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A writer with an ear for the rhythms of Australian speech, Melbourne-based Alan Marshall published in the dominant social realist tradition of the 1940s and ‘50s. The author of short stories, journalism, children’s books, novels and advice columns, he is best remembered for the first book of his autobiography, I Can Jump Puddles (1955). His work is marked by a deep interest in rural and working-class life, with an emphasis on shared experience.
HOUSE of BOOKS
ALAN
MARSHALL
The Complete Stories
of Alan Marshall
This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012
First published by Nelson publishers, Australia in 1977
Copyright © Alan Marshall 1977
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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Introduction Stephen Murray-Smith
TELL US ABOUT THE TURKEY, JO
Tell Us About the Turkey, Jo
Bulls
The Grey Kangaroo
A Little Son
Cardiac
Little Girl
The Singing of the Sun
You’re a Character
First Kill
Tch! Tch!
An Encounter
Crossing the Road
Bushman
Blow Carson, I Say
Mary, Do You Know What?
The Dog
The Gentleman
Prelude to Foreclosure
Clarkey’s Dead
Beware of the Man in the Blue Suit
Stepmother
Grey Morning
Kiss Her?—I’d Kiss Her!
No Murderin’ from Now On, Eh?
Boot Factory
THESE ARE MY PEOPLE
The Aborigines’ Grave
PEOPLE OF THE DREAMTIME
The Dog and the Kangaroo
The Eaglehawk and the Crow
The Winjarning Brothers
HOW’S ANDY GOING?
They were Tough Men on the Speewah
Blue Stews
How’s Andy Going?
Street Scene at Midday
My Bird
See the White Feathers Fall
Out of the Way, Mug
Trees Can Speak
Wild Red Horses
It’s a Hen’s Track
How My Friends Keep Me Going
Tips for Birthdays
The Donkey
Along the Track
SHORT STORIES
The Three-legged Bitch
Mrs Hookey’s Dick
How I Met General Pau
Hairy Legs
Four Sunday Suits
Singing to God
FESTIVAL AND OTHER STORIES
When a Man Kills, He Runs
HAMMERS OVER THE ANVIL
‘Duke’ McLeod
Mick Hanrahan
Peter McLeod
Jimmy Virtue
Elsie
East Driscoll
Joe’s Home
Old Mrs Bilson
Miss Armitage
Pat Corrigan
Mr Thomas
The Ostrich Man
Miss Trengrove
Fear
Judy Fliesher
Snarly Burns
Freckles Jack
Miss McAlister
Miss Barlow
Miss McPherson
The Catholic Ball
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the following publications in which Alan Marshall’s short stories appeared: the ABC Weekly, Australia, Australian New Writing, Bohemia, the Bulletin, the Labor Call, the Left Review, Meanjin, the Melbourne Herald, Overland, Pertinent, Smith’s Weekly and the Sun News-Pictorial. In addition, specific acknowledgement is due to the publishers of the following collections: Festival and Other Stories (Wren, Melbourne, 1975), Hammers over the Anvil (Nelson, Melbourne, 1975), How’s Andy Going? (Cheshire, Melbourne, 1956), Short Stories (Nelson, Melbourne, 1973), and Tell us about the Turkey, Jo (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1946).
Special acknowledgement is made to Noel Counihan for his pen drawings; to Mr and Mrs B. Hadlow for their permission to use the Noel Counihan portrait on the cover; and to Peter Wells, who photographed the portrait.
It should be noted that some previously published short stories by Alan Marshall were not included in this anthology, at the author’s request.
We live in times which are not very loving. No politician is loved as Ben Chifley was loved, or even Maurice Blackburn. As an academic I must say that I know of no vice-chancellor today, anywhere in this country, who is as loved or as lovable as Raymond Priestley or John Medley, sometime of the University of Melbourne. None of us love our teachers much these days: there is a kind of critical disaffection abroad, and not only in the schools, of a ‘times are out joint’ kind, which has eroded affection from the market-place. No poet is loved as Lawson was loved; we may admire Fred Williams or Clif Pugh or Arthur Boyd, but unless we know them well on personal terms their work does not arouse a personal empathy between the viewer and the artist. Art has moved towards distancing itself from the consumer. Gladys Moncrieff, Roy Rene, Les Darcy, you are needed at this hour.
Among Australian authors there has been, in recent times, one interesting exception. Alan Marshall not only held a firm place in the thoughts of all who knew him—and it was never hard to get to know Alan, as he must sometimes have ruefully reflected—but was a man who was regarded with national affection.
This was partly because his art was never pretentious. He never tried to be trendy; on the other hand he was never self-consciously folksy, either. Of course he was punished for this, as Lawson was too, for two generations. It is only recently that the critics have been looking closely at Alan’s prose, and starting to recognise within it the superb literary and intellectual skills, the quality of thought, of which it is compounded. I will be very surprised if Alan Marshall’s creative reputation does not bloom very considerably over the next fifty years as his deceptively concealed powers become more accessible to investigation.
