Swords and Crowns and Rings (48 page)

‘I can't lean on the boy, Ghost, no. Not yet,' he thought, in real torment. The fact that Jack was a dwarf seemed to make it all the worse. ‘The size of him and all! I got to hold me end up somehow, and maybe things will work out.'

So he stood up straighter, never mentioned the pain in his leg, spoke as if he didn't have a care in the world. When the sergeant, after three days, could give them no news of the truck, he said cheerfully, ‘Well, me old Jack, I vote we hop the train to Rungil Ponds, and see what's offering.'

As the train left the station, and the livid light of the green signal dipped into the truck and out again, Jackie exhaled with relief. Though he had followed the thin professional's advice, Jerry and he had had a tense, anxious hour, dodging around the dark good-sheds, seeing the train approach from the north, the engine throwing a red glow over the long black snake behind. As she stood snorting on the loop, they scurried across the rails on the offside, threw their swags into an empty louvre, and jumped up after them.

‘Are you sure it's the right one?' whispered Jerry.

‘Yeah. All freight except for the one carriage. She's picking up two or three passengers now. I saw them on the platform with their luggage.'

When they were well away, they unrolled their swags and wrapped blankets around themselves. The bike had been sold for four pounds; they had, at the same auction room, obtained secondhand flannel shirts, a torch and batteries, blankets and a metal water-bottle, a few odds and ends such as a cut-throat razor and a towel. They had a tucker-bag, and just before the shops shut Jerry had bought a bag of terrible comestibles called ‘faggots' to keep them going through the night.

The stars streamed overhead, sometimes obscured by smoke. The wind whimpered with a shrill human voice. Jackie pulled the doors shut, but the truck was still full of wind and coal-dust, stinging their eyes, chokingly cold. There had been four trucks covered with tarpaulins, but the professional had specifically warned against riding in them.

‘I'll tell you for why,' he had said. ‘A truck with a tarp over it is like a locked house. Get in there and it's breaking and entering. If they collar you, you'll do a stretch. Also, it's a favourite dodge of railway guards and cops to crawl over a tarp belting it with a wooden waddy. If you're lying underneath on top of the load you could get a fractured scone.'

The train tore through the night. They expected to go through Rungil Ponds at first light. Jackie dreaded the time when they would have to alight, dropping off the train as she slowed at the first halt signal approaching the station.

‘Still,' he comforted himself, ‘older men than Dad have done it without breaking a leg.'

They ate their faggots, now cool and greasy, little flowerpots of sawdust, ground up fag-ends of corned beef and stale sausage, pepper, fat.

‘Ugh!' said Jack, and disgustedly fired the peaty remnant into the darkness. ‘I'd rather do a starve.'

He rolled himself in his blanket and fell asleep as if into a pool of oil. Jerry, too, his back against the wall of the truck, his head on his chest, slept intermittently. When he awoke he felt as if every bone in his body had been dislocated. The pain of straightening his neck as he raised his head was unbelievable. My bloody napper must weigh a stone, he thought. He became aware that the train was slowing, the wheels clicking and bumping into a slow glide.

He gripped Jackie's wrist. The young man awoke instantly.

The train jerked to a halt. Reverberant noises in the chill silence, lights touching the tops of trees, vanishing. Jackie cautiously peered out.

‘She must be watering. No sign of any town.'

A boot crunched on gravel. The door was slid open, and a lantern shone.

‘Cold night, ain't she?' An amiable rat face looked up at them. They were speechless.

‘You can ride free far as you like, for all of mine. I just came along to tip you off that we got Owen up front.'

Jerry said, ‘How'd you know we was here?'

The guard was amused. ‘Saw you get on at Pyramid, course. Green, ain't yer? But Big Owen's a thorough-going bastard and I wouldn't like to see the kid stop a clout. Take the hint, mate, and slip off right now. Strike due west, two-three miles, and you'll come to the main south road.'

He lifted the lantern to see them better.

‘Christ, you ain't no kid! Well, spare me days!' He looked closer at Jackie. ‘Ain't you that dwarf fella that was mixed up in that funny case over Ghinni way?'

‘It was a bushfire,' said Jack. ‘An accident.'

‘Oh, yeah,' said the guard. His face changed, hardened. The whistle blew. He stepped back. ‘Well, a man can make up his own mind about things like that.'

