The Grass Castle (41 page)

But this is different.

She watches Kevin empty a box of bullets into a leather pouch around his waist. He extracts a fistful and slots them into the magazine. In his hands, bullets are like marbles, harmless things that click against each other, rolling and jingling. He shuffles his fingers through the pouch as if he is sifting Lego, then zips it up. Next he slides the bolt into the rifle, twisting deftly till it ratchets into place. Then he inserts the magazine which locks in with a dull click. His fingers stroke the weapon with the familiarity of a lover. The gun is an extension of self, part of his daily rhythm and routine. He slips it onto a safety rack bolted to the dashboard.

Around the car park, men are sorting themselves and swinging into the vehicles, engines rumbling. Darkness is falling, the last of blue dusk fading from the sky. Kevin directs Abby into the front of his truck: a boxy old LandCruiser modified for the job. It’s dirty—dust and grass seeds everywhere. On the dash there is a GPS and a heavy sandbag. There’s no windscreen. ‘Increases the range of angles for shooting,’ Kevin explains.

Pete the driver jumps in and slams his door. He grasps a handle dangling from the roof and smacks a switch on the dash to ignite a swathe of brilliant white light. He swivels the handle, and the light shifts from the ground and flashes up in the trees, blinding any possums that might be hiding among the foliage. He switches it off. ‘Still works,’ he says with a grin.

Kevin wriggles in beside Abby and grunts. ‘Bit cosy.’

Abby makes herself as small as possible to allow him more room.

‘Sorry about the windscreen,’ he says. ‘Hope you’ve got plenty of warm clothes. She gets a bit breezy.’

Abby huddles behind the dash as they drive out from the depot, a trailer rattling behind them. She is sandwiched on top of the gearstick between Kevin and Pete. Pete is driving first while Kevin mans the gun. When Kevin tires they will switch jobs. It’s safer this way. Better for the kangaroos too, improves the accuracy of the shots.

The night is cold and clear. In convoy the vehicles drive slowly along the road, headlights dimmed and engines quiet so as not to alarm the kangaroos. Kevin and Pete are silent; Pete leaning forward over the wheel, Kevin with his elbow hooked out the window. They don’t seem inclined to conversation, and that’s good because Abby doesn’t feel like talking.

Somewhere in the darkness kangaroos are grazing, teeth nipping and cropping, soft lips seeking blades of grass. Abby wonders if heads are already raised, watching this procession of four-wheel drives trundling down the road, now turning onto the dirt track, bouncing over wash-outs, now mounting the hill to the ridgeline.

There is no moon and the landscape sleeps in shadows. The vehicles move in the yellow haloes of dimmed headlights, blocky silhouettes tracing the line of the trail, riding the hills and gullies. At the designated location, a vehicle stops and remains idling on the ridge, its headlights off, waiting. The other trucks move on, dipping and bobbing along the track.

Abby glances at Kevin. His hands are easy on his lap as he absorbs the rough jolts of the track. His body is loose, accustomed to irregular terrain. The crackle of the radio makes Abby jerk, raising a smile on his face. ‘Bit jumpy?’ he says.

She shakes her head, not wanting to admit her anxiety.

‘Got any earplugs?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Here, have some.’ He fumbles in the glove box and drops a small plastic bag in her hand. ‘You’ll need them. Pete and I have earphones to cut the noise. Otherwise we’d be deaf.’

She tears open the small bag and fingers the cylindrical nuggets of rubber.

‘You don’t need them yet.’ Kevin’s face glows in the light cast from the dash. ‘I’ll let you know when to stick them in.’

They grind up a steep hill, lurching over wash-outs. Abby tries not to stare at the rifle, cradled in its rack in front of her. It’s a thick and sturdy work beast with impressive telescopic sights. The barrel shimmers greenish-silver in the muted light.

‘You’d think I was married to that thing,’ Kevin says, nodding at the rifle. ‘I clean it daily. The barrel gets dirty. Gunpowder’s messy.’

Shooting’s messy, Abby thinks.
Death
is messy. She knows about that.

The track mounts a knoll and they stop while the last of the vehicles lumber on. Abby is already cold. Soon her fingers and toes will be stiff.

They wait, and there is stillness in the dark as if the night is waiting too. Minutes shuffle by. The headlights from the other vehicles ascend the next hill and disappear into blackness. A breeze shivers in the mounds of tussock grass. Time grows heavy.

