Our Sunshine: Popular Penguins (7 page)

And I’m riding home in a daze – still tingling from recent flesh events – unaware of all this. I’m snatching leaves off peppermint trees and munching them, rubbing the minty spittle on my face and neck (a guilty habit to throw my mother off the scent when I’d been with perfumed women), when I hear a horse coming up fast. I pull up behind a tree, and Fitzpatrick gallops past me in the opposite direction.

After the fight at our house he fled back to the grog shop and reeled home to the barracks at two a.m., spilling out his face-saving drama. Saying I’d been there and shot him in the
hand
. Even though the doctor who dressed the scratch would only say a bullet
might
have caused it, and that the patient stunk of brandy, his superiors jumped at this opportunity.

Attempted murder of a policeman by the Kellys! The suddenly, blissfully, dead-meat Kellys.

Can’t reveal my alibi, that I was romancing Mrs C. So Dan and I ride off into the Wombat Ranges to Bullock Creek. Rewards posted on our heads. Mother’s soon in gaol. All this is on the evidence of a single witness soon cashiered as a lying pisspot. Bugger the truth, they want me regardless. So angry, more than angry, I can’t sleep or keep food down.

So I damn one woman by protecting another.

In a winter hiding guilty in the ranges the mind and body quickly turn to whisky.

W
HISKY HANGOVERS
have their good points. A rum hangover marinates the brain in syrup and overlays all next day, next week, with a sticky aftertaste. With a gin hangover it’s shoosh the kids and hide the guns and mother’s knives and draw the blinds and roll up in cotton sheets till the season changes. (Joe says a gin hangover is like looking at life through a black snake’s bum. Inwards
or
outwards. Things are bleak and won’t get any better.) Draw a pistol with a brandy hangover and you’ll shoot something important off you. But a whisky hangover is like peering through a steamed-up window: it cuts out unnecessaries. Even the worst ones, where the bright world quivers behind clouds of leaves and feathers, can slowly set certain trains of thought in motion.

Bullock Creek’s a good place to hide and think. For hiding and thinking and drinking – and for realising we have to make some quick, quiet money to get a new trial for our mother and a lawyer for ourselves. Deciding that a whisky still and gold digging are the quickest ways to make quiet money.

The Greta Mob helps us with a hut, two miles of fencing and cleared ground to grow barley and man-gelwurzels to distil whisky. We’ve got all the tools for digging and sluicing for creek gold, and Tom Lloyd bringing regular news of police movements and sugar and extra supplies along the stock track over the hills from Greta. (Tinned herrings in tomato sauce for Dan, satsuma-plum jam for me.)

We build the hut strong enough to withstand a siege. Bulletproof logs two feet thick, an iron-plated door with loopholes to fire through. And from the hut we practise shooting in every direction with targets set up on trees at ranges from twenty to four hundred yards. Shoot and chop, shoot and chop. Shoot head and chest shots in the afternoon; every morning chop the cold bullets out of the wood, melt them down, remould them and shoot them again.

Spend one long winter among the gouged and gradually splintering trees of Bullock Creek. Working on the stills and sluicing, selling gold dust, slaughtering the occasional footloose beast, socialising with trusted members of the Mob, practising our shooting every afternoon and preparing for the day when the police come for us.

Meanwhile we like the idea of being bootleggers, even building a dummy still in case of raids and hiding the main one downstream like all the best sly-groggers. But we don’t get to sell much whisky.

I’
D LIKE
to say in front of witnesses that I’ve got nothing against Kennedy. Seemed an honest man. I’ve never said he was a fool. Nor were we. Well …

He was the sergeant based at Mansfield. Discovered Tom Lloyd was regularly selling gold dust for someone and guessed Tom’s cousins were hiding in the ranges. One of his informers had more details and told him the gang was hiding among the creeks. He’d seen Tom in the Greta general store. Look for a still, the spy said, prospectors’ muddy tailings, a bit of barley crop. Jam and herring tins.

Stupid bugger didn’t know enough to also warn him of the hut’s wide radius of splintered trees, all gouged at the height of brain and heart.

Kennedy decided a pincer movement might flush us out – one party patrolling south from Greta and the other, led by him, searching north from Mansfield. A funny thing about police informers: as soon as Kennedy, Lonigan, Scanlon and McIntyre left town disguised as prospectors, the spy rapidly saw the other point of view and rode off to square himself with the Mob.

He was our informer too, you could say.

