Claypan

By William Davies

In the unforgiving Australian outback a young boy is kidnapped by a pastoralist who is tormented by the memory of his own dead son.

Under the influence of the ancient landscape and the spirits of its first people their lives are transformed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Davies
• Release date: Jun 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648531319

Book preview

Chapter One

Burt never got visitors.

Alarmed, when told there were two men waiting to see him, his skin crawled when he saw Longfella and Bandy, two criminals who lived in his street. Longfella wore his usual scowl and Bandy, the negotiator, had come with his most disarming smile. Behind the smile were flint eyes that measured the smallest nuance of the person who stood before him. And so, it was with Burt.

This was not a social visit to tell entertaining stories which Bandy was good at. Before prison, Burt spent hours in their houses absorbing colourful stories about Aboriginal lore. Today, they threatened him with death if he didn’t tell them what he’d heard when secretly listening to their conversation. Burt refused, so they paid the prison enforcer to get the information. Mick, his prison buddy, had encouraged Burt to finish his sentence, but Mick wasn’t the one threatened with the laundry steam hose. Though Burt was close to giving in to the jail bully, he escaped before revealing what he’d heard.

Burt jogged about twenty miles to reach the New England Highway. He ran onto the road, grateful for the preparations he’d made in the prison gym and walked north, the morning air crisp on his face.

A truck driver slowed and offered to take him to Toowoomba. With his luck holding, a low loader driver heading for Longreach and looking for company gave him a lift. In the late afternoon, approaching Charleville the driver tuned his receiver to the local radio station. Half asleep, Burt heard his name mentioned as a prison escapee. The driver looked nervously at his passenger while the announcer read the description:

Twenty years old, 190 centimetres, fit, light-framed, fair hair, pale blue eyes, a distinctive scar on his left cheek.

Burt remembered the glassing, blood everywhere. Underage, but tall, Burt had collected an order from the counter. Leaning over the shoulder of a man who was waving his arms about, the schooner of beer spilt onto the thick-necked man’s shirt. This fight was one item in a list of crimes that resulted in the courts giving Burt a six-month prison sentence.

As the low loader slowed for an intersection, Burt jumped out and disappeared into a side street. While looking for a car, he avoided eye contact by hiding under the broad brimmed hat that he’d lifted from a man asleep under a jacaranda tree.

The men’s distant shouting added urgency to his search. With sweat blurring his eyes and a racing heart – the dogs’ baying ever closer – he stumbled to the white Toyota Crown. Steadying his shaking hands, he hot-wired the car just as the first German shepherd with its handler appeared in the rear-vision mirror, dark outlines in the fading light.

Burt drove into the night, passing little traffic. A livestock road train forced him off the bitumen, its horn ringing in his ears as it rumbled past. The fuel gauge was nudging empty when he hid the stolen Toyota behind a low ridge and walked north. Mentally exhausted and unable to coax another step from wobbly legs, Burt slumped under a bush.

He woke before dawn, the coolest time of night yet his clothes clung to his skin and his crotch was sticky. His swollen tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Burt scooped the last of yesterday’s summer storms into his grubby hat, muddy puddles with creatures flapping in their death throes. Overcoming revulsion, he sucked the liquid through clenched teeth and splashed himself with the soupy mixture from another puddle. With brown water dripping down his face, Burt continued to walk north hailing the few vehicles that passed. He was hoping to find Mick’s friend, Donny who lived in Tambo.

The cars ignored him, except for those that increased speed as they hurried by. The truck drivers blasted their horns and shook a fist or gave crude hand signals. The word had spread. With a throbbing head and depleted willpower, he sat under a small bush. Trapped in nature’s furnace, the creatures now shrivelled in death, he watched the shallow pools of watery mud turn into soft cakes of cracked brown-red soil.

Panicked by withering heat, he tried again to hitch a lift. Still ignored, he was walking back to shade when a dented green Land Rover travelling north slowed to a crawl. Disheartened that it didn’t stop, Burt walked on until he heard a dog growl. With its paws resting on the tail gate, it stared at Burt while the vehicle reversed. There was a white car closing fast from the South, its outline blurred by the heat haze. It was too far away to read the sign on the roof. Was it the police?