Without another word he strode off. Jerry said uneasily, ‘Who's this bloke, Big Owen?'

‘Don't know. But I think we ought to get off.'

Jackie began swiftly to roll up his swag, urging Jerry to do the same. But it was too late. The train started, gathered speed. Jack swore. He stuck his head cautiously out of the truck. The night plunged past, faster and faster; there was a smell of swamps and wet coal. Water glistened in spectral patches.

‘Missed our chance,' said Jack. ‘Bugger it. We'll have to wait for a grade.'

‘But we'd be in the middle of nowhere,' protested the Nun. He couldn't see Jack's face, but he said, ‘You know who this Big Owen is, then?'

‘Never heard of him; but from the way the guard spoke he can't be anything but a railway cop, and a well-known one. He won't be well-known for his cheerful disposition.'

Jerry was inclined to argue. ‘Ah, the guard was a decent fella, he wouldn't pot us.'

‘Not you, maybe. But he'd gladly see me hanged. Now look, quit the arguments, Dad. The next time she slows, we'll scarper.'

‘We could take him,' growled the Nun. Jackie let him talk on, knowing that it would calm him. He himself waited, alertly, listening to the sound of the wheels. The moon came up, but the countryside only hung suspended, faintly high-lighted. No feature could be discerned except black fins of hills against the sky.

Jack carried a map in his pocket. He spread it out on the splintered floor, held the light of the torch close to it. He figured that they were still sixty or more miles from Rungil Ponds.

Suddenly there was another man in the truck. A great shadow leapt across the circle of torchlight, the map skidded away under a heel, Jack saw the Nun, who was on his feet, whip up his left arm to block a descending blow, and drive his own right fist into the centre of a block of semi-darkness. A waddy clattered out of the man's hand, and he doubled up, making sounds like a roaring horse. Jackie seized the waddy, stood ready. He shouted to his father:

‘Get the swags to the door.'

The man's hand shot out, grabbed Jackie by the hair. Instead of jerking backwards, the young man leapt forward, bringing his head up under the other's chin with a sodden smash. At the same time he seized the man by the throat, and wound his legs about his body. They crashed into the corner, floundering in the noisy darkness, the torch rolling back and forth and casting a weird, fluctuant light upon the louvres, a hulking shoulder, Jerry lurching around shouting.

Jack yelled, ‘Keep back, keep back! I can take him. Get to the door!'

It was like a small monkey fighting a big monkey. In spite of Jack's exertion of his great strength, his opponent managed to roll sufficiently to get some of his weight on the younger man. Slowly he forced Jack's shoulders back against the floor. Jack dug his thumbs in at the corners of the jaw. The slewing torchlight showed a congested face.

Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw his father hesitating beside the sliding, clanking door, the darkness running beside the train, prickly pears coming at them like grey giants for an instant and then vanishing. He heard the hammer of the wheels change as the engine took the weight of the train on the grade. He choked out, ‘Not yet, Dad!'

Under his head he heard the metal grip and gride; the whole orchestra of groans and clacks and rattles changed its tempo, the buffers clamoured. He shouted, ‘Now! Jump!'

He sensed, rather than saw the doorway become empty.

The face goggling into his own was dark with blood. With a fearful effort he thrust back the chin. The veined eyes rolled up and the body went flabby. Jackie squirmed out from underneath it. Every muscle in his body was shaking, but he could not afford to wait. He stuck the torch inside his shirt, dropped out into the darkness, and rolled like a ball down the embankment. He crashed against the base of a prickly pear, and a thousand steel hairs pierced him. As he tottered to his feet he saw the tail of the train swing around the curve ahead.

He rested a while, feeling nauseated, exerted to the last ounce of his strength. He heard a faint coo-ee, picked up the torch, and stumbled through the faintly moonlit scrub to look for Jerry. It was freezing. The wind fingering his many abrasions was as sharp as metal. He found the Nun at last, propped against a tree.

‘You all right, Dad?'

The older man said anxiously, ‘Christ, boy, I didn't want to leave you back there.'

‘Something the matter?'

‘Just landed a bit heavy, that's all,' said the Nun. ‘But I dunno where the swags are.'

‘I'll find them. Don't move from there.'

