The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (19 page)

OVER THE BANDIT CITADEL
the sky ran red with the rising sun and the citadel’s shadow stretched over the road to the west and the Kid riding out of the shadow kept his eyes on the road ahead and did not look back over his shoulder. Behind him high on the walls of the citadel El Rabbitoh stood alone against the sun and watched him go and the dawn light caught in the eyes of the Bandit King but his face could not be read.

The Kid rode with shoulders set and Cooper watching the Kid’s shoulders did not speak but turned his head and looked back and in the softening distance he could just make out two figures. Halfway back along the road to the Bandit Citadel the boy paused with the mule’s rope slack in his hand and looked after the riders. Then he tightened the rope and spoke to the mule and led it on to the other side.

You know where you’re goin Kid? Cooper said.

I know, the Kid said and the palomino’s hooves whispered in the cold morning dust. Don’t worry. It aint far.

You figure he told you the truth? Cooper said.

Yeah, the Kid said. I do.

No reason he should, Cooper said.

No reason at all, said the Kid.

So what makes you think? Cooper said.

I don’t know, said the Kid. I just do.

You figure he’s comin after us?

No.

He say anythin else you want to tell me about?

The image of the Bandit King’s face as he left remained with the Kid as if it were lodged in the sky.

Not a thing worth repeatin, the Kid said and he touched his heels to his horse’s sides and the palomino’s forelegs lunged as the horse picked up the canter.

Behind them a buzzard circled the citadel silhouetted against the sun and El Rabbitoh turned and left the walls and the hooves of the grey and the palomino drummed and drummed upon the road and only the buzzard high in the sky remained to watch the rising dust of the riders as they lit out west across the range.

Winstone listened to the drum of the hooves fall into the dust and the rain blew in over the Rough Ridge Range and paused and fell without hurry. It wrapped around the cave and he listened to it patter soft as mouse-feet over the tarp above his head and land
thud-thut
in the dirt beside his ear
thut-thud
and on the rocks and the grass beyond the cave the rain made a stillness without sound and he listened to that too.

It was a still thick enough to take his weight and he leaned back into it and drifted for a while.

When he woke up the rain had eased and the stillness had mounted and he pulled on his trainers and went out into the beaded grass and sank ankle-deep in the stillness and travelled with it over the range with the cloud overhead and around in and out like breath over a lens. On the top of the ridge he stood with the wet grass bathing his knees and looked down on the grey tin sheet of the dam and he watched its slow corrugations.

A man should know how to fish, Todd said once. He said it up to his knees in the Glentrool Stream looking over his right shoulder not at Winstone where he stood on the bank hands in pockets but at the grub on the end of his line as he swung back to cast and then he turned body arms shoulders and wrists all in time and the loose reel whirred and the line curved out like a spider’s line on the wind and grub and hooks and sinker entered the pool without splash or sound like the cunning trap they were.

Todd was talking more in those days and after he’d reeled in he said that two other things a man should know how to do were to drive a car and shoot a gun and though he agreed with Debbie that Winstone was too young for those yet, fishing he could learn.

The first time Winstone swung the rod back he hooked his jeans and Todd had to get him free. Todd said try again and he did and this time he got the line into the river but only a metre or so from the bank and the bait plunked in and sent up a big water spout like it was some aerial bombardment. Here, Todd said, and he stood behind Winstone for a while and put his hands over Winstone’s hands and he showed him when to free the line and when to brake it.

It was a bright day with some wind and the high sun behind
them and no wonder they didn’t catch anything but it was the first weekend of the season and Todd had bought the fishing licences while he was filling up with gas in Glentrool the day before so they had to try. The next day they got up early and tried again but the weather had held and they could see themselves in the river and so could the fish. After three hours they picked the drowned grubs off their hooks and packed up their gear and Todd said they’d have another go soon and that in the hills there were dams full of trout and that one day they’d go up there and he pointed out the whereabouts of those dams and traced the broken lines of their access roads with his fingernail on the dog-eared map in the Pajero. He and Winstone didn’t go fishing again and they never drove up to the dams but that wasn’t Todd’s fault and Winstone didn’t hold it against him.