T
he showdown was brought on by exploding par-rots. Rosellas. There was this explosion, then these booming, screeching echoes along the gulleys followed by a cloudburst of green and crimson steam.

What happened was this: Tom was already on his way out of town with the weekly supply of still-sugar, jam and herrings when Joe’s mother waved him down at Twelve Mile Gully and passed on the informer’s warning. Mrs Byrne didn’t know how fast these phoney prospectors were travelling, only that they were heading in our direction. Tom galloped so fast along the stock trail his horse was roaring by the time he reached us. We reconnoitred and saw where their horses had stamped down the speargrass only a mile away at Stringybark Creek.

But there was no sign of them. I sent Tom to search downstream while Dan and I went upstream, keeping quiet and low. Joe and Steve followed ten minutes behind, to cover our rear. Still no sign of the police.

A perfect spot for snipers. But expecting a sneaky bullet makes any place seem ominous. Angled lumps of quartz poke from the hillsides here, and this particular afternoon these glistening outcrops looked to me like tilted gravestones. Long fluttery shadows fell across the creek. Breezes nipped around the ridges and hissed through the speargrass where it tangled up with the dense wattle and stringybark and sassafras trees down by the creek. Down here the visibility was down to twenty or thirty feet. And then this
boom
rang out and when its shock waves had echoed along the creek and our gullets had loosened enough to breathe again we saw shreds of feathers floating down like painted snowflakes.

McIntyre was the sort of sleuth-hound who eased his nerves by loosing two barrels at a flock of parrots. When the din and fluff had settled, Dan and I crept up to the police camp. It was very easy to find now, only two hundred yards away – as well as all his racket, McIntyre was by this time building a big smoky fire as a beacon to other members of the hunting party. There was a tent in the middle of a small clearing and another trooper was sitting by it on a log, daydreaming into the flames and twirling a revolver in his fingers.

Well, any real murderer would’ve picked them off from the bushes. A cinch for any monster! But my idea was just to take their guns and horses and leave them stranded. While Dan watched the man by the fire and I covered McIntyre, I stood up and ordered them to throw up their hands. Then things happened.

McIntyre did just as he was told.

The other man got clever and ran toward a pile of logs.

Dan froze and couldn’t shoot him.

The man reached the logs. He raised his head to fire and I shot him through the temple.

The man said, ‘Oh Christ, I’m shot!’ and died.

I said, ‘What a pity the bastard tried to run.’

I’m always quoted as saying that.

I
KNOW
the papers’ name for it.
The Killers’ Picnic
. Trooper McIntyre fussing around, boiling the billy, making tea and toast. And Lonigan the groin-grabber is spread-eagled, seeping, on the picnic rug. (You wouldn’t read about it in the
Age
! Of all the police in Victoria I’ve killed the man I swore to kill!) While this fact sinks in I’m gulping strong tea so hot my tongue bubbles. And big, pale McIntyre’s in a tizzy spreading fresh butter and marmalade on our slabs of toast.

He’s offended when we make him taste the tea and food before us. He munches his toast in a huffy way, shakes his head at the very idea of poison. ‘It’s you who’s the deathly worry to me,’ he says. ‘Not the other way round.’ If we don’t kill him he promises to leave the force first thing tomorrow. Of course all the time he’s making toast, flattering our abilities and fervently decrying the police, he can’t keep from casting sidelong glances at Lonigan’s extra eye peering out.

The new eye is weeping colourless stuff. Well, no tears from me. If it has to be anyone’s, I’m glad it’s Lonigan’s brain juices, that’s all. Just look at it as my several-hundredth afternoon head-shot.

Dan’s grinning at me. ‘Very pretty.’ Leans over and picks a little red feather from my beard, and another. Bright parrot fluff sticking everywhere to me.

A
T SIX
the picnic ends suddenly. In the twilight the other police ride up from the west – Kennedy and Scanlon. I’m down behind a log; Joe and Dan crouch in the speargrass; Steve’s in the tent. I’m covering our puppy-dog McIntyre as he steps into the sunset, saying, ‘Sergeant, better surrender. You’re surrounded.’

Kennedy’s pink Irish bearded face, too well-groomed for any prospector, is still grinning at this joke –
Oh, Mac, ha ha … there’s the welcoming fire, the cheery smell of toast!
– until I stand up and prove it. A general gasp, a split second passes – there’s still just time for everyone to live a proper lifespan – but this time it’s Scanlon who can’t not try some cleverness. Swings his horse around, unslings his rifle, swings back and fires at me. So I shoot him in the heart.