Alone in this vast, hot country – what to do? Burt sprinted to the driver’s window. The dog, with its stumpy tail followed him along the back of the vehicle and stretched its neck over the edge. Its saliva dripped onto Burt’s shirt. The driver, with an expressionless face and eyes that measured, saw dirty clothes and a hat that shaded a red slash highlighted against pale skin. Burt’s heart rate lifted further. There was something not right here. He started running back to the scrub which sent the heavy-set dog into a rage. Snarling, it rocked the Land Rover as it thumped along the tray. With flared lips, it prepared to lunge. Burt froze.

Lost and overwhelmed by fear, he would hail the police car, its sign now visible and return to Glen Innes Correctional Centre, his dreams of a new life trashed by a growling dog and the man’s suspicious eyes. Brought back to the moment by a blast from the road train’s horn as it headed south, Burt heard the threatening voice.

‘Get in, boy.’

As Burt grabbed the steel door handle, too hot to hold for long, the man acknowledged the policeman’s friendly wave and sign of approval as the car whipped by. Why would this policeman with his cropped red hair and freckled skin sanction Burt’s lift?

With a clammy skin and unable to control his shudders, Burt shrank into the corner of the two seated Land Rover. Mesmerised by the rifle cradled on the dashboard and further enthralled by the aerials flexing from the bull bar, his eyes smarted from the haze of tobacco smoke, its smell mingling with stale sweat. He attempted a firm thank-you but heard a hoarse whisper. The man didn’t speak but continued drawing on his durry. The dog challenged the few cars that passed. They travelled slowly. About twenty minutes later when turning left onto a faint track, the wireless crackled. The man picked up the mouthpiece.

‘Yer there?’

‘Yeah, got him. Back tonight.’

Chapter Two

Burt’s piss trickled down his leg, adding to the smell of human waste in the confined space. Still near the highway, he opened the door but shut it quickly as the dog, with a low growl, made ready to jump. Quivering, he risked a sideways glance at his new warder. At least in his sixties, craggy and heavy-built, he wore a large hat over his face, burnt leather brown as were his powerful arms exposed below a short-sleeved, checked shirt. His gnarled hands held the wheel steady.

They travelled westward, covering miles through lightly timbered country, and bounced across gullies, the vehicle leaving a trail in the red sand. Burt’s stomach was hurting from hunger as he fought the hypnotic lure of sleep. The man’s clipped voice startled him, the first time he’d spoken since leaving the highway.

‘Come far, boy?’

Was it just casual chat, or demanding an answer? The HF and CB aerials flicked with the bouncing of the vehicle and the rifle showed signs of frequent use. Burt had no backpack and wore someone else’s hat. He worked a little saliva into his mouth.

‘Yeah, just travelling.’

The man’s lips extended in a thin smile before he had to guide the vehicle through another shallow watercourse. He rolled and lit his durry one handed without spilling a strand of tobacco.

The killer dog guarding Burt crushed his spirit. Except for an occasional glance, the man ignored him. The hours ticked by, the only disruption to the monotonous noise of the engine, a four-cylinder diesel with the third injector misfiring, was the relentless banging of the vehicle as it lurched across thousands of uninhabited acres. Eventually they parked under a tree with barely enough shade to cover the back of the Land Rover. A couple of kangaroos, disturbed from their scooped-out day beds, bounded away. The instruction was military-like.

‘Out, boy. We’ll camp here for a couple of hours, give the dog a run.’

Intimidated by the blunt order, Burt quickly obeyed without answering. He’d heard stories of people disappearing in the outback. Mick release was due in a month. His tracking skills were legendary.

‘Fill ‘er up, boy.’

The dog was busily marking its territory. Burt wondered if dogs had double-jointed legs as he refuelled the vehicle from the jerry cans. The man collected wood and lit the fire on top of old ashes. He filled the billy-can from the canvas water bag that was hanging from the bulbar and placed it onto the hottest ashes, the fire flaring as pieces of tar broke off.

‘The esky, boy.’

