Ashes (18 page)

If he had initially intended to make only one
thrust, he probably would have gone for depth. If he had aspired to
make art, then a number of factors came into play. Ricky’s head
hurt, his throat a wooden knot. He grabbed the knife that most
resembled the murder weapon shown in the press photographs.

Ricky turned the lights low, then carried the
knife to the counter. He pressed the blade to the watermelon and
found that the blade trembled in his hand. The watermelon grew soft
and blurred in his vision, and he realized he was weeping. How
could anyone ever destroy a thing of such beauty?

He forced himself to press the knife against
the cool green rind. The flesh parted but Ricky eased up as a
single drop of clear dew swelled from the wound. The husband hadn’t
hesitated, he’d raised the knife and plunged, but once hadn’t been
enough, neither had twice, three times, but over and over, a
rhythm, passion, passion, passion.

He dropped the knife and the tip broke as it
clattered across the tiles. The watermelon sat whole and smooth on
the counter. Tears tickled his cheeks. Maybelle was upstairs in the
dark bed, his pillows were stacked so he wouldn’t snore, the
familiar cupped and rounded area of the mattress was waiting for
him.

The husband had been a crazy fool, that was
all. He’d cut his wife to bits, no rhyme or reason. She hadn’t
asked for any of it. She was a victim of another person’s unvoiced
and unfulfilled desires, just like Maybelle.

Ricky spun and thrust his fist down into the
melon, squeezed the red wetness of its heart. He ripped the rind
open and the air grew sweet. He pulled at the pink insides, clawed
as if digging for some deeply buried secret. He was sobbing, and
the pulp spattered onto his face as he plunged his hands into the
melon again and again.

A voice pulled him from the red sea of rage
in which he was drowning.

Maybelle. Calling from upstairs.

“
Ricky?”

He held his breath, his pulse throbbing so
hard he could feel it in his neck. He looked down at the counter,
at the mess in the kitchen, at the pink juice trickling to the
floor.

“
Ricky?” she called again.
He looked toward the hall, but she was still upstairs. So she
hadn’t heard.

He looked at his sticky hands.

“
Are you coming to
bed?”

He looked at the knife on the floor. His
stomach was as tight as a melon. He gulped for some air, tasted the
mist of sugar. “Yes, dear.”

She said no more, and must have returned to
bed in her silly and slinky things. The room would be dark and she
would be waiting.

Ricky collected the larger scraps of the
watermelon and fed them into the garbage disposal. He swept the
floor and scooped up the remaining shreds, then wiped the counter.
He wrung out a dish cloth and got on his hands and knees, scrubbing
the tiles and then the grout.

The husband had harbored no secrets. A
pathetic man who made another person pay for his shortcomings. He
was a sick, stupid animal. Ricky would think no more of him, and
tomorrow he would throw the newspapers away.

He washed his hands in the sink, put the
knife away, and gave the kitchen a cursory examination. No sign of
the watermelon remained, and his eyes were dry, and his hands no
longer trembled.

Tomorrow, summer would be over. It was the
end of something, and the beginning of something else. Maybelle was
waiting, and he might get lucky. Ricky went to the stairs and took
them one step at a time, up into darkness.

###

THE MEEK

The ram hit Lucas low, twisting its head so
that its curled horns knocked him off his feet. The varmint was
good at this. It had killed before. But the dead eyes showed no joy
of the hunt, only the black gleam of a hunger that ran wider than
the Gibson.

Lucas winced as he sprawled on the ground,
tasting desert dust and blood, his hunger forgotten. As the Merino
tossed its head, the horns caught the strange sunlight and flashed
like knives. Lucas had only a moment to react. He rolled to his
left, reaching for his revolver.

The ram lunged forward, its lips parted and
slobbering. The mouth closed around the ankle of Lucas' left boot.
He kicked and the spur raked across the ram's nose. Gray pus leaked
from the torn nostrils, but the steer didn't even slow down in its
feeding frenzy.

The massive head dipped again, going higher,
looking for Lucas' flank. But Lucas wasn't ready to kark, not out
here in the open with nothing but stone and scrub acacia to keep
him company. Lucas filled his hand, ready to blow the animal back
to hell or wherever else it was these four-legged devils came
from.