One of the reasons why we have accepted Alan’s art, rather than studied it and talked about it, is because of his immense skill in drawing us into his own world and making us feel, if not exactly part of it, then deeply engaged with it. I once had a letter from London, from a young architect, in which he talked about the poetry in a recent Overland as being symptomatic of ‘something a tiny bit intellectual, simplifying therefore distant’, but then goes on to talk about how Alan’s studies of the people of his childhood in the same issue (and now published in this book) exemplify what is needed instead: ‘compassion linked to a deepening comprehension of perceptions’.
I think this quality in Alan Marshall came through most clearly in his morning radio readings of material from his own books. Each one of these short readings was an artistic act of great power, linking the voice and personality of the creator with the words that evoke other times, places, characters, incidents. I don’t remember much these days of what I see or hear or read, and on the face of it I suppose the least likely setting to remember things is in driving to work over thirty miles of busy road. Yet the wonder of what Alan was doing in these broadcasts stays vividly with me: the child at the piestand, or the hobo looking for his mate and fearful he has fallen under the train. A marvellous and moving experience, in the fullest sense of the phrase an artistic experience, and I hope that for the sake of the future the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has kept the tapes.
In these broadcasts we had a combination of qualities: Alan Marshall as narrator, as writer, as man. I realised more fully than ever before that we had a person here of quite exceptional importance to us all, a creator who, in our fractioned world, impels us towards a unity of the spirit. It is true that in this book we lack the voice of the narrator: the dry, warm, Australian voice of Alan’s—the laconic evenness of the bushman rather than the polished cadences of the actor. But per contra we have the pleasure of being able to linger over the words and phrasing and of being able to return to the edge of the pool.
Alan seemed to me one of the most ‘whole’ men I am ever likely to meet. Like a benign priest, humanity could not shock him. More than this, I felt on talking to him that he asked more questions of himself about himself than the rest of us can dream of doing. This gave his writing, even the most dramatic of it, a sense of peace and unity, and I believe that with Marshall it is here that we must look for the core of that quality that all great writers have, the capacity to unsettle the reader. In other words, Marshall is hitting hard at the most exposed flank in our national psyche. Of course he can and should be read for simple pleasure, but whether he knew it or not he was in fact opening more doors than that.
Alan Marshall is no longer with us and, in death, he is probably all-forgetting. But, as Samuel Butler has reminded us, men like him will not be all-forgotten. Many who are not yet even a twinkle in their great-grandfather’s eyes will draw knowledge and beauty from Alan Marshall, and will still be his people.
Stephen Murray-Smith
He came walking through the rusty grasses and sea-weedish plants that fringe Lake Corangamite. Behind him strode his brother.
He was very fair. His hair was a pale gold and when he scratched his head the parted hairs revealed the pink skin of his scalp. His eyes were very blue. He was freckled. His nose was tipped upward. I liked him tremendously. I judged him to be about four and a half years old and his brother twice that age.
They wore blue overalls and carried them jauntily. The clean wind came across the water and fluttered the material against their legs. Their air was one of independence and release from authority.
They scared the two plovers I had been watching. The birds lifted with startled cries and banked against the wind. They cut across large clouds patched with blue and sped away, flapping low over the water.
The two boys and I exchanged greetings while we looked each other over. I think they liked me. The little one asked me several personal questions. He wanted to know what I was doing there, why I was wearing a green shirt, where was my mother? I gave him the information with the respect due to another seeker of knowledge. I then asked him a question and thus learned of the dangers and disasters that had beset his path.
‘How did you get that cut on your head?’ I asked. In the centre of his forehead a pink scar divided his freckles.
The little boy looked quickly at his brother. The brother answered for him. The little boy expected and conceded this. He looked at the brother expectantly and, as the brother spoke, the little boy’s eyes shone, his lips parted, as one who listens to a thrilling story.
‘He fell off a baby’s chair when he was little,’ said the brother. ‘He hit his head on a shovel and bled over it.’
‘Ye-e-s,’ faltered the little boy, awed by the picture, and in his eyes was excitement and the thrill of danger passed. He looked across the flat water, rapt in the thought of the chair and the shovel and the blood.
‘A cow kicked him once,’ said the brother.
‘A cow!’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Go on, Jo,’ said the little boy eagerly, standing before him and looking up into his face.
‘He tried to leg-rope it,’ Jo explained, ‘and the cow let out and got him in the stomach.’
‘In the stomach,’ emphasised the little boy turning quickly to me and nodding his head.
‘Gee!’ I exclaimed.
‘Gee!’ echoed the little boy.
‘It winded him,’ said Jo.
‘I was winded,’ said the little boy slowly as if in doubt. ‘What’s winded, Jo?’
‘He couldn’t breathe properly,’ Jo addressed me.
‘I couldn’t breathe a bit,’ said the little boy.
‘That was bad,’ I said.
‘Yes, it was bad, wasn’t it, Jo?’ said the little boy.
‘Yes,’ said Jo.
Jo looked intently at the little boy as if searching for scars of other conflicts.
‘A ladder fell on him once,’ he said.
The little boy looked quickly at my face to see if I was impressed. The statement had impressed him very much.
‘No,’ said I unbelievingly.
‘Will I show him, Jo?’ asked the little boy eagerly.
‘Yes,’ said Jo.
The little boy, after giving me a quick glance of satisfaction, bent and placed his hands on his knees. Jo lifted the back of his brother’s shirt collar and peered into the warm shadow between his back and the cotton material.