Then a radio message comes through: confirmation to start. At Kevin’s nod, Abby stubs her earplugs in while he slips his earphones over his head and lifts the rifle from the rack. Pete lights the spotlight, puts the truck in gear and they trundle slowly forward. With a paw hooked in the handle, he swings the spot in an arc, scanning the bush. Grass shimmers yellow and trees smoulder in the light, branches reaching.

The spotlight roves steadily then hovers on a mob of kangaroos, perhaps fifty to eighty metres away. They emerge like ghosts from the undulating slope, shadow-hummocks that lift their heads to examine the light. The long arm of the spotlight stretches and Abby sees the sideways shift of mouths still chewing. The kangaroos have paused mid-mouthful to look. There is no alarm. Why don’t they flee?

Pete eases his foot off the accelerator and lets the vehicle idle gently while Kevin shifts the rifle into position, resting the stock on the sandbag nestled on the dash. The bolt clicks home. The kangaroos watch, semi-erect like a readying orchestra. They are dazzled by the beam, unsure, but insufficiently alarmed to run. On bunched muscular haunches they sit, fixed on the hypnotic eye of the light, their forearms waving.

There is a pause, pregnant with anticipation. Abby’s breath locks in her throat, her fingers tingle. Her entire body tenses.

Then
bang
: an explosion in the night, her ears echoing, despite the plugs.

A kangaroo slumps sideways and the others lift as a unit and bound off in erratic leaps. Relief sweeps Abby. They are going—but no, they’ve stopped about ten, twenty metres from where they started. They stand upright, heads raised. There’s a click then another stupendous pause; time melting before another blast. At the edge of the beam, a body lapses with a thud. Two more rapid detonations and two more bodies fold with soft swishes.

A lull ensues as Kevin searches for the next best target. The muzzle of the gun follows the spotlight, seeking other quivering faces, other eyes shining red in the dark. The mob has tightened: their bodies lifting, uncertainty swelling.

More shots crack from the gun. Kevin’s body jolts as it absorbs each kickback. Closer now, bodies slump. Animals are dropping like stones, skewing sideways, legs jerking. Then the mob is moving, a few startled bounds and a gradual shifting away, kangaroos fading among trees. Abby doesn’t understand why they don’t rush, panic-stricken, into darkness.

The truck bumps forward among the skeletal shadows of trees, the spotlight seeking. There is another large mob, eyes shining in the light. Kevin’s tongue eases across his lips as he reaches and flicks the magazine out of the rifle, deftly slotting in six more bullets, each as thick as Abby’s thumb. ‘Okay?’ he grunts.

She nods.

‘Gotta keep moving,’ he says, somehow sensitive to her struggle.

He cradles the rifle in his hands. The barrel slides out the window. Again, the blast. Abby is almost half ready this time.

38

Cease-fire is called to pick up bodies.

Pete pulls up beside the first carcass, and Kevin hooks the rifle onto its rack and swings out of the vehicle, hefting the kangaroo by the hind legs and dragging it. The head dangles and blood drips, making a dark trail on the pale cropped grass. Kevin heaves the dead kangaroo onto the trailer.

Abby wonders if she should scramble from her stupor to assist, but she sits tight while Kevin slings in five more animals. She is trying to shut out the awful clunk of bone on metal, trying not to see the limbs waving in the rear-view mirror as the vehicle advances across the hill.

At the next carcass, Kevin leans in and suggests Abby do the pouch-checking. She retrieves the head torch from her backpack, slips it on over her beanie and jumps out into the night.

‘Just do a hand-swipe,’ Kevin says. ‘Shove your hand in and have a feel around. You’ll find any passengers pretty quick. If you can’t pull the joey off, just cut the teat. Got a pocket-knife?’

Abby nods, sickened.

‘Here’s a bag.’ He tosses her a soft black pouch.

She turns her torch on and starts wandering among the battlefield of slumped bodies. Kevin has dropped ten from this mob. She bends over the nearest dead animal and lifts a hind leg. This one has testicles; a young adult male. Abby ought to have known by the muscular forearms and the strong hooky claws. She lets the leg fall and brushes the dense grey coat with her hand, afraid to look at the head in case it has been blown away. The kangaroo is warm and its fur is damp with beginning dew. The rusty smell of blood is everywhere, laced with the sour smell of death. She waves to Kevin to let him know it’s okay to pick up the carcass then she moves on to the next skewed hump, a female collapsed in a twist. This time there is no avoiding a full view of the head and the dark meaty hole ripped in the cranium. Abby’s head throbs and long-buried visions press up from somewhere deep within. Suppressing a choking sensation, she steels herself to check the pouch.