But he was slow, tired from four days in the
saddle and weak from hunger. The tip of one horn knocked the gun
from his hand, and he watched it spin silver in the sky before
dropping to the sand ten feet away. Eagles circled overhead,
waiting to clean what little bit of meat the steer would leave on
his bones. He fell back, hoping his leather chaps would stop the
teeth from gnawing into his leg.

Just when he was ready to shut his eyes
against the coming horror, sharp thunder ripped the sky open. At
first he thought it was Gabriel's trumpet, harking and heralding
and all that. Then Lucas was covered in the explosion of brain,
bits of skull, and goo as the ram's head disappeared. The animal's
back legs folded, and then it collapsed slowly upon itself. It fell
on its side and twitched once, then lay still, thick fluid
dribbling from the stump of its neck.

Gunsmoke filled the air, and the next breath
was the sweetest Lucas had ever taken. He sat up and brushed the
corrupted mutton from his face, then checked to make sure the
animal's teeth hadn't broken his skin. The chaps were intact, with
a few new scrapes in the leather.

" 'Bout got you," came a raspy voice. Lucas
cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted as a shadow fell over
him. The man was bow-legged, his rifle angled with the stock
against his hip, the white avalanche beard descending from a
Grampian mountain range of a face.

"Thank you, mate," Lucas said, wiping his
mouth. "And thank the Lord for His mercy."

The old man kicked at the carcass, and it
didn't move. He spat a generous rope of tobacco juice onto the
oozing neck wound. Flies had already gathered on the corpse. Lucas
hoped that flies didn't turn into flesh-eating critters, too.
Having dead-and-back-again sheep coming after you was plenty bad
enough.

"A stray. Third one today," the old man said,
working the Remington's action so that the spent shell kicked free.
He stooped to read the brand on the ram's hip. "Come from Kulgera.
They never could keep 'em rounded up down those parts."

Lucas struggled to his feet, sore from the
sheep-wrestling. He found his hat and secured it on his head, then
returned his revolver to its holster. "If you hadn't come along
when you did—"

The man cut in, his eyes bright with held
laughter. "Hell, son, I been watching you for five minutes. Wasn't
sure which of you was going to walk away. I'd have put two-to-one
on the Merino, but nobody much left around to take the bet."

Lucas thought about punching the stranger in
the face, but Lucas was afraid his hand would shatter against that
stone-slick surface. The man must have seen the anger in Lucas'
eyes, because the laugh busted free of the thin lips, rolling
across the plateau like the scream of a dying wombat.

"Never you mind," the man said, slapping the
barrel of his Remington. "I'd sooner sleep with a brown snake than
watch a man get ate up."

He held his hand out. It was wrapped in a
glove the color of a chalky mesa, stained a rusty red. Lucas took
it and shook quickly, feeling a strength in the grip that didn't
match the man's stringy muscles.

"Name's Camp," he said.

"Lucas," Lucas said. "Is 'Camp' short for
something?"

"Not that I know of. Just Camp, is all."

"You're not Aussie."

"Hell, no. Come from Texas, U.S. of A. Had to
leave 'cause the damned place was perk near run over by Mexicans
and Injuns. You know how it is, when the furriners come in and take
over, don't you?"

Lucas nodded, and said, "Things are crook in
Musclebrook, no doubt." He walked toward his horse twenty yards
away, to where it had fallen in a shallow gulley. Camp followed,
solemn now. Nobody laughed at the loss of a good horse.

The horse whinnied softly, froth bubbling
from its nose. A hank of flesh had been ripped from its side. The
saddle strap had broken, tossing Lucas' canteen and lasso into a
patch of saltbrush. The horse's tail whisked at the air, swatting
invisible flies.

"Never thought I'd see the day a sheep could
outrun a horse," Camp said.

"Never thought I'd see a lot of things,"
Lucas answered.

Camp spat again, and a strand of the brown
juice clung to his beard. He was the first person Lucas had ever
met who chewed tobacco. "Want to borrow my Remington?" he asked,
holding out the rifle.

"Mate's got to do it his own way."

"Reckon so," Camp said, then turned so as not
to see the tears in Lucas' eyes.

