The Evening Redness in the West
Billy Hunter sat in the tin and timber structure that served as office and living quarters at the whistle-stop siding, watching the air darken above the deserted tracks. His chair by the door faced the dusty slab of platform. Cradled in one elbow and resting across his knees like a musical instrument was a .22 rifle - his new friend. He had the aspect of a person waiting for something, or someone.
Although it was only eight weeks since he had acquired Betsy, as he called the rifle, such is the condition of infatuation that it tends to obliterate memories of anything that preceded it. Billy's life as the sole attendant of this hellhole at the edge of the world had undergone a transformation since he'd got his gun.
He could of course remember how it had been before that. Lonely. Terrifying. Spooky. Insane. Months and months of feeling his mind coming adrift. The brigalow scrub was worse than a prison. If you were in jail at least your fate was shared by others. Here there were no fellow-sufferers. And outside the prison walls you knew there was some form of civilisation: shops, houses, families - people! What was there here? A dirt road dissolving in scrub, a railway track outside the door, trains that seldom stopped, and brigalow. A sea of it.
Billy knew some of the people submerged in that sea. That is, he knew who they were, he'd sometimes eavesdropped on their party line, a local telephone network that invited breach of privacy. He sometimes tapped their grapevine, just to scratch the itch of isolation.
So he knew that one of the daughters of a prominent grazier was spending time rolling in the hay with the district horse-breaker. He guessed she must have been lonely too. He knew of land deals being cut, so that the big fish could get bigger by swallowing the few remaining little fish. Billy also knew who had a secret drinking problem, and who was cheating on whom. This knowledge had been acquired gradually, snippet by snippet, over many months. You had to learn how to read between the lines, and put two and two together. It was a bit like doing a crossword or a jigsaw, and he knew about those too. But there are only so many crosswords and jigsaws a person can do before it all starts to gyrate in your head and add to the general chaos.
With a lopsided grin Billy reflected that there were quite a few potential targets, invisible out there in the scrub, people he could hold to ransom if he so desired. Just a little blackmail note here and there. They'd never suspect him, because while he knew some of them by sight from the occasional goods deliveries to the siding, none of them ever so much as looked at him. "Boy," they would call him. Like a dog. "Here, boy, give us a hand to load this fencing wire, would you?"
No thanks, no reward, no word of acknowledgement that this was a fellow human being. Once in a while, perhaps an impersonal "good lad!" Of course, the sort of men who passed through the siding were impressed by brawn, and it had always been a source of secret heartache to Billy that his own physique was closer to scrawn - what kindlier souls, such as his Aunt Sally, might refer to as "wiry". But more like a jockey than a lumberjack, in fact.
No, blackmail was too good for the likes of that lot!
It was getting on for a year since he'd been posted to this hole. "Gotta do the hard yards before you can go for a cushy job!" they'd told him cheerfully. Nobody had mentioned how long it might take for the tide to turn. Oh, sure, he got four days off every fortnight - a day each way on the train to and from the city, a taste of his mum's cooking, a couple of hot showers, clean sheets and a bed you could actually rest in, then it was load up the clean socks and jocks and climb on the train for the back of beyond, where the radio reception was up to shit, and he'd jump at the sound of his own voice.
He'd never been what you'd call a great reader, but reading did help to pass the time, that was for sure. A stack of fly-specked cheap paperbacks climbed the wall in one corner, but it was like the jigsaws and crosswords. There were only so many words you could swallow without getting indigestion. He'd worked his way through whodunnits, Westerns - Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, a string of repetitive scenarios - and lingered over Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West. Now that was a story he'd not forget! He'd really identified with the hero. The characters and their wild lives had made him forget he was stuck in this dump. They'd taken him along for the ride. Their world was also a desolate, desperate place, but at least things happened there.
Since he'd bought Betsy, his trusty rifle, what difference had this made? For a start, it made him feel different. As if he could be the one in control, for a change. Otherwise, what was his life? He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, where nobody even spared him a thought. There had to be someone in attendance here, even though only two trains a day, one coming north, one going south, passed through the siding, mostly without stopping. It was when they stopped on rare occasions for passengers or goods that he needed to switch signals and communicate with stations farther up or down the line.
In fact, although he'd loved trains as a child, he'd been watching them go past for so long that now they made him sick. He resented the way the drivers grinned and waved from the locomotive, or didn't grin and wave, acknowledging the existence of the siding only with a piercing whistle, not even bothering to slacken pace as they sped on their way. They were mobile, he was not.
But somehow he felt different with the gun in his hands. He would grin to himself, imagining the look on the face of an engine-driver approaching the platform and suddenly noticing that he was in Billy's rifle sights. Of course, he wouldn't be such a fool as to try a joke like that, but even imagining it was good for a laugh.
He didn't fancy killing animals either, except for snakes. He'd rather shoot at fenceposts, or tin cans on a box. He didn't plan to kill anything really. He just felt that the gun sort of empowered him. Gave him some clout. Not that anyone would notice, but it was a good feeling just the same.
* *
It was a Saturday some weeks later, half way through Billy's usual ten-day stint in Woop-Woop. He'd had a couple of cans of beer, which was illegal for someone on duty. A rare reward for helping a bloke load some freight. Pity to let it get hot. It was six hours before the next train was due through, so he decided to cut across to the highway, two hours walk away, to break the monotony. He knew the shortcut, he'd done it a few times before, now he had Betsy for protection. Against regulations, naturally, which required him to be at his post at all times, just in case. But who would notice? The clerk who relieved him on his four days off used to say he couldn't have stuck it. Even four days and nights in the bush gave him the creeps, and he couldn't wait to escape.
Billy headed off on a bridle path through the scrub, made when the siding had functioned as a mail exchange. He fired into the air a couple of times, just for the hell of it, sending a few crows into momentary panic.
He was in a strange mood as he approached the road, light-headed, a trifle tipsy at this break in routine, as if he could just keep going, and never return to that place of incarceration, where he might as well wear a ball and chain.
He noticed some smoke rising at the old stockyards to one side of the highway, and decided on a stealthy approach, partly for the fun of surprising whoever was there, and partly in case it was someone who'd know he was playing hookey. Not that he cared right now. It might be the best favour he'd ever done himself, if he got himself sacked.
Billy soon realised that it was nobody local. The camper-van had Tasmanian registration. Circling round to get a better view, he noticed an elderly couple sitting on folding chairs near a campfire, the woman holding a steaming mug, the man poring over a map on his knees.
Billy watched them with curiosity, envious of their mobility. Here today, gone tomorrow. Someone to talk to, new things to see, while only ten miles away across country he lived as if on another planet.
Just fooling around, he lifted his rifle, training the sights on the elderly man. As if she sensed something, the woman swung round abruptly in her chair. In a nervous reflex, Billy squeezed the trigger, heard the shot, and then a cry from the man crumpled over the map, before he turned and ran.
His breath was ragged, his mind numb as he reached the siding in record time. Cradling Betsy in one elbow, Billy took up his post on a chair by the open door, as the dark came down on the scrub and the rails still hot from the sun began to contract.