It took Jackie twenty minutes of searching along the embankment: the Nun had thrown the swags too wide. Jack shouldered them and trudged back to his stepfather. In the dim, lemon light of the torch the older man's face was cadaverous. Jack took fright.

‘You've broken something!'

‘My leg,' gasped the Nun. ‘Something's bust.'

A large blue protrusion on his upper thigh had split open like a thin-skinned pear. Pus and blood gushed out. Jackie looked at it aghast. Jerry, half fainting, leant against the tree.

‘It's been coming up this last week, that bit of shrapnel, I suppose, but when I landed, I bust it...Oh, God, Jack...'

Tears of agony ran down his face.

Jack turned the torch on the wound, which was like a huge burst abscess. Protruding from the depths was a discoloured piece of metal, shaped like a corroded knot of cord.

‘Christ, Dad, why didn't you say something? You silly bastard, why didn't you?'

But Jerry could not reply. He leant against the tree, his teeth chattering with cold, uttering now and then, ‘Ahhh! Ahhh!' in a low anxious tone.

Jack unrolled his swag, found their towel, which was filthy. He got out his clean shirt.

‘Oh, God, boy, not your shirt,' babbled the Nun. ‘And don't let the muck get on my strides—I'll have nothing to cover me bank account.'

‘I won't,' said Jack. He made the shirt into a pad, mopped the gullied flesh gently. ‘Try and stick it, Dad. The bleeding's not too bad. And I can see the shrapnel.'

‘Where?' cried Jerry, brightening. ‘Let me see the bastard.' But even as he leant forward he grunted and slumped against the tree once more, half-conscious.

Quickly with the cloth Jackie dragged long strings of clotted pus and mucus from the hole, pressed gently, forcing the blood to flow once more. He took hold of the metal, tried to withdraw it. It shifted soggily. The Nun shouted hoarsely, and Jackie desisted.

‘A doctor could get it out. We've got to get you to a doctor,' said Jack. He looked at the sky. ‘A couple of hours to dawn. I'll light a fire and make you comfortable.'

He bound up the wound and covered the Nun with a blanket, then gathered together dusty twigs and bark and lit the fire. Jackie boiled the billy, made tea, and put steaming hot cloths on the Nun's leg.

When, at last, the Nun fell asleep Jack hunkered beside the fire, smoking, gazing into the flames, wondering how he could get him to a doctor. The map had been left in the louvre truck; he had no idea if there were any towns between here and Rungil Ponds. Absently he sucked the skinned places on his hand, rubbed his painful knuckles. He became aware that he hurt all over and his back was on fire with the cactus spines. He slept little.

At dawn he was as stiff as a board. The Nun was still asleep, his mouth sagging, his face wan. Jackie was relieved, for he had feared blood poisoning and fever from that open wound. Pulling up his coat collar against the needling cold, Jack scrambled up onto the embankment, looked all around for smoke from chimney, any sign of human life at all.

It was wilted country into which they had jumped, cur country, licked by nature. To the south were long meandering hills, worn by ancient ice or water, hairy with low grey vegetation. Crows kaa'ed lonesomely. To the north was a wide plateau. A listless wind picked over ragged scrub. Here and there were sandy patches already hopping with rabbits, small grey dots like fleas or lice. Jackie wondered if there were a rabbiter's camp where he could get help, or where Jerry could lie up until a doctor was fetched. He sniffed, trying to pick up the dankness of mud, or foul sedge, for almost all the water they had carried was gone.

He looked up and down the permanent way. It was so quiet he could hear the sand whispering along the rails.

Hearing movement, he glanced down to see his stepfather, trailing his blanket, lurching out of the scrub. Jerry was pale, but he looked better than he had done the night before. He was vexed with himself; ashamed to meet Jack's eyes.

‘Bit of an old woman, I guess. Sort of a shock it was, that was all.'

Jackie lit the fire again, put the remains of their water in the billy.

‘If your leg needs fomenting I'll use it for that; otherwise you can have a cup of tea.'

He removed the blood-stained pad. The wound had collapsed on itself like a toothless, oozing mouth. Raw tissue surrounded the metal slug, angry-looking. The Nun stared at it.

‘That bugger has given me hell for over thirty years, d'you realise that, Jack? And now here we are, face to face. Gawd, I'd like to get the bastard out. Have a go, Jack, go on, and if I yell, don't pay attention.'