It was large and heavy. Burt dropped the tail gate, grabbed the two handles, and staggered to the fire. There was a strong smell of rotting flesh coming from a padlocked box that occupied over half of it. The man took out bread, chops, sauce, tea, two plates and two mugs. The truncated instructions kept coming.

‘The griller, boy.’

With the chops secure inside the wire rack, the man positioned the griller over the coals and supported it with two small logs. They sat separately on dead tree trunks, waiting for the chops to cook and the billy to boil. The man put two slices of stale white bread on top of the griller. When toasted, he put half the meal on each enamelled plate and poured the tea into the chipped mugs. They settled back on their bush seats. Burt lifted his mug to sip the steaming tea, his first drink since the muddy water, when his captor coughed.

Making sure he had Burt’s attention, he said, ‘A long way from Glen Innes, eh.’

Burt stifled a cry as the tea spilt down his front. The man’s gotcha grin revealed tobacco-stained teeth and a chipped tooth before turning back to his food. The dog pricked its ears. Burt’s impulse was to throw the metal plate at his smug face. He was ravenous though, not having eaten since leaving prison. Burt ate the food and drank the rest of the tea.

‘Take a rest, boy, ‘til the heat cools.’ Did he mean the heat of the day or his burning stomach?

The man stretched his big frame in the shade of the vehicle. Ignoring the cloud of bush flies sucking on his wet shirt, he pulled his hat over his eyes and rested his head on a small log. Red soil clung to his clothes.

Doing as the man told him, Burt scraped the chop bones onto the fire and followed with the tea leaves, the embers hissing steam as they turned into chips of black in a pile of grey-white ash. The dog was lying next to the man under the battered Land Rover, but its eyes followed Burt’s every move.

Escape, but escape where? Although lost, he must try. Burt glanced at the panting dog. With the day’s heat affecting his judgement and the man’s rhythmical snoring, he limped away, swatting the cloud of bush flies that sought moisture from his eyes while others rode on his sweaty back.

It was a windless day, save for the pelting sun creating small eddies that lifted the sandy soil into the air. Nothing moved except for the trudging of this solitary figure. Before him stretched a boundless land, sparsely covered with unknown scrub and trees. Attempting to see through the shimmering haze, Burt extended the hat with his hands and squinted at the shapeless objects rimming the skyline. The horizon stayed remote as one step followed another, taking him further away from his new jailer and the brindle dog. Fine red sand, disturbed by prison-issued boots, clung to his clothes.

The dog’s muffled growl disrupted the muted world as its jaws locked above Burt’s left ankle. He dragged it a couple more paces before yielding. He hobbled the hundreds of yards back to the Land Rover, the dog trotting ahead, its tail twitching rapidly. With barely moving lips, the man upbraided Burt.

‘Dangerous land, well! Fella can lose his way quick. Time to go.’

The man already seated behind the wheel had stored the esky. Burt stood by the ashes of the fire. Irritated the man told Burt,

‘Yer’d be dead within the week. The summer storms might give yer a little time, but yer soft. Yer skin’d crack. Yer’d be delirious by the third day. If the heat don’t kill yer, one of them mulga snakes will as yer stagger about. Nobody comes this way unless they’re mustering and that’s not for months.’

The man started the engine and slipped the vehicle into gear. Burt stumbled to the passenger door. The man didn’t speak again. The dog was drowsy, curled in the back while the Land Rover thrashed through miles of scoured country. Drained of resistance, Burt slept until the vehicle jerked to a stop outside a small cottage. It was dark but the stars were bright in a clear sky. The man went inside and came back with a kerosene lamp that gave a dull glow, enough to walk with.

‘Bring the esky, boy and the swag, everything in the back.’

Taking the lamp, the man followed by the dog went to a nearby shed. Soon Burt heard a diesel engine running and dim electric light came on throughout the cottage. Having emptied the Land Rover, Burt stood near the vehicle waiting for his next instruction.

‘If yer careful, there’s enough food for a few days. Don’t waste water, the storms have missed. Only use the generator for an hour at night to keep the batteries charged. Diesel and stuff in the shed.’

