Headhunters

Chapter Seven

They took the Jeep into Booligal. The village was tiny, with a general store and post office, a cricket oval for the occasional social game, shaded eating areas and a playground. The Booligal Hotel offered food and drink. It was a tired, dusty business that survived on the back of the tourist trade. Townsfolk made the trek out to Booligal for an “authentic” cattle drive, moving stock through the outback. A drover’s life would normally have been hard and uncomfortable, but the tourists were treated to floored tents with mattresses, hot showers and luxury food. A party was waiting to start their trek as they walked into the bar that evening. Eric and Mervyn made no attempt to hide their disdain, looking over at their table and making loud remarks about how they found the whole thing distasteful. Milton said nothing. He bought a packet of cigarettes from the bar and smoked them quietly by himself, happy to sit there and take it all in.

There were three other men in the bar. They were in their late middle age, broken-down old shearers bearing the scars of their profession like badges of honour. The fridge was on the blink, so the bottled beers were lined up on the bar and served warm. Harry went up and corralled three and a plastic bottle of water. Milton had explained to him that he had stopped drinking and, after a period spent trying to work out why he would do such a fool thing, he had eventually accepted it. The others had not been so forthcoming, and, as he took his glass of warm water, they made the usual suggestions as to his masculinity and then his sexuality. Milton was not bothered by any of it. He knew they were joking and, in any event, their ribbing was nothing compared to the continued serenity he found in abstinence. He would usually have felt uncomfortable in a bar — the AA line was that if you went into a barbershop, eventually you would get a haircut — but he didn’t feel vulnerable here. He was in good company, with friends, and he felt satisfied after a hard day of work. And he knew for certain that the alternative was not appealing. He had woken up in enough gutters with no memory of how he arrived there to last a lifetime. He was not tempted.

They ordered plates of food and drank several more bottles of beer. Eric, whom Milton had quickly diagnosed as a man who could not hold his beer, quickly became drunk. His sense of humour, coarse at the best of times, became even more so. He kept glancing over at the table where the tourists were sitting. There were eight of them, five men and three women. It looked as if three of the men and the three women were couples. The remaining men, both slightly effeminate, looked like a couple, too. Milton could easily diagnose how well that was going to go down. They were all middle aged and, he guessed, they had paid a handsome price for the experience that they were about to have.

Milton’s attention was drawn to the two guides who were sitting with them. They were authentic-looking blokes, dressed in khaki pants and shirts with the logo of the tour company stitched into the lapels. So far, so corporate, but it was the small details that Milton noticed that betrayed them: their hands were calloused, their arms and faces discoloured with small red blotches from the sun, their faces tanned a deep nutty brown apart from their foreheads where their hats would sit. They had the same complexions as Eric, Merv, Harry and Milton did. They worked outdoors. They looked tough.

Milton could see that Eric was getting worked up to start something. Harry could see it, too, and tried to redirect the conversation when Eric started making comments about how rich townsfolk would never be able to understand what it was really like to live and work in the outback.

It wasn’t a question of being able to overhear what he was saying. He was making no effort to speak quietly. The sensible thing would have been for the tourists to ignore him. Eventually, he would have become bored of his sport and allowed the subject to be changed. But one of the men took offence to Eric’s remarks, swivelled in his chair and told him to be quiet.

The mood changed.

“You what, sport?” Eric said.

“I said you ought to keep your opinions to yourself. You don’t know the first thing about us.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, see?” he said. “I know plenty.”

One of the guides stood. “Leave it out, fella. Just enjoy your beer and mind your business.”

Eric ignored the suggestion. Milton realised that he was drunker than he had suspected. He spoke quickly, his face was flushed red and there was a nervous tic in his cheek that danced up and down. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you fuck muppet.”

“What did you say?”

“Leave it out, Eric,” Harry said.

“Fuck that, skip. I ain’t sitting here and taking bollocks from a dipshit like that.”

“That’s not necessary,” said one of the effeminate men.

“Fuck off, you chocolate driller.”

