crack in the wall, I catch the movement of the sack. I know what to do. I wipe the knife on my sleeve, and I work it into Queenie’s neck. She sighs as she slips and falls.
I don’t fold the knife. I have one more sinew, one more thread to sever. I step out into the chill night, walk across the dark dirt yard on muted feet. I hear the tree creak and I face the sack.
It is not a sack at all, but a man. I feel the man-sized weight of him as I stand close. The knife slices through the rope and I let him fall.
Look down on his body, meek against the earth with me, moon, I think. But the moon doesn’t answer. Its belly is beginning to split.
I fold the knife and go to my hammock. The tree doesn’t creak anymore. I sleep sound through the night, until the flies wake me.
Bruno’s Song and Other Stories from the Northern Territory