Headhunters

Chapter Fourteen

They arrived at Boolanga at two in the morning. Milton hit the sack and managed four hours of sleep, waking as the morning sunlight lanced through the uncovered windows. He lay still for a while, watching motes of dust as they drifted through the bright golden shafts, taking the opportunity to assess his body. He had the usual aches and pains that would be associated with a physical job, the stiffness in his muscles and the creaking of joints that had been pushed beyond their capacity. Beyond those were the injuries that had accumulated over the years of his previous life. The stabbings, shootings, the beatings that he had taken. His body had been put through it, the toll severe enough that he occasionally had to resort to medication to soothe the aches. He tried not to — he didn’t want to exchange one addiction for another — but there had been days when he had no choice.

He closed his eyes and probed deeper. Avi Bachman had inflicted serious punishment: the dislocated shoulder, fractured ribs, a concussion so severe that he was still getting headaches two weeks later. Those wounds had all healed. Thinking about them recalled the fight again. He had only been able to save himself because Bachman had been distracted. Milton had taken a metal crank and swung it into Bachman’s head when his back had been turned. It wasn’t gallant, but he didn’t care about that. Most of Milton’s victims had been murdered without even knowing that he was there and, in this case, it was the only reason he was still breathing. Gallantry was a luxury that he couldn’t afford.

Matilda, Harry, Mervyn and Eric were outside the dormitory. They were dressed for work. The air was baking hot already. The sheep in the pens were making an enormous racket, as if aware of the indignities that were about to be visited upon them. Someone had prepared bacon rolls. They were eating them and drinking from big litre bottles of water.

Harry tossed one of the rolls over to Milton. “Wakey, wakey.”

Milton was starving. He bit into the roll and savoured the salty bacon.

“We were just saying,” Matilda said. “We should make it interesting today. You still up for it?”

“Sure.”

“We each put fifty bucks into the pot and whoever shears the most sheep takes it all.”

“Fine,” Milton said, ignoring the fact that gambling was another compulsive behaviour that he was probably not best suited to indulge in.

“You want,” she said, smiling, “I could give the rest of you five sheep as a head start.”

“We’ll manage, Matty,” Harry said.

She grinned. “This is going to be fun.”

Milton worked hard. He settled into a groove, muscling the uncooperative sheep into his pen and wielding his clippers with a dexterity that he would have said was impossible just a few weeks earlier. The set-up at Boolanga was more amenable than at Booligal. The sheep were kept in a large corral, with an Aboriginal station hand responsible for shepherding the next one forward when there was a vacancy in the pens. Milton kept a tally, scoring a line on one of the wooden fence panels with the blade of his shears as he waited for the next sheep to arrive.

The first hour passed. “How many?” Matty yelled out.

“Ten,” said Harry.

Mervyn had nine and Eric seven.

“John?”

“Eleven,” he said.

“Fuck off.”

“Straight up.”

“Twelve,” Matty called back, dampening his excitement. “Keep up, boys.”

Milton glanced out across the pens. Harry was in the one next to him and Matilda was in the one adjacent to that. She had already bent back down to the next sheep and was stripping off the wool with easy, practiced strokes. She was wearing a muscle top beneath her dungarees and her skin was already awash with sweat, animal waste and wispy balls of wool that had stuck to her. She finished the sheep, ushered it on its way with a kick to its flanks and looked up. She noticed that Milton was gazing at her, and grinned.

“You all right?” Harry called across to him.

Matty winked.

Milton couldn’t suppress the smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Miles away.”

“Looks like it. This ugly bastard is number twelve. You’re falling behind.”

It grew ridiculously hot as noon approached and Harry called out that they would stop for an hour to refresh themselves and shelter from the worst of the sun. Matilda protested, but not too much; Milton could see that she was suffering as much as the rest of them. They revealed their tallies and Harry had forged ahead by four animals. Milton was in third, behind Matty but ahead of Mervyn and Eric. That did not go down well.

They got back to it again. The afternoon dragged on. The heat was oppressive, a crushing weight that lay across them all. Milton’s wide-brimmed leather bush hat offered a little shade, but did nothing to take the edge off the volcanic temperature. His sweat soaked into the leather and, after a while, he stopped trying to deter the swarms of flies that gathered around the squealing animals from alighting on his face. Harry seemed to be struggling with his legs, cursing as he wrestled a difficult ewe into position. Milton marked each shorn animal on the wood, and, when Harry called out that he had just finished his eightieth, he saw that he was five ahead of him. Matilda was still working with steady efficiency, but she was quiet, not announcing her tally, and Milton couldn’t see across Harry’s pen well enough to see her count.

The last animal was ushered into Mervyn’s pen a little before six. The sun was low in the sky, but it was still blazing hot. Milton finished his sheep, shooing it out of the pen and carving the final notch into the wood. He counted and then recounted his tally: he had managed one hundred and eleven animals. His shirt was sodden with sweat and he was bleeding from several small cuts. One particularly obstreperous ewe had bitten him on the wrist and the indentations from its teeth were starting to turn a dark red. He was exhausted and he needed to sit down.

“Done!” Harry called out.

“How many?”

“One hundred and three. You?”

“One eleven.”

“Piss off, Milton.”

“I’m serious. One eleven.”

“Well, fuck me sideways,” he said, shaking his head. “You beat me.”

“By eight. It’s your legs.”

“Fuck off, John. No excuses. You beat me.”

Eric and Mervyn finished and reported numbers of ninety-seven and ninety-nine.

They waited for Matilda. She was finishing her last sheep, stripping the wool away in two neat sections and tossing it aside. She booted the sheep up the arse and watched it trot to the others, bleating its dissatisfaction.

She leaned back against the pen and wiped the sweat from her eyes. When she brought her arm away, she was grinning and Milton knew that he had lost.

“How many?” Harry asked.

“One fifteen.”

“Serious?”

“One fifteen. Money’s mine, boys. Drinks on me.”