‘You can see it,’ he said uncertainly, searching the white skin for its whereabouts.
The little boy twisted his arm behind his back and strove to touch a spot on one of his shoulders.
‘It’s there, Jo. Can you see it, Jo?’
‘Yes. That’s it,’ said Jo. ‘You come here and see.’ He looked at me. ‘Don’t move, Jimmy.’
‘Jo’s found it,’ announced Jimmy, his head twisted to face me.
I rose from my seat on a pitted rock nestling in grass and stepped over to them. I bent and looked beneath the lifted collar. On the white skin of his shoulder was the smooth ridge of a small scar.
‘Yes. It’s there all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet you cried when you got that.’
The little boy turned to Jo. ‘Did I cry, Jo?’
‘A bit,’ said Jo.
‘I never do cry much, do I, Jo?’
‘No,’ said Jo.
‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
‘The ladder had hooks in it . . .’ commenced Jo.
‘Had hooks in it,’ emphasised the little boy nodding at me.
‘And he pulled it down on top of him,’ continued Jo.
‘Oo!’ said the little boy excitedly, clasping his hands and holding them between his knees while he stamped his feet. ‘Oo-o-o.’
‘It knocked him rotten,’ said Jo.
‘I was knocked rotten,’ declared the little boy slowly as if revealing the fact to himself for the first time.
There was a pause while the little boy enjoyed his thoughts.
‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it?’ Jo sought new contacts with me.
‘Yes,’ said I.
The little boy stood in front of his brother, entreating him with his eyes.
‘What else was I in, Jo?’ he pleaded.
Jo pondered, looking at the ground and nibbling his thumb.
‘You was in nothin’ else,’ he said, finally.
‘Aw, Jo!’ The little boy was distressed at the finality of the statement. He bent suddenly and pulled up the leg of his overalls. He searched his bare leg for marks of violence.
‘What’s that, Jo?’ He pointed to a faint mark on his knee.
‘That’s nothin’,’ said Jo. Jo wanted to talk about ferrets. ‘You know, ferrets . . .’ he began.
‘It looks like something,’ I said, looking closely at the mark.
Jo leant forward and examined it. The little boy, clutching the crumpled leg of his trousers, looked from my face to his brother’s and back again, anxiously waiting a decision.
Jo made a closer examination, rubbing the mark with his finger. The little boy followed Jo’s investigation with an expectant attention.
‘You mighta had a burn once. I don’t know.’
‘I wish I did have a burn, Jo,’ said the little boy. It was a plea for a commitment from Jo, but Jo was a stickler for truth.
‘I can’t remember you being burnt,’ he said. ‘Mum’d know.’
‘Perhaps you can think of another exciting thing,’ I suggested.
‘Yes,’ said the little boy eagerly. He came over and took my hand so that we might await together the result of Jo’s cogitation. He looked up at me and said, ‘Isn’t Jo good?’
‘Very good,’ I said.
‘He knows about me and everything.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
There was a faint ‘Hulloo’ from behind us. We all turned. A little girl came running through the rocks in the barrier that guards the lake from the cultivated lands. She had thin legs and wore long, black stockings. One had come loose from its garter and, as she ran, she bent and pulled and strove to push its top beneath the elastic band. Her gait was thus a series of hops and unequal strides.
She called her brothers’ names as she ran and in her voice was the note of the bearer-of-news.
‘Dad must be home,’ said Jo.
But the little boy was resentful of this intrusion. ‘What does she want?’ he said sourly.
The little girl had reached a flat stretch of grass and her speed had increased. Her short hair fluttered in the wind of her running.
She waved a hand. ‘We have a new baby sister,’ she yelled.
‘Aw, pooh!’ exclaimed the little boy.
He turned and tugged at Jo’s arm. ‘Have you thought of anything exciting yet, Jo?’ His face lit to a sudden recollection. ‘Tell him how I got chased by the turkey,’ he cried.
The little girl ran quickly from the shed and stood listening.
Again she heard his voice, loud and menacing:
‘Bring up those cows, blast you!’
She darted back and hid a tin of mud beneath a loose board on the floor. She wiped her hands on her stained, blue dress and ran towards the paddock gate calling with rising and falling inflection:
‘Ja-ack, Ja-ack!’
A black dog rushed after her, barking excitedly.
‘G’way back!’ she commanded, pointing.
The dog sped past her, its flexible body animated with an intense energy. The little girl picked up a long stick that lay on the ground and followed, running with short, swift steps.
The cows were scattered across the paddock. Some were lying down. At the sound of the dog’s imperative barking, they rose laboriously to their feet and commenced to walk towards the track that led to the cowyard.
The little girl stopped. She leant on her stick, waiting for the dog to collect those in the far corner. She was seven years old and had brown skin and smooth, round limbs. Her fair bobbed hair hung in an untidy mass from her head. When she ran it shook across her eyes so that she could not see. She would toss her head and push it back with her hand, but its natural position seemed to be before her face. It was generally adorned with a dirty ribbon secured by a single knot. The ends hung to her shoulders, the original bow having disappeared earlier in the day.