Cowed, Burt struggled to look at the man who was ready to drive away with the dog, again half asleep in the back. Barely able to stand, Burt managed a squeaky whisper. ‘But my mum. She worries. OK if I give her a ring?’

Impatient to leave, the man gave a loud snort. ‘No telephone here, boy.’

The dust trail glistened in the dim light from a quarter moon as Burt stared at the back of the Land Rover. He was in another prison, its walls the horizon. With drooping eyelids, he stumbled to the cottage, grateful for its protection from the dingoes calling to each other in the distance. He heard the grunting of pigs in another patch of trees. Were they wild? Someone had told him feral pigs could run a man down and eat him alive. He shut the gauze door, sorry he couldn’t lock it and spread the canvas roll – the man had called it a swag – on top of an old iron bed, the mesh reminding Burt of the prison fence. Why was there only one swag and the food? The man had been searching for him.

Looking for a bathroom, he found a cement floor covered with scattered animal droppings. There was a shower in a corner. A chipped enamel basin stood next to a large cement wash tub; its edges capped with a metal strip. Spiders nested in the drain holes. Ignoring the brownish colour of the warm water, Burt cupped his hands and drank from the basin tap until his stomach hurt. Still dressed, he stretched his perspiring body on top of the swag.

Not able to hold it in any longer, there was no toilet, he forced himself outside and squatted by the door. Fighting his fear of snakes and the intermittent howling of dingoes and grunting of pigs, Burt prayed the lamplight would keep him safe while he ran to the shed and turned off the diesel engine.

Fatigued, both mentally and physically, he slept undisturbed until the early morning heat woke him.

Chapter Three

Lying on the soaked swag, Burt looked at his watch, a present from Mick. It was just after six. He stripped and angrily threw his clothes into a corner of the room. Sitting on a metal chair that was already uncomfortably warm, he thought of his last days in prison. When walking around the exercise yard, Burt’s eyes would brighten and his face shine with anticipation while Mick, looking past the security fence to the distant hills, talked about the outback with passion and a yearning look. This cottage was farfetched from Burt’s understanding of the outback taken from Mick’s stories. For a moment he thought unkindly of him preying on his gullibility. It was Burt’s mateship that had helped Mick, a man of the desert, cope with his confinement.

Burt’s mood improved when he stepped under the weak spray of warm water coming from the three parts blocked shower rose. He couldn’t remember a day without showering, even on those days when his brothers, looking for sport forced him to run from the bathroom as they flicked wet towels onto his bare skin. With a cracked cake of soap, avoiding his blistered stomach, Burt rubbed vigorously, removing three days of stale sweat, body odour and the taint of prison. Being clean again reduced his misery. Slowly masturbating further eased his stress. He missed Mick.

Stepping from the shower, he looked closely at a small mirror flecked with toothpaste or was it shaving soap, fixed to the wall above the basin. Faded letters written across it spelt out,

‘FUCKIN INSANE.’ Who wrote that?

The increasing heat and isolation killed the lingering respite from the shower. Leaving the towel on its peg, it had spiders nesting in its folds, he opened the squeaking gauze door and stood on the cement steps, letting the sun dry him. He was relieved to hear only the buzzing of flies that had discovered his shit and the occasional call of birds as they flew from tree to tree. Having rinsed his clothes in the tub he looked for somewhere to hang them. Naked, he walked towards the fence, but quickly hopped back for boots, the cruelty of this environment reinforced by the sharp prickles embedded in his feet.

With only one meal eaten since leaving prison and hunger pains again hurting his stomach, Burt opened the esky. The sickly smell persisted, so he removed the ten chops and the bread wrapped in cloth. He found matches, tea, sugar, and sauce inside the billy-can. He was about to go outside and light a fire when he saw an old stove with cobwebs laced across the oven door handles.

Next to the stove was split timber stacked on magazines and newspapers that would slip easily into the firebox. While the fire was building, he rummaged around the small kitchen. Cupboards, their doors hanging from broken hinges held aluminium pots, a heavy cast-iron pan, enamelled mugs, and a wire grilling rack alongside an old Bakelite phone, useless, its cord broken. Burt put all the sinewy chops into the pan, placed two slices of the bread into the wire rack and made tea in the billy.