Milton groaned and rested his forehead in his hand. Eric laughed, turning to Mervyn and looking for a reaction. They shared a laugh. Harry scowled at him and told him to shut up, but it was too late.

The two guides had stood up.

Milton assessed them afresh. They were both a touch over six foot and, he guessed, fifteen or sixteen stone. Big, rugged men who looked like they knew how to handle themselves. The nearest one was wearing a big belt buckle with a steer design to hold up his moleskins. There was a half-finished bottle of beer at his place at the table, but he had been sipping at it and he looked clear-eyed. He wasn’t drunk. Neither of them was drunk.

Eric most certainly was. He staggered out of his seat and bumped against the table as he approached the man. Harry tried to grab his wrist, but he brushed his hand away.

The two of them squared up.

“Sit down.”

“Don’t think so.”

Eric threw the first punch. The guide deflected it with his left hand, cocked back his right and drilled Eric in the face. There was a splash of blood and a crunch as the bones in his nose snapped. Eric’s legs went out from beneath him and he fell against an empty table, overturning it as he slid onto the floor.

“Any of you pig-ugly shearers want to make an issue of that?”

Milton was nearest to the guide. He sighed a little. This was the other reason he tried to avoid bars. He had been involved in brawls two times in the last twelve months, and both occasions had landed him in trouble.

The man was glaring down at him. “What are you looking at?”

“I’m not looking at anything,” Milton said.

“You’re looking at me, dickhead. You want some, too?”

Milton sighed again. He stood, very deliberately, and took a step to his right so that he was standing between the fallen Eric and the man. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. He was shorter and a couple of stones lighter, but there was an aura about him that made it very obvious that he wasn’t a man to be crossed. He usually hid it, but, when required, it was as effective as it had always been. There was an almost physical quality to his confidence, a manifestation that made it very clear that he wouldn’t hesitate to use violence and, if he was pushed, it would go badly for those in his way. And then there were his eyes. Pale blue, flinty, as lifeless as ice. There was no prospect of mercy or empathy or understanding. They promised pain.

The guide squared up to him for a moment, but then, as Milton cocked his head and stood his ground, the man took a step back.

“Fine,” he said, bristling. “You keep your pal in line or there’s going to be a problem.”

Still Milton said nothing. He stayed where he was, staring at the guide until he backed away, returned to his table and sat down.

Harry was helping Eric to his feet. “You got what you had coming to you, you idiot. I don’t know why I let you drink. That mouth of yours is always getting you into trouble.”

Eric didn’t respond; he was still woozy. Mervyn, who looked like he would have felt obliged to come to his friend’s aid, now appeared to be relieved that the situation had been defused.

“Jesus,” Harry sighed. “Well done, John.”

Milton waved it off. It was nothing.

The touring party left the room soon after that. The atmosphere had been spoiled for them and it was obvious that they had no interest in seeing whether the brawl would reignite when Eric finally came around. Harry looked at Milton and shook his head: part apology, part wry admission of the foolishness of the whole situation. Milton had seen similar attitudes during the three months that he had been working with Harry across New South Wales. As an industry, shearing was, as Harry put it, “on its arse.” It was assailed on the one side by the trend towards mechanisation and, on the other, by big corporate station owners who were determined to drive down their costs. Harry’s family owned their station and that lent them some measure of security, but, as he had admitted at the melancholic end to a previous evening, that didn’t mean that they would be around forever. Progress couldn’t be ignored. Change was coming.

All of the shearers Milton had met had felt an affinity for each other through their shared vocation and the life they eked out of the wilderness. It was a harsh, difficult place to survive, and the sight of these soft, pampered tourists, backed up by a convoy of four-by-fours in the event that they should get tired, was a thumb in the eye.

Harry suggested that they should leave soon afterwards. Eric had been cowed by his embarrassment at the hands of the guide, Melvyn was half asleep, and Milton was happy to go along with the majority view. They finished the round, bought some travellers to drink on the way home, and headed back to the Jeep.