The cows soon collected into a herd that moved slowly towards the yard at the end of the paddock. Occasionally one would stop and bellow loudly. The little girl urged the lagging ones by running to and fro, shouting and waving her stick. The dog barked and snapped at their heels. Some broke into a clumsy trot, their heavy udders swinging violently from side to side.
A bull walked among the cows. The little girl glanced at it frequently. As it altered its position she moved so as to keep as far away from it as possible. This fear was always with her. Frightened thoughts startled her in the midst of play, like the touch of cold hands. In the night the bull’s head came out of the darkness and looked at her.
The bull walked with its head held low, swinging it from side to side with the movements of its body. The tremendous muscles on its shoulders rose and fell. Its staring, wicked eyes seemed to be always looking back at her. They were concentrated and intent as if it were listening to the sound of her feet swishing through the long grass.
The little girl knew that some day it would whirl suddenly and rush at her with its short, black-tipped horns. It would bellow and toss her and throw her to the ground and she would never move again—like the calves her father struck on the head with a piece of iron. Then the bull would go back to the herd and her father would milk the cows just the same.
He stood at the open cowyard gate, swearing at the delay. ‘Blast you! Get a move on.’
He was a large man with a heavy, unshaven face. He scowled continuously. His lips were full and bore small, dry flakes of skin. His round, obese stomach, confined by a tightly stretched galatea shirt, bulged over the twisted leather belt that supported his dungaree trousers. The cuffs were caught up by the tags on the back of his boots revealing the boots in their entirety like the enormous, misshapen hooves of some grotesque animal. The untied laces were almost hidden by an accumulation of pollard, mud and chaff. His felt hat was stained with milk, and stuck to the grease were numerous small red hairs from the flanks of the cows against which he had pressed his head. There breathed from his clothes, and accompanied him continuously, an odour repulsively animal—the smell of the cowyard.
The little girl ran backwards and forwards behind the herd. The dog barked frantically. The cows plunged through the mud which lay deep round the yard, striving to get away from the snapping teeth.
‘Hi! Hi!’ called the father.
The cows, crowding and jostling, flowed into the first yard, which was unstoned and knee-deep in black, slimy mud. The little girl plodded through the morass and closed the bottom gate. Her father opened the one leading into the small paved yard confronting the bails. The cows standing near moved forward, lifting their legs high as they pulled them from the mud, and heaving their bodies as they clambered on to the stone paving.
The father put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The dog appeared and rushed in among the cows. They jammed and pushed in the gateway, their heads held aloft, forced up by the hindquarters of those in front of them. They crowded forward, slipping and horning one another.
‘That’s enough, Mick,’ came a plaintive voice. The little girl’s mother stood at the entrance to a bail holding a bucket. The father kicked at the cows coming through and forced the gate shut. The cows nearest the bails walked into their position.
The little girl hurried from bail to bail, pulling the rope that manipulated the upright securing their heads. She leg-roped them, pushing hard against their flanks to force them against the rails, and pulling their legs back into an unnatural rigid position. Their legs were thick with dripping mud and the ropes became slimy snakes, horrible to touch.
A bucket made from half a kerosene-tin and a piece of wire hung from a nail driven into one of the posts. The father lifted it down and filled it with water. He took a dirty rag that lay on a bench. He went to each cow and, resting a hand on their flanks, he bent and soused their udders and teats with splashings of cold water. Many of the udders had been dragged in the mud. The water became black. A muddy sediment collected in the bottom of the bucket.
He commenced milking. His pudgy hands pressed and released the teats tirelessly. They seemed to have an existence apart from his clumsy body. The milk spurted in rapid streaks. A white froth arose in the bucket. Where the straight, white stems lost themselves in the froth, a grey, discoloured circle appeared making an unclean stain upon the white surface.
He often squirted milk on his hands to moisten the grip. Mixed with mud from the udder, it dripped from his fingers in round, grey drops. Where the top of his hand pressed against the udder a circular encrustation of grease and dirt collected.
‘Let some more in!’ he yelled at the little girl.
She ran to the gate and swung it open. The bull entered with the cows.
‘Open a door and let that bull through!’ he commanded.
The bail doors were weighted and had to be held open. The bull’s body would brush hers as it passed. The little girl was afraid and made no move to obey. She stood pressed against the fence, looking first at the bull and then at her father.
He rose from his milking block in a rage. He pointed at the door and roared: ‘Open that blasted door, I say!’
The little girl took a few faltering steps forward.
‘The bull,’ she said weakly. Her powerless eyes never left his face.
He put his bucket on the stone floor and stepped out of the bail. The little girl shrank back, her clenched hands pressed against her mouth, her terrified eyes looking upwards.
The head and shoulders of her mother arose from behind a cow. ‘She is afraid of the bull, Mick.’
‘Afraid, is she!’ snarled the father. ‘I’ve told her the bull is harmless. She’s lazy, that’s what’s wrong with her.’
The head and shoulders of the mother shrank from view.
‘Come here!’ he shouted, his head thrust forward.
The little girl came to him as a dog would that expects a blow.
‘Open that door!’ he mouthed, pointing with his hand and looking down on her.
As she turned to obey him, he struck her heavily between the shoulders, precipitating her violently forward for a few steps. He watched her, then walked over to the bull and drove it toward the bail.