At the far edge of the clearing, Kennedy’s whipping out his revolver as he slides off his horse. Dan’s advancing on him and Kennedy fires over the horse’s rump and nicks Dan’s left arm. Now Joe and Steve start blazing away from the shadows, so the gully’s ripped by flashes, blasts, oaths and horse screams. It’s almost dark. I can’t get a clear shot at him. The panicky horse springs away and Kennedy fires into my face, so close I smell sizzled hair as the bullet parts my beard. McIntyre sees his chance, flings himself on his sergeant’s horse and makes a run for it. And Kennedy stumbles toward the creek and crashes into the cover of the wattle and swamp gums.

I follow him.

This one’s not an amateur. I’ve scooped up Scanlon’s Spencer repeater but the mechanism’s unfamiliar and I drop it in favour of my old shotgun. Kennedy retreats from tree to tree, stopping to fire, while I push him deeper and deeper into the scrub, trying to remember how many shots he’s fired.

He fires his fourth shot (I think) ducking on the run, fifth (probably) from behind a tree. And he’s aiming his sixth bullet (I estimate) when I hit him in the armpit with a blast of swandrops before he can fire.

When I shoot him in the armpit he drops his revolver and heads off again, crashing through the bushes in a shambling run. But at that second I don’t realise he’s dropped his gun. As he’s changing his mind, panting like a croupy draughthorse and swivelling around to surrender, half-raising his arms in the twilight, I mistake the blood all darkening his hand for that revolver with one bullet left – and I fire again. And the shot passes through the right side of his chest.

In the new silence I move toward him through the crackling speargrass. Although he loudly argues that this is not the case, anyone can see he’s had it. Hope he appreciates that it’s not a proper topic for discussion. Embarrassing for both of us, his wheezy scoffing at those loose-petalled wounds like open roses, his begging and looking up at me like that. As an act of charity I position the gun between the two blooming roses, against his heart, and shoot him truly dead.

W
E BURN
the police tent without speaking and go back to Bullock Creek. Tired in my bones and head and legs, I feel my organs are all shrinking and withdrawing. At the same time my outline’s flickering. Skin’s all shuddery; if you shook me I’d rattle like an old, loose-skinned kangaroo dog I once had. Rips from roos’ claws and pigs’ tusks letting in air pockets under Shandy’s fur. A twitchy Great Dane–dingo cross – in the end Shandy sounded like his yellow flanks were packed with marbles.

My skin won’t sit still on me.

The others: Dan’s cross we didn’t handcuff McIntyre – or shoot him; Joe’s too cut up to speak, just smiles a vague smile and shakes his head now and then; Steve – all the way back to the hut Steve’s gibbering how he’s hungry, rambling on about lamb chops, steak and kidney pies, corned beef and brisket casseroles. But when we get there he can’t even wait for meat to cook, so while the rest of us have big whiskies Steve sucks down five eggs instead.

‘You two don’t have to be in this,’ I tell him and Joe. ‘It’s still only the Kellys. You can put yourselves in the clear, leave now – free as birds.’

Steve’s poking his tongue around inside a shell for missed bits, and he grins up at me with yolk in his face-fluff. ‘A short life and a merry one,’ he says. You’d think this eggy kid was some rollicking highwayman in a book.

‘Well, tally-ho to you,’ I say. ‘It’s New South Wales, then.’

Tom Lloyd keeps watch while we four try to snatch some sleep. Takes a bit of whisky to settle the flickering skin. After three hours we load two packhorses, set fire to our bulletproof hut and get out of there.

It presses on my hip as I ride. The gold-rimmed circle. The watch. Christ, who needs another watch! Not a scratch on it, though
.

The time’s just after midnight. Fog rolls through the valleys of white quartz headstones, the creek is running deep and fast and rain starts hurling down.

F
or three days the rain pelts down and when they come out on to the Murray Plain the river is in flood. He sees that New South Wales has vanished and everything north of the Victorian bank churns under a muddy sea. Already dead sheep and cows and bush animals and sheds and trees and fences are whirling by in a stewy surge of topsoil. Two possums float past on their backs, legs outspread, neat genital purses exposed and vulnerable, and at once he thinks of his baby brothers, Danny and Jimmy, bobbing in their tin bath.
But now they’re bony Dan and hairy Jim, who’ve been to gaol
. Big crows, their feathers in a sheen, flop along the crumbling loamy banks and eye the possums too.