Little Exiles

Jon finds the knife already in his hands. It is smaller than he had imagined, with a short handle and a longer blade that curves back against itself. Tommy has others stacked up – one with jagged teeth like a saw, one a huge cleaver sitting on a wooden shaft – and he circles the goat gently, cooing at it all the while.

‘Give him a hug, Jon.’

Jon recoils. He thinks of Judah Reed, putting his arm around a boy just before telling him: they’re all dead; you’re the only one left.

‘Go on, Jon. If you hold him properly, he’ll roll right over.’

Tommy Crowe is right. Jon advances, strokes the back of the billy’s head, and then drapes himself over its body. Bemused, the goat nevertheless relents, rolling onto its side like an obedient pup. It is then an easy thing for Tommy Crowe to take the rope and knot together its back legs and fore.

‘Keep pressing down, Jon. He’ll only try and get back up again.’ Tommy bows low, rubs his forehead onto the goat’s shoulder. ‘Won’t you, lad? You only want to get up!’ Tommy looks up. ‘Have a go, Jon. Bring his head back, see. The first cut’s the hardest, but after that, it’s plain sailing.’

Jon understands, too late, why the knife is in his hand. His eyes widen, he flicks a look at Tommy, another at the throat now exposed. Still, the goat is silent. Jon Heather thinks: it might at least cry.

‘Take it in your hand like this,’ Tommy says, snatching up a stick to show him how. ‘Then …’ He tugs the stick back. ‘Don’t be shy. If you’re shy, you’ll hurt him.’

‘Tommy, I don’t …’

‘Of course you don’t! Street boy like you … But, Jon, you have to. We all have to. If you don’t, they’ll know. Then they’ll come and make you.’ Tommy is silent. ‘It’s better they don’t have to make you, Jon. The thing is, they enjoy making you. It’s better not like that.’

Jon isn’t certain that he understands, but he pictures Judah Reed standing here, pressing the knife into his hand.

‘They’re making me anyway, Tommy. You’re making me …’

Tommy releases the goat’s hind legs. The poor brute kicks out, and Tommy must tackle him again.

‘I knew a boy who wouldn’t,’ he breathes. ‘It was when we were building the sandstone huts.’

‘Building them?’

‘We built them our very own selves. There was hardly a building standing when I got dumped here. But this boy, he wouldn’t mix bricks, and he wouldn’t kill goats, wouldn’t go out on muster or even pop the head off a chicken. Wasn’t that he was a cry-baby. I don’t think I ever once saw him cry. He just wouldn’t do a thing he was told. So …’

‘They made him.’ The way Jon breathes the word, it might be a spell that they cast, a terrible enchantment. ‘How did they make him, Tommy?’

‘The same way they’ll make you, if you don’t cut this goat. With nights in Judah Reed’s office and big old welts on your bare backside. With slop for breakfast and tea, so you’ll be begging for a hunk of lovely goat. Going out for lessons with honoured guests.’ Tommy Crowe pauses. ‘Do you want to know why I’m the only lad in this whole Mission who’s never had a strap across him?’

Meekly, Jon nods.

‘It’s because Judah Reed doesn’t even know my name. I never gave him a reason to learn it. He might have put me on that boat and brought me here, but he doesn’t even know I was born. And that, Jack the lad, is the only way to do it. So …’ He pauses, tilting his head at the blade still in Jon’s hands. ‘… are you going to cause a stink about this, or what?’

Jon strokes the top of the billy’s head. The silly creature must love it for, willingly, he tips his head back. With one hand, Jon steadies the head against the earth; with the other, he plunges forward with the blade.

He must have done something wrong, stabbing like that, for a jet of red shoots out at him and Tommy Crowe winces.

‘Don’t skewer it, Jack the lad! Bring it up, like this …’

The second time is more difficult, for now the goat knows what these two turncoats are about, and now the goat resists. Even so, somehow, Jon gets the knife back in. He tries to draw it up, opening the neck, but over and again it slides back out. Now he is mindlessly hacking, hands covered in pumping red, the blade so slippery he can hardly keep hold.

Quickly, the goat relents. Its kicking stops, and Jon reels back.

‘Up and away, Jack the lad! We’ve made a meal of this one!’

Tommy rushes around, grabs a broom handle from the dairy wall, and runs it between the goat’s hind legs. With one mighty heave, he throws the billy on his back and staggers to a dead tree by the dairy doors. Here, he slides the broom handle into the crooks of two branches and steps back with a flourish, the goat hanging from the tree with its throat open to the ground.