Lucas drew the revolver and put two bullets
in the horse's head. Vickie, he'd called her. Had her for six
years, had roped and broken her himself. Now she was nothing but
eagle food. But at least she wouldn't rise up tonight, bucking and
kicking and hungry for a long mouthful of the hand that had once
fed her.

"Where you headed?" Camp asked when they'd
reached the top of the gulley.

Lucas scanned the expanse of plateau ahead of
them. Finally he shrugged. "I was mostly headed away from
something, not toward something."

"Sheep's everywhere now, is the word. Perth,
Adelaide, Melbourne, all your big transport cities. They roam the
streets scrounging for ever scrap of human cud they can find."

"Even back Queensland?"

"Queensland got it bad. 'Course, them damned
banana benders deserve everything they get, and then some." Camp
took a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket that looked like a dry
dingo turd. He bit into it with his four best teeth, then worked it
until he could spit again. He held out the plug to Lucas.

"No. You're a gent, though." Lucas was
thirsty. He took a swig from his canteen, thought about offering a
drink to Camp, then shuddered at the thought of the man's backwash
polluting the water.

"I'm headed for Wadanetta Pass. Hear word
there's a bunch holed up there."

"I didn't know some were trying to fight,"
Lucas said. "I figured it was every mate for himself."

He hadn't seen another person for three days,
at least not one that was alive. He'd passed a lump of slimy dress
this morning, a bonnet on the ground beside it. Might have been one
of them pub girls, or some schoolmarm fallen from a wagon. The
sight had about made him launch a liquid laugh.

"You hungry?" Camp asked.

"Nobody not? What the blooming hell is there
to eat out here except weeds and poisoned meat? It was a fair go
I'd have ended up eating my horse, and I liked my horse."

"Wadanetta is thataway," Camp said, pointing
into the shimmering layers of heat that hung in the west. "Might
reach it before night."

"Damn well better. I don't want to be out
here in the dark with that bunch playing sillybuggers."

"Amen to that." Camp led the way, moving as
if he had a gun trained on his back. It was all Lucas could do to
keep up.

They walked in silence for about half an
hour. Lucas' feet were burning in his boots. He was about convinced
that hell lay only a few feet beneath the plains and that the devil
was working up to the biggest jimbuck roundup of all time. First
killer sheep, then a sun that glowed like a bloody eye.

"Suppose it's like this all about?" Lucas
asked.

"You mean, out Kimberly and all that?"

"New Zealand. Guinea."

"Don't see why not. Sheep are sheep all over
the world."

"Even over in England?"

"Bloody hope so."

"Beaut," said Lucas. "That bugger, God, ought
to be half sporting, you'd think."

"Hell, them Merino probably would stoop to
eating Aborigines. I heared of a country run all by darkies, hardly
a white man there. These darkies, they worship cows. I mean, treat
them like Jesus Christ come again."

Lucas almost smiled at that one. "Cows likely
went over with the sheep. Bet the darkies changed their tune a
little by now."

"Them what's left," Camp said, punctuating
the sentence with tobacco spit.

They walked on as the sun sank lower and the
landscape became a little rougher. A few hills rolled in the
distance, dotted with scrub. They came to a creek, and Lucas
pointed out the hoofprints in the muddy banks.

They stopped for a drink and to rest a few
minutes, then continued. The sun was an hour from dark when they
reached the base of a steep mesa. The cliffs were eroded from
centuries of wind and weather. A small group of wooden humpies
huddled in the shadow of the mesa.

"Wadanetta, dead ahead," Camp said. They
broke into a jog. When they were a hundred yards away from the
town, they shouted. Their voices echoed off the stone slopes.
Nobody came from the gray buildings to greet them.

"Anybody here?" Lucas yelled as they reached
a two-story building that looked like a knock shop. Camp pushed
open the door. The parlor was empty, a table knocked over, playing
cards spread across the floor. A piano sat in one corner, with a
cracked mug on top.

They went inside, and Lucas yelled again. The
only answer was the creaking of wood as a sunset wind arose.
"Thought you said blokes was here," Lucas said.

"Said I heared it. Hearing and knowing is
different things."

Camp walked around the bar and knocked on one
of the wooden kegs that lined the shelf. "They left some grog."