One day later that week Wednesday Thursday maybe Winstone didn’t remember exactly he got up and went to school and sat at the desk and looked at the date written up on the board and there was something familiar about it. At playtime he was eating his crackers and cheese and watching the little kids run and squeal when it came to him for no particular reason he could see that it was Bodun’s birthday. He sat and chewed and thought about that for a while and he wondered where Bodun was and if it felt any different being fifteen and away to the east an unmuffled V8 raked the main street of Glentrool like a blast of bad news and it went without saying that Bodun was hanging with the wrong crowd but Winstone hoped they were treating him kindly. After that he thought about all the runaway kids on the news who got murdered and cut up and sold but Bodun wasn’t a kid any more and anyway there was nothing Winstone could do about it.

He thought about Bodun some more on the bus after school and maybe that was the wrong thing to do because when he got
home Debbie gave him a funny look and said that Ros-your-social-worker had rung and they’d found his brother. They’ve got him up in Christchurch, she said.

Winstone asked if Bodun was okay and Debbie said he was fine and he asked if Bodun was coming to stay with them in Glentrool and Debbie’s mouth opened but nothing came out and she looked at the cat for a bit and then she said no he wasn’t.

Winstone paused to consider how he felt about that and he thought he was pleased but that didn’t seem right and Debbie said that they weren’t allowed on the internet where Bodun was but that Winstone could write to him if he wanted and Winstone thought about the pit where they put Doc and Chavez in
Young Guns II
and he wondered what he’d say.

He didn’t have anything to say to Debbie either so he went out and fed the dogs and when he got back Jemma had drawn a picture of him and the cat. Winstone on the left, though it wasn’t easy to tell and the picture not all that flattering to either. Write your name, Jemma told him. Here.

So he wrote his name above the figure of him and then he wrote the cat’s name although he hadn’t realised until that moment that it had a name or thought about its gender. Mr Socks, Jemma said, write Mr Socks, and he wanted to check how to spell it but there wasn’t much point asking her so he just asked if it was like the socks on your feet and Jemma wanted to know what other kinds of socks there could be and Winstone couldn’t think of any.

When he heard the Pajero door slam outside he shifted forward a bit in his chair and concentrated hard on the fox he was trying to draw that kept turning out more like Sonic the Hedgehog. He didn’t turn to look when Todd walked in and Todd passed behind him and laid a hand on the back of his chair and Winstone felt the weight of it there but he looked at the fox.

There’s my girl, Todd said.

Winstone looked up then. Jemma clambered onto the cracked leather seat of the chair beside his and held out her arms and Todd lifted her and she clung to his neck with her bum hanging over his forearm and her summer dress rucked up and showing her pants.

Are you a good girl? Todd said, and she bit her lip while she thought about that and then she bounced a bit on his arm and she shouted out a triumphant yes.

What have you got for me? Todd said, and Jemma didn’t hesitate one bit, she kissed him full on the lips and then she laughed like a drain.

She laughed and bounced and Winstone looked at her and thought about Todd’s arms around him standing out on the shingle fan in the Glentrool Stream and the sound of Todd’s breath in and out above his head and he thought about Debbie and Debbie’s thighs and he thought about Tara and the track of her neck and when he’d finished all things considered he thought that whatever fishing turned out to be it would be okay.

The line flew over the dam back and forth like a spider travelling the wind but there was no wind no spider no fly just a man with a few little feathers and a barb trying to trick a trout out of the water. Winstone waited until the fisherman had settled into his cast and then he went back around the rocks and up the slope to the end of the track where the fisherman’s Isuzu Trooper stood solitary against the sky and he opened the far door.

Underneath the front passenger seat of the Trooper he found an old box and in the box was a dusty billy and a dustier mug and a plastic container of teabags and in the billy under the lid was a camping stove and he picked it up and weighed the gas in his hand and it felt good and heavy. It was too much to ask for anything more but he looked anyway and up front in the glovebox he found a lighter and a whole bag of peanut slabs and he took it all every bar without even trying to hide it.