The opening is soft and slack, reminding her of the roadside kangaroo she killed for Cameron months ago. This pouch sags open, gaping at the top and she kneels to insert her hand. It’s damp inside with the musky brownish lubricant that coats the young to keep its fragile skin moist. She feels a warm mound squirm against her hand, a gawky limb pushing her away. Cupping her hand around it, she eases the pouch open further. A small pinky writhes against her fingers: a bundle of gangly legs and a little wizened head. Dark flaps for ears. Eyelids purplish—glued shut. A prickle of whiskers pierces the skin around the muzzle.

Gently she wraps her hand around the soft abdomen, trying to draw the joey out, but it’s so young that it holds firm, its mouth almost fused to the nipple. She grips the long, strap-like teat between her fingers and attempts to drag the joey out, but it suctions tightly. For a moment she considers calling for help, then she realises she will have to do this alone. She’ll have to cut the nipple. Groping her pocket-knife from inside her jeans, she withdraws both hands to open the blade then carefully reaches back inside the pouch. She feels for the swollen bulge of mammary tissue, locates the nipple and severs it. The joey falls into her hand and she draws it out, slides it into the cloth pouch.

Over by the vehicle the men are watching. She can see Pete behind the wheel, Kevin standing by, hands on hips, sucking on a cigarette. ‘I found a pouch-young,’ she calls, yelling the bleeding obvious, her voice echoing into nothing. ‘I had to cut the nipple.’

Pete waves and Kevin chucks his stub on the ground, grinding it with his toe. They are not interested. Of course they’re not. They do this for a job. Kevin climbs into the truck and Pete drives across to fetch the carcass.

‘What should we do with it?’ Abby asks as they draw alongside.

Kevin shrugs, his blue eyes meeting hers then dodging away. ‘Stick it in your jacket to keep it warm. Would have been better to kill them as we go, but this is what they want so we have to do it. We’ve got a few more bodies to pick up yet.’

Abby loosens her coat and slides the pouch under her jumper. She can feel the small angular body writhing. The joey settles, snuggling into warmth. Abby strides across the slope to the next body, trying to look competent and unrattled, but she is shaken. Will this joey be large enough to hand-raise? Or will it receive the injection and be thrown into the pit—a tiny soft rag-doll among the hummocks of fur?

She mustn’t think about it, mustn’t think at all. There is nothing yet that hasn’t been humane. Kevin is distant and emotionally uninvolved—of course he is: this is how he makes his living. It’s tough and unpleasant, but no worse than a job in a knackery. While humans want to eat meat, animals must die. So why should it seem worse with kangaroos? Does it matter if death arrives by shooting? There are no yards, no transport, no milling among other hungry, thirsty, frightened animals at an abattoir. Maybe this is more humane than it is for domestic livestock. One moment a kangaroo is hopping free, the next moment it is dead, life over without knowledge or pain.

But how does she know there is no pain? Wouldn’t there be a flashing moment of infinite, spectacular agony as the bullet strikes? Or is the impact so horrifically intense that pain is over before it begins? God knows, the bullet inflicts enough damage. Surely it is better than dying slowly.

She bends at the next humped body and pauses before she grasps the hind leg and lifts it. It’s a male again, thank goodness. Not that she wishes death on males—it’s just that she doesn’t want to find more young, doesn’t want to cut more nipples.

The next animal, slumped beneath the silver arms of a dead tree, is a female. There’s a young in the pouch, a tiny wet nugget of matchstick arms and a soft domed head. It can’t be long born—perhaps a week or two—and it’s too small to hand-raise. She can’t put it in with the larger joey or it might be torn by a jerking toe. While Kevin and Pete fling the carcass onto the trailer, she finds another bag on the front seat and slips the tiny joey inside. Then she tucks it inside her bra, closer to her warmth and her beating heart.

The next animal is female too, but its pouch is empty with no mammary development. ‘Fewer pouch-young in the drought,’ Kevin says, cigarette dangling from his lip as he and Pete toss the body onto the trailer. ‘That’s what we’ve been seeing on our regular shoots. Sometimes the odd late young or the odd kidney bean. But lots of empty pouches. Usually all the females have young. But it’s a cruel drought. Too many hungry mouths. Makes my job easier. Doesn’t feel so bad, knowing they’re starving.’