The little girl watched it approaching. As it drew near, her eyes slipped here and there with quick little movements like the eyes of a bird. It came straight towards her, its head swinging low, its small black eyes gleaming. She stood very still with one arm outstretched to the door, the other held stiffly by her side. The bull’s head passed her barely a foot away. She could see the red, curling hair between its eyes, the texture of its horrible horns, its black slimy nostrils. She felt its hot breath.
Her father returned to his milking, grumbling.
‘She’ll turn that bull savage, that’s what she’ll do. You’ve got to stand up to them. It knows me. I flogged it once and it’s never forgotten it. What with her howling and running every time it comes near, it’ll never be safe.’
Swish, swish went the milk in the buckets. The cows, with heavy, drooping lids, chewed their cuds in silent ecstasy. The milk sang from the coolers.
Each Monday her father drove to the township five miles away. Her mother accompanied him. The little girl stayed at home to ‘look after the place’. She played with the dog and built little houses beside the hay-shed with bags and fencing rails. On one of these days she sat on the paddock gate watching the bull feeding. A deep hatred of it stirred her. That morning it had shaken its head at her as it walked through the bail. She suddenly felt she wanted to hurt it. She remembered her father’s words, ‘I flogged it once and it has never forgotten it.’ She would like to flog it too. She pondered on ways of hurting it, of making it afraid of her.
She climbed from the gate and ran to where a bluish dog with one wall eye was chained beneath an old gum-tree. Her father used him when he drove cattle to the saleyards or brought springers from the dry paddocks. She unfastened the chain from his collar. He bounded away and tore round the yard, glad to be free. He stopped suddenly beside a bucket of water and began to drink noisily.
‘Here, boy!’ she called.
She ran with him to the paddock fence and climbed through. She walked watchfully towards the bull, then stopped and waving her hand urged the dog: ‘Sool ’im, Bluey! Get hold of him!’
The dog gave a delighted yelp and raced towards the bull. He dived in, snapped at the animal’s hocks and shot past, propping frantically.
The bull gave a startled jump; then, realising the dog’s intention, commenced trotting down the paddock. Again the dog drove at him, sinking his teeth into the firm, sinewy legs. The bull broke into a lumbering gallop. The dog followed, harrying the animal with vicious, perfectly timed attacks. The bull kicked as it ran. It kept turning its head from side to side so that it could watch the dop leaping behind it. The dog was an old heeler and squatted low as it snapped, so that the powerful legs shot over its head.
The bull slowed down, then turned and, lowering its head, made a rush at the dog. The dog dodged and tried to get behind the bull so that it could continue its onslaught; but the larger animal kept turning so that its horns always confronted its antagonist. The dog made short little jumps towards the bull’s head, barking savagely. This continued for some time. The dog paused and, evading the bull’s horns with a quick bound, dashed in, biting savagely at the bull’s legs. The beast again set off at a gallop.
Later they stopped and repeated the performance.
Occasionally the dog looked towards the little girl for encouragement. It stood still with one front paw raised, its ears pricked, its tongue dripping. Her voice: ‘Sool ‘im, boy. Get to him,’ relieved its dog’s mind of any doubt as to the wisdom of this unusual latitude and it returned eagerly to its persecution.
Round the paddock they went. Long threads of saliva floated from the bull’s mouth. Its shoulders were streaked with shining strands. Its sunken flanks rose and fell. Blood from its torn hocks dripped to the ground. At last, almost exhausted, it made a stand in a corner, its back to the fence, and defied the dog’s attempts to rout it. It pawed the ground, tossing lumps of earth and grass shoulder high with sullen rage. It dropped to its knees, burying first one horn and then the other in the earth and flinging its head upwards. Small lumps of damp soil and grass adhered to the ends of its horns. It bellowed onimously.
The dog stood in doubt. It looked towards the little girl for guidance. But a sudden fear smote the little girl and she called the dog to her and ran swiftly towards the house, her heart beating rapidly.
When her parents returned her mother hurried her into the house. Her father wasn’t well. He staggered and swore. Her mother cut the child a thick slice of bread and jam. Her movements were flurried and nervous. She was a thin woman with tired eyes. Two bright red smudges of colour high on her cheek-bones stood out from the pallor of her face. She glanced often at the door and urged the little girl to hurry.
‘Bring up the cows quickly,’ she said. ‘Your father isn’t well.’
The little girl trotted across the paddock munching the bread and jam. She kept as far away from the bull as she could. One of the cows was standing near it. The little girl was afraid to approach any closer. She urged Floss to ‘fetch her out’, but the cow was one that her father had bought at a sale the week before, and refused to leave the corner where it stood looking towards some distant hills and sometimes lowing in a restless, unsettled way.
The little girl looked first towards the house and then towards the cow. She began to cry. Floss trotted up with wagging tail and pushed her damp nose against the little girl’s limp hand. They both walked after the rest of the cows which were approaching the yard.
‘You haven’t brought in the brindle cow, you little fool!’ her father yelled. ‘Go and get her.’
‘The bull . . .’ she began faintly.
Her father spurned the stool back with his booted foot and took several quick steps forward, but the little girl turned and ran across the paddock towards the corner in which the bull stood motionless, its head bent at an acute angle.