A door from the kitchen gave access to a breezeway where there was a Coolgardie safe resting on top of a small table, its hessian sides partly rotted. Burt had seen these safes in Sydney houses. He attached rags to the hessian and filled the metal evaporative tray with water. The fridge, powered by kerosene, stood waiting for fuel. It shared the breezeway with the meat safe and an old army jeep. At a glance, with escape in mind, Burt saw it would need a significant number of repairs before he could drive it.

Dressed in his half-dry clothes, Burt sat on a stool and stared at the stove while eating the portion of food he’d allowed for breakfast. Sweating from drinking mugs of tea, he thought about what had led him to this forsaken cottage, built on a grassless knoll. It was a terrifying jolt for a boy who had grown up as member of a dysfunctional family living in the working-class suburbs of western Sydney. The man had been looking for him, but why? Was it to fix the damaged jeep in the breezeway? He could certainly fix the Land Rover with its misfiring third cylinder.

He put the remainder of the food; six chops and the half loaf of cardboard like white bread into the meat safe. It had to last until the man returned, he’d said a few days. What if he didn’t come back?

Burt looked for somewhere away from the cottage to relieve himself. There was a tiny shed, about six feet by five, which he’d missed in the dark. School boys had told him of the little house or outhouse when cottages didn’t have inside toilets. Was this one? Cautiously he opened the door. A brown snake disturbed a stack of old newspapers before slithering outside, rapidly disappearing down the slope. Shaking, with his heart beating quickly, he slowly approached the open door. Still fearing more snakes, he found a long-handled shovel in the shed. With clenched teeth, he screwed his nose against the fetid smell while he prodded the pile of papers and swept the cobwebs hanging from the tin roof. Black spiders scurried into crevices and hid from the glare. Using the paper to wipe the seat, he quickly relieved himself. Collecting the shovel, he ran to the cottage and buried his shit from the night before. He took another shower. Ignoring the stiff towel, he dressed in his wet clothes.

To keep from dwelling on his hunger, Burt explored the rundown cottage. From the outside, he had noticed an addition that ran along one side, from the front with the gauze door to the breezeway at the back. The glass in the windows prevented anyone looking in. From the front door, a passage led to the kitchen and gave access to two bedrooms. There was a locked door opposite these which would open into the side room with the darkened glass, he thought. Burt had noticed the man wore a plaited cord around his neck with a key attached. Though Burt could readily pick the lock, he didn’t. The floor of the accessible part of the cottage, other than the bathroom, was crudely sawn timber planks laid with large cracks between each. The ceiling and walls were fibro sheets. There was a table, two stools and four chairs in the kitchen. Burt’s bedroom had the iron bed with his swag on it and one metal chair, the other, two iron beds and two metal chairs. His tour finished at the front steps.

He stared in disbelief over this wasteland seeing only the abandoned cottage, the shed, the dunny and the windmill alongside the near-empty dam. A gust of wind spun the galvanised blades. The squealing from dry bearings and the clunking of the pump stopped when the breeze faded, leaving the day with just the ticking of expanding roof iron. He’d seen pictures of these metal towers. When the vanes rotated, the little pump pushed water along the pipe into the tank on the high stand beside the cottage.

Burt’s only company was the buzzing from the ever-persistent flies, the noise from the dingoes of the night and the grunting of pigs hidden by trees that had spooked him in the dark.

The irresistible march of the sun continued to bake the earth and forced anything living to find shelter from it. It was not yet seven-thirty.

Where were the houses, the electric light poles, the corner shop, the cars? – And no people. Burt had often turned to the company of others for refuge from his challenging home life, his mum being his only support when she could sneak past his brothers. Burt was grateful for those rare moments when his father, who struggled to provide for his family, had given him good advice. His sister was too old to see him often, except there was a time when she looked to Burt for protection from their brothers – the gang as they were known by.

Opening the front yard gate, the hinges were strands of wire, Burt walked to the brigalow trees and found the best shade, but still the heat beat him, so he walked back to the coolest part of the