Near dusk the fisherman caught a fish and he waded out and checked the sky and went back to his hut on the other side of the dam and it was a hut that Winstone had never seen open before and there was nothing left on its shelves but coffee and tea and a bottle of bitter black sauce and even the sugar had been exhausted. Winstone watched the windows light up small and yellow and far away and the smoke rise grey on the greyer sky and he thought about the fisherman sitting down to a fried-up
trout and he didn’t care because he had chocolate and gas and hot satay chicken noodles.

The next day the wind cut up and blew the fisherman and the Trooper back down the road and off the range and Winstone went around the dam to the hut where the fisherman had stayed to see what things had been left behind and in the cupboard next to the sink was a weird square tin and he looked at the bright pink meat on the tin and he couldn’t believe his eyes.

There were also two cans of barbecue beans and one of tomato soup and a six-pack of chicken noodles and he stuffed the lot down his hoodie and took it fast before somebody else came and got it. He went back the long way just in case the Trooper returned. But the hut had been closed up pretty good and he didn’t really think it would and on the way he stopped and hid up in the rocks for a while in a spot he knew where the wind wouldn’t come and the uncut sun fell thick and gold from the blue sky. He took out his tins and set them one by one on the stone with the labels lined up and looked at them and they seemed like a lot to have. He picked up the tin of corned beef and turned it and shook it a bit and he heard the beef slide and he set it back down and looked again at the smiling bull on the outside.

Away over the dam he heard a long cry and Winstone stood up and shaded his eyes and looked and a string of geese came beating out of the western sky and settled beside the water. In the wake of the geese the wind dropped away and he watched the geese amble and bleat and begin to feed.

He packed up his tins and his noodles too and he walked around the dam through the long yellow grass every blade standing still and nothing flew out and the cattle fence strung on the sky up ahead was bare and he realised the Armageddon birds had got tired of waiting and gone and the earth was still
rotating at its usual speed as far as he could tell.

He took the tins home and stacked them up and he put the corned beef tin on the very top and he looked at it one more time. Then he went back to the dam and walked around the Red Hut and assessed its boarded-up windows and door and he made a mental list of the tools he would need if he was going to maybe one day get inside and climb into Alicia’s bed and lay low there for the winter.

For an hour or two he scouted the other huts for the tools on his list and after a while the blue ran out of the sky and the cold came up and Winstone got his things from the cave and in the fireplace under the rocks behind the Red Hut he built a fire and he built it big and the fire lit up the range and the thickening dusk and he didn’t care. When the fire had burned down he opened up the can of corned beef and he did it slow with the proper respect and he thought of the Bible lady from Brownburn School and he almost said a prayer as he broke the tin and the smell rushed out meat and jelly and fat so good it hurt his heart. He tipped the corned beef into the billy and threw in a can of barbecue beans and poked it about with a stick and put the billy over the fire to heat and hash or no hash when it was done it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

He was cleaning the pot with his finger when the kitten turned up and it looked pretty angry to find itself late and he gave it the corned beef tin to lick out but the kitten wasn’t falling for that trick twice and it just stuck in the tip of its nose and licked the rim.

The range was settling into black and before the edge of the lake got lost he went down and squatted beside it and scoured out his billy and rinsed his fork while the brown moths whirred past his ears and across the water on the opposite beach the geese complained but did not rise.

When he was done he went back to the fire and built it back up until it warmed the sky. He ate another peanut slab and lay back on the grass and the kitten lay with him close and tucked in its paws and Winstone reached out his finger to touch its ear and the kitten bit it but only around the edges where the skin was already hard.

He lay and the grass beneath him was thick and dry and his belly was full and his face was warm and he watched the night wrap up the range and on his shoulder he felt the palomino’s warm breath as it cropped the grass.

The Kid stretched his boots to the fire and he looked across it.

Hey Coop. You ever get to thinkin we could jes let em go?

But in the darkness Cooper couldn’t be seen and maybe he was already fast asleep because he made the Kid no reply.