When she got half-way there she stopped and looked towards the yard. Her father was watching her, his big hands resting on top of the gate.
‘Get a move on there,’ came his voice.
She approached a little nearer to the bull then stopped once more. Again her father’s voice bellowed from the yard. She did not move.
He slammed the gate savagely behind him and walked towards her. The little girl watched him approach, plucking at her skirt with her fingers. When he was so near that she could see his face she sank upon her knees in the grass.
‘Get up,’ he said through his teeth.
She made no effort to obey him but crouched closer to the ground, her legs drawn beneath her, her elbows close to her sides, her hands pressed palm downwards on the grass. He kicked her. Anguished sobs, almost inaudible, shook her. He seized her by the shoulder and lifted her to her feet. ‘You’ll come with me, miss,’ he said.
He dragged her towards the bull. It stood with stiffened muscles but, as they approached, it began to bellow menacingly and shake its head.
The father hesitated and released his hold on the little girl. She darted through the fence like a terrified rabbit. He picked up a dry clod and hurled it, with a curse, at the animal.
The bull made a sudden, swift rush. It went forward with great bounds, digging its hooves into the ground. All the tremendous power of its smooth, rounded muscles was concentrated in hurling its heavy body at this hated man.
He flung out his arms, took a faltering step backwards, then turned to run. His eyes were wide open. Curved wrinkles corrugated his forehead. The muscles of his hanging jaw were loose and flabby. He cried out with a loud, harsh voice. The enormous head struck him, a driving horn caught him in the armpit. The bull tossed its head, lifting the man from his feet and flinging him sideways like a loosely-filled sack. He fell sprawling to the ground. In a very access of fury, foam flecked and bellowing, the bull turned and hurled itself at the recumbent figure. It gored it into the soft grass, using the body as a pivot round which it circled with its hindquarters. The thing’s passiveness infuriated it the more. It buried its red horns in the shapeless bulk again, and again, and again. . . .
She knew the old prospector. From a cleared patch on the hillside she often noticed him washing for gold in the creek that ran through the valley.
Sometimes he stopped his swirling and sat on the bank watching her while he filled his pipe.
He had known her for two years. She was his friend. She was smaller than her companions, and differed from them in colour. She was grey; they were almost black—‘scrubbers’, the old man called them.
Each morning the creaking of his cart, as he followed the winding track round the mountain side, would cause them to stand erect for a moment, nostrils twitching.
But they did not fear him. He was one with the carol of the magpies and the gums.
When his ‘Whoa there!’ stayed the old black horse, they knew he only wished to look at them. They continued feeding. Their movements were like music—rhythmical—an undulating rise and fall of symmetrical bodies against a background of slender trees.
Occasionally they stopped and, sitting upright, looked back at him, a look of intense interest, of watchfulness.
Their flanks, wet with the dew from sweet-smelling leaves, glistened in the morning sun. They seemed like children of the trees.
There was a day when the old prospector approached within a few yards of the grey kangaroo. She awaited his coming, standing with head extended, eyes half-closed, nostrils working with curiosity. He remained motionless, and they regarded each other.
She turned and hopped slowly away from him. She moved with grace and dignity, despite her burden. She carried a joey.
A mile from the spot where the old prospector worked, two boys were cutting timber. Their axe-heads glittered in the sun. When for a moment the eager steel poised motionless above their heads, the muscles on their uncovered backs stood out in little, smooth brown hills. Their skin had the unblemished gloss of eggshells.
Beside the log on which they worked lay a blue kangaroo dog. His powerful, rib-lined chest rose and fell. His narrow loins had the delicacy of a stem.
Suddenly he lifted his head and, turning, bit at the smooth hair on his shoulder to ease an irritation. His lips, pushed up and back, revealed red gums and the smooth, ivory daggers of his teeth. He snuffled and worked his jaws. His jowls flowed with saliva. He expelled a deep breath and lay back again. Flies hovered over his head. He snapped and moved restlessly.
The boys called him Springer—Springer, the killer. In the shade from surrounding trees lay other dogs. They formed a pack, the existence of which was due to the boys’ love of hunting. They had no beauty of line, as had Springer. They were a rabble. They barked at nights and howled at the moon. They ran down rabbits with savage joy and, in the pack, were relentless in their pursuit. They looked to Springer to bring down the larger game. They were content to be in at the kill.
One of them, Boofer, a half-bred sheep dog, rose and stretched herself. She yawned with a whine and walked into the sunlight. She stood there a moment meditatively. She looked back over her shoulder. A flying chip fell beside her. She sniffed it. She was bored. She turned and trotted off among the trees.
Some time later her excited barking caused the other dogs to jump to their feet. They stood with their necks erect, their heads moving alertly from side to side.
Boofer tore past, some distance away, running at speed, her nose to the ground. The dogs yelped with delight and, scattering dry gum leaves and crashing through scrub, sped after her.
The boys stopped work and watched.
‘There they are, up on the hill!’ cried one. ‘Look, quick, look!’
He pointed.
He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled shrilly.
Springer, having disregarded the yelping of the pack, leaped to his feet at the sound, as to a clarion call.