‘Damn it Jack, you’re letting it spill!’

Jon looks down. Too late, he sees the puddle of blood spreading around him, his feet islands rapidly being submerged in a grisly typhoon. Too stunned to do anything, he simply stands there, imagines the tide getting higher and higher, subsuming his ankles, his knees, the whole of his body. At last, Tommy Crowe pushes him out of the way, kicking two milk pails into place so that the blood might be caught. ‘It’s for sausages, you dolt … Blood sausages, remember?’

Jon looks up. The goat dangles with two gaping smiles: the first its lips, the second the great gash they have carved in its throat. Only minutes ago, it was a real, living thing; now it is a cruel mockery of everything it used to be.

‘You want to help with the butchering too?’

Against his will, Jon nods.

‘It’s easy enough,’ says Tommy. ‘Just take a hold of this knife …’

Once the goat has bled out, they strain to carry the buckets of blood away, into the dairy where fewer flies can set to feasting. Now, Tommy Crowe explains, there comes a job any old boy can do, without even a hint of training.

‘All you have to do is twist until it pops off. You ever get the cap off a bottle of milk?’

Jon nods, eyes fixed on the goat’s gaping smile.

‘Same thing, Jon. Go on, give it a go …’

Jon might keep still, then, were it not for the footsteps he hears behind him: McAllister knuckling around the corner of the dairy. With Tommy Crowe’s eyes on him, he steps forward. The goat is strung high, so that the head dangles almost into his lap. Up close, the stench is severe, steamy and sour.

He places one hand on one side of the goat’s head and, holding his body back as far as he can, the other hand on the opposite side. Eyes closed tight, he turns the head. It has moved only inches when it resists, and he lets go. Behind him, Tommy Crowe insists that he just has to try harder. When he tries again, something gives, and now the goat’s head is back to front. He turns again, his hands now oily with blood, and at last there is a sound like a pop. Stumbling back, he crashes into the dirt.

When he opens his eyes, the goat is staring back, a disembodied head bouncing in his lap like a baby boy.

Next, the legs have to be broken. This, Tommy explains, will make it much easier to whip off his skin. Each leg needs a good old yank, but when Jon takes one of the forelegs, dangling close to the ground, he can barely get a good grip. There’s a trick to this, Tommy Crowe explains. All you have to do is twist at the same time as you snap. In this way, the bone shatters inside. Legs, he explains, really aren’t so difficult at all.

‘You ever had a broken bone, Jack the lad?’

Jon shakes his head, hands still clasped around the two ragged ends of the leg he has ruined.

‘You will,’ mutters Tommy. ‘It hurts like hell.’

Under Tommy’s instruction, Jon is supposed to slice up the goat’s tummy, from its star-shaped backside to the great gash in its neck, but the hide is thick and it is all he can do to force the blade in. If Tommy Crowe were doing it, he says, he could have the skin off a goat like this in ten seconds flat – but every time Jon tries to draw the blade up, it sticks on fat and flesh. First, he has the knife in too deep; then, not deep enough, so that it rips out and Jon staggers, catching his own arm with the tip of the knife. Now, his own blood mingles with the goat’s, but Tommy tells him not to worry.

‘It takes some practice, Jack the lad. Once you’ve killed a dozen of these bastards, you’ll be able to skin anything. A cow, a kangaroo, Judah Reed himself …’

Even with Tommy Crowe’s help, it takes an age to wrestle the skin off. Now, it is naked, glistening white and red. The first thing Jon must do is collect up the guts. This is easy enough, because they slide out straight away. All it takes is the right incision – but when Jon sinks the blade in, a smell like shit erupts, and he staggers back. Coarse brown muck pumps from the hole he has made, and Tommy Crowe rushes to finish the job.

‘That’ll happen if you’re not careful,’ he says, wiping his hands of the thick slurry. ‘You put that knife straight in its shit sack.’

Jon tries to wipe his hands clean up and down his thighs, but all it does is make a dark brown mess, massaging it deeper into his palms.

‘Look,’ says Tommy. ‘I’ll cut you a deal. If I get this bladder out, you do the rest. If this goat pisses all over itself, he’ll be ruined.’ He stops. ‘Shall I tell you what pissed-on goat tastes like, Jon Heather?’