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Day Four
XI. THE GOAT ABATTOIR
12. Driving Home
All the way home
I tried to keep warm
by closing the window
but my blood ran cold.
Dad said, "You've gone quiet,
do you want a cake?
We can stop at the bakery."
All the way home I tried
to answer.
But I was cold.
They know it's wrong.
We're finished out here.
One stunner, one sticker,
& a shot of electricity
behind the horn.
In the car with dad driving us home,
hair blown across my face by wind,
sun through the dusty windscreen,
burning into the backs of my hands,
freckling them, lighting up my rings,
like dad's cigarette.
On the way home
I couldn't get warm & felt shivery
as I tried to absorb the scream,
because it had to be fully absorbed,
before I could let it go.
It would have to run its course.
So that I could hear it,
deep & urgent.
Full of the terror of murder.
The one murdered just before it,
blood spraying the floors
& the goats still living behind it
& its own neck being touched.
Dad said, "They begin to scream
as the knife goes in" &
this screaming went forever.
It travelled with us in the car,
over the miles.
It came back to Brewarrina,
as grey black thunderclouds
swept up over the box
on the horizon. The promise
of rain as vague, as the ending
of this scream.
I looked back to Patch-'Em-Up Dog
on the back of the ute,
in need of an animal, well cared for.
In need of her living,
her happy dog attitude
stretched longitudinal,
blown back by wind.
The smells streaming past,
her streamline blue,
the smells that came into her
& the smells she let go.
Then there was dad,
driving us back to Bre,
in his old green coat.
He said, "Yeah, well,
I never liked Bourke anyway."
His elbow on the window
& his company, which I call 'Dad'.
But inside, my blood ran cold
& the sun wasn't warming me
& I felt queasy, like I had in
the kangaroo boning factory
where I had swallowed too much
of the dead sweet blood,
that hung in the air
simply by breathing
& being there. |