He sprang forward with short, stiff bounds, craning his neck as if to see over obstacles. He stopped and grew tense, one forefoot raised in the air. His panting had ceased. He looked eagerly from side to side.
The boy who had whistled jumped from the log. He ran to the blue dog and, grasping his head between his hands, half lifted him from the ground. The dog’s neck was stretched and rolls of skin half-closed his eyes.
‘See ’em. See ’em,’ he whispered excitedly.
But no responsive quickening of muscle stirred the dog. The boy ran forward dragging Springer with him.
Then Springer saw. With a mighty bound he parted the boy’s hands. He leaped with a terrific releasing of energy, doubling like a spring until, having attained speed, he moved with effortless beauty.
The boy sprang again to the log. He stood with his lips slightly parted, eyes wide, his hands clenched by his side.
‘Boy!’ he breathed to his companion. ‘Look at him.’
Upon the hillside the mob of kangaroos had heard the yapping of Boofer on their trail. The little grey kangaroo lifted her head quickly. For a long, tense moment she stood in frozen immobility looking down into the valley. Her joey, nibbling at the grass some distance from her, jumped in sudden panic and made for his mother with single-purposed speed. With her paws she held her pouch open like a sugar bag. He tumbled in headlong, his kicking legs projecting a moment before he disappeared.
How safe he felt in there; how secure from dogs with teeth and men with guns. His little heart, swift-beating at the excited barking of the pack, became even and content. He turned and his head popped forth with childish curiosity.
His mother was already on the move. The does were in haste; the old men were more leisured.
With a clamour the pack broke through the trees. Ahead of them, like the point of a spear, Springer ran silently.
The kangaroos leaped into frantic speed, but before they gained their top Springer was among them and they scattered wildly.
Perhaps it was because of her conspicuous colour, perhaps because she was so very small, the kangaroo dog singled her out from her companions and set after her relentlessly. And, recognising his leadership, the pack followed eagerly, joyfully, the hills echoing their exultation.
She had intended making up the hill to thicker timber, but, as if suddenly realising her desperate plight and the heavy responsibilities of motherhood, she turned her flight towards the old prospector.
Through the fragrant hazel, past the mottled silver-wattles, by sad tree-ferns and across chip-strewn clearings she sped; and behind her Springer cleared as she the fallen trunks, the scattered limbs, swerved as she did from the pointed stakes, flew wombat holes and trickling water-courses with equal ease. He rode the air like Death itself.
The clutch of some mimosa hampered the grey kangaroo. She lost ground. The blue dog gathered himself and sprang, but the rough take-off spoiled his leap and he wobbled in mid-air. His teeth closed on the skin of her shoulder, his body struck her. She staggered and collided with a sapling. The dog shot past her, scarring the moist earth with tearing feet.
With heroic endeavour the grey kangaroo recovered her balance and in a violent, concentrated effort, she drew away from the dog, a tattered banner of red skin draggling from her naked shoulder.
She made for some crowded gum suckers. They brushed her as she passed. With a swift and desperate movement she tore her joey from her pouch and flung him, almost without loss of speed, into their shelter. She turned at right angles, leading the blue dog away from him.
The joey staggered to his feet and hopped away distractedly. But the following pack, with triumphant cries, bore down on him. He gave one helpless glance back at them and tried to flee. They swept over him like a wind. He was lost in their midst.
Their howl of triumph reached the little grey mother as she strained ahead of Springer, the killer. Their unleashed savagery, fleeing from them in bloody glee, broke upon her in waves.
The old prospector heard it too, and, dropping his dish, he clambered in clumsy haste from the creek. When his head and shoulders appeared over the bank, he stopped a moment with dazed eyes and open mouth watching the approach of the grey kangaroo and her pursuer.
He raised himself swifty and ran towards them. His eyes were wide open, distraught. He raised his hand in the air and cried hoarsely, ‘Come be’ind ‘ere! Come be’ind ‘ere!’
When the grey kangaroo reached the clearing she was all but spent. The blue dog, with mouth open and silken strands of saliva blowing free, raced behind her across a patch of fern. He was but a length away when, with painful bounds, she reached the cool sweetness of young grass.
He made a last, terrific burst. He left the ground with all the glorious energy of a skin-clad dancer, his body modelled in clean curves of muscle. His teeth locked deep in her shoulder. His hurtling body seemed to arrest its speed as if suddenly braked. He met the ground stiff-legged and taut.
The grey kangaroo, her head jerked downwards, spun in the air. She turned completely over. Her long tail whipped in a circle above her head. She landed with a dull crash on her back. Before the shock of her falling had released her breath, Springer was at her throat. With demoniac savagery he tore at the soft, warm fur. With braced forelegs and tail erect, he shook her in a frenzy.
She kicked helplessly.
He sprang back, keyed for further conflict.
Her front paws, like little hands, quivered in unconscious supplication. She relaxed, sinking closer to the earth as to a mother.
He turned and walked away from her, panting, with red drops dripping from his running tongue.
With half-closed eyes he watched the old prospector running towards them, his heavy, wet boots flop-flopping on the grass.
She stood near the broken she-oak tree, her hand shading her eyes. She could see miles across the saltbush plain, but there was no sign of that little patch of moving white—the canvas-covered wagon of her husband.
The heat was palpable. It moved through the air like waves of syrup through water. It had weight and pressed on her bare arms. No sound, no movement. . . . The sky was cloudless.
She was weary and heavy with child.
Two days ago she had watched the curved-topped drover’s wagon pass through the myall clump and strike across the dusty-coloured saltbush towards the home of Mrs Clancy, the wool teamster’s wife—a twenty-mile trip. Mrs Clancy was their nearest neighbour and a good midwife it was said. All the people of the plains knew her.
The wife lowered her hand. She had expected her husband back the next day. Two days had almost gone. She was afraid. Her time was nearly here. Yesterday she had had a bad attack of pain. She cried so easily. It took so much courage.
She turned wearily. The small, pine-log house conserved the heat, which took from it its spaciousness and fouled it with a heavy smell of stagnation. The coolest spot was beneath the bed. She had lain there for some time that morning.
Three topknot pigeons alighted with a flutter of wings on the fence beside the house. Their bills were open. All the crabholes were dry. They sat with their heads on one side. She knew that when she walked inside they would fly down to the dog’s tin to drink.
As she brushed between the hessian bags hanging over the doorway, disturbed flies rose from her back in a cloud of circling dots.
She moved slowly round the house preparing her evening meal.
She was careful with the water. The two-hundred-gallon tank on the dray propped near the door was nearly empty, and although she had thrown two packets of salts into the water to clear it when it had first been carted from the big, excavated tank five miles away, it was still very muddy.
She strained it through white flannel. There was no milk for her tea. She used an egg beaten up in water. When the tea was made she sat in the oven-like house sipping it and thinking.
That night she did not sleep and early next morning she scanned the plain for a sign of the wagon. The plain was empty.
The heat became more intense as the morning passed. Before her anxious eyes it became a vapour that shimmered as it rose from the dry earth. A needlegrass-covered sandhill on the edge of the plain was reflected in the clear waters of a mirage. Some sheep feeding on its edge appeared to have the legs of giants.
Later, pain came upon her and she thought, ‘It’s coming.’
She broke out into a cold perspiration and began to tremble. She walked into the house and lay on her bed. She got up and commenced to walk about.
She suddenly heard the excited yapping of dogs as they strained on the chain tied to an axle, the rattle of the worn boxes of her husband’s wagon wheels. She went to the door.
‘Are you all right?’ her husband called anxiously. He had pulled up before the gate. She nodded. Mrs Clancy climbed down. Her back was black with flies. She waved her hand before her face and bustled up, full of soft murmurings. She hurried the wife inside.
‘Just in time—just in time,’ she murmured to herself.
The husband led the horse round to a shed to unharness it. It had froth on its neck and shoulders and shone with sweat. Sweat trickled over its hooves in streaks and dripped from its belly in round, black drops.
Inside, the young wife clung to the old, experienced woman with the short, plump body and the round, motherly face.
‘I’m frightened,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry, dear. Don’t be frightened. You will be all right. God is very good to women in the bush.’ Her voice was a caress.
She hurried round heating water and attending to the trembling girl.
The husband appeared. The young wife looked at his worried face. She smiled at him bravely. He was anxious to be of use. Mrs Clancy hurried him outside.
‘That’s one reason why I don’t mind having babies,’ she said to the girl, ‘for if ever a man runs for his wife, he’ll run for her then. They’re never more kind or thoughtful.’
The girl crouched on the edge of the bed.
‘You must keep walking till near the time, dear. You will be all right—a big strong girl like you. Keep walking about the room. That’s the way.’
The girl kept walking to and fro. When bouts of pain seized her she clung to the end of the iron bedstead, swaying and moving her lips soundlessly. Her face was pressed against a stockwhip that hung on the end of the bed. When the pain ceased and she drew a shuddering breath she could smell the scent of its myall-wood handle.
She commenced walking again. She felt so alone. Her husband was near yet he seemed far away from her. She felt a need of her mother. The heat in the room was intense. Flies buzzed round her.
In her walking periods she dreaded letting herself sink into the abyss of pain again. To have to encourage the darkness of that lonely agony sapped her courage.
‘Dear God!’ she whispered.
‘Don’t fight against it, dear.’ Mrs Clancy stroked her arm.
Later she said, ‘Better lie down now, dear.’
But the young wife was afraid and cried:
‘I can’t lie down. Not yet.’
‘Yes, dear. Come on.’
‘I want to kneel on the floor. . . .’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
The gentle old midwife laid her hand upon her and led her to the bed, crooning soft words.
The wife lay gazing at the enormous bulge in the calico ceiling above her bed. The accumulated sand from many storms had collected there and hung down like a dead body. Each summer it got worse. She was always afraid it would burst and smother her. John had promised to let it out.
The midwife knotted two towels to the head of her bed.
‘Catch hold of these when it gets bad.’
When it gets bad! She laughed weakly. When it gets bad.
‘Oh God! God!’
Mrs Clancy sat beside her.
Through the obscurity of pain that howled and shrieked and shot like lightning about the room above her open, unseeing eyes, she could hear as from a distance the voice of this old woman:
‘Don’t worry, dear. Don’t be frightened. God is very good to women in the bush. There, there now.’