Oh Hey, a Short Story

Watering Holes

I was the new guy.

"You're the new fellow, Yank." Don tells me.  I had been there four months and still, I was the new guy.

"That's just the way it is," he said, "luck of the draw I suppose."

We're on a large earth embankment looking down into a parched watering hole. A dirty drop of water sits at it's lowest point. That cracked mud radiating out on all sides. The worn and leathered heads of three cows punctuate the scene. It wasn't just the heads though. Don had explained it all to me.

"The wells just can't keep up," he said, "when it gets to the end of the dry the steers and heifers have to get down there for a drink see?"

I nod.

"But there's all that silt," he said. It comes out see-lt, all Outback and Australian. ”Stupid animals that they are, they get stuck. I hate to see it, but that's the way of it all I suppose. Dumb god damn animals. Anyways, we can't fill the bloody things up with all that rotted beef down there now can we?"

He's looking at me, making sure I follow. It was all pretty clear when I saw the chain and shovel.

"So, being the new fellow, you've got to go down there, get the chain 'round their necks, and Collin'll pull'em up."

I nod again.

"Just drag 'em over to the dump pit and we'll burn the whole lot in diesel yah?"

"Yah." My mouth is dry.

"Ata'boy yank," and he gives me a meaty palmed pat on the back and waddles off towards his four wheeler. He yells back over his shoulder, "you yankees always get the job done."

It's a rare complement but, as I stare down into the first of a dozen watering holes, it's lost on me. Collin saddles up beside me, chain in hand. At 28 he's the oldest and unofficial foreman of our crew.

"Ready?"

"Would it matter?" I ask.

"Nope," he says.

It's silly really. Just dead cows. I can do this. We stand, looking, as long as we dare.

It's impossibly hot. The kind of hot where your skin shrinks and cracks. The sort of hot that makes you worry if you'll turn to leather and dust. You can feel your skin burn. Not UV burn either, heat burn. Overcooked flesh burn.

"Ok," I start, "I guess I'll do the one on the left first. Maybe if you back the truck up to the edge there." I point about half way around the ring of earth.

"Right-o" says Colin.

He hands me the shovel and goes back to the truck. I pick my way down to the carcass. At first, the mud holds but, as I get closer, I begin to sink. It's hot and sticky and dry. More like glue than mud. I don't think I'm even getting wet. Just covered in earthy cement.
This one is a heifer. Maybe two or three years old. Best as I can tell, it's one of Don's Angus. There's nothing but brittle fur, hollow leather, a scaffold of bones. An empty eye stares, unblinking, into the sky. Flies crawl in and out. Coming and going. Some sort of Caddis parking garage. More like a cafeteria I suppose.

I hear the chain land with a plop by my side and start digging.

As Don had explained, "The trick is to dig out the neck," he said, "get the neck an maybe a bit around the edges yah? Then use the truck an' pop 'em out. Not too fast though, it'll all come part if yah giv'er too fast."

So I start at the neck. The mud shovels easy enough. It's light, like shoveling dirt on the moon. It doesn't have the weight I expect. When I get deeper though, down below the top layers, it's heavy and wet and has all that moist weight. It begins to drip off the shovel and refill my gouges. I go down a foot or so on each side of the heifer's neck. Then I'm on my knees, elbow deep in the red leather silt. I slide the chain down one side and fish it out the other.
Colin is watching and when I'm done I give him a thumbs up.

"Ok Ruth!" he shouts over the embankment and we can hear the truck shift into gear. The chain goes taught. It vibrates with tension for the briefest of moments and then, with a sucking thouwaap, the heifer is out. The carcass buffets over the silt and dirt and earth. Up the bank. It disappears from view and I make my way over to the second body.
Colin is all grins.

"'Twasn't so bad mate now was it?"
He wasn't in the dirt, or mud, or whatever, but he's right. It wasn't that bad.

The second and third go pretty much the same way. Both heifers. Both angus. Both all leather and fur and bone.

Dig dig dig, clink clank clunk, thouwaap.

After the third I climb up out of the bowl, chain over my shoulder dragging a long 'u' in the dirt.

Colin hands me water.

"How about a beer?" I ask.

He laughs - I’m not kidding.

Ruth is in the truck, on the radio with the other kids, a German and a Belgian. They're somewhere near Alice Springs on the monthly shopping trip.

"Get ah extra case ah beer fur th’yank," I hear her say and she smiles at me. I smile back.

"Soap too," she adds, "I think e'll need it after today."

Colin and I both laugh. I hand him the water. He takes a long drink.

"Ok, on to the next one then."

One hole down, eleven to go.

It's an hours drive to the next hole. Colin and Ruth sit up front. I sit in back, stretched out across the truck's bed. The back window is open. We talk. Colin rolls cigarettes for us. We talk some more. Ruth puts on my copy of ‘Pinkerton’. The Outback rolls by.
There aren't any corpses at the second hole and I whisper a prayer of thanks.
Universe, don't fail me now.

"On to the next one then," Colin says and we pile back into the truck.

More talk. More smokes. More Outback. More heat.

"oh, look at tha wild horses!" Ruth calls. There's a pair of them, galloping toward the horizon. White and brown. Old Bill told me that if you rope one it's yours.

"The law of the Outback," he said.

The fantasy of riding out into the wild carries me onto the the next hole and up over the embankment.

"Nice," Colin says, "Just one 'ere. Could be ah short day fur us."

There is just one but, it's a mess. No fur, just strips of leather and bands of tendon clinging to bleached bone. As I wade through the grit I'm overwhelmed by the smell. One of it's black spots hisses at me and lifts off into the sky, a mass of flies. I peer into the arches of it's ribs. Everything is still there. All the oaful, curing in a slow cooked rot of mud and flesh.

"I don't think this one'll pull," I yell.

"Just giv'er a go and we'll see what takes," Colin says.

I sigh and get to work.

Dig dig dig, clink clank clunk.

Thouwaaa-CRACK.

The skull and spine and ribs and a few bits of leg go skittering across the dirt. Everything else is still in the mud, a cow shaped hole filled with all the parts we don't eat.

"What do we do now?" I ask, pointing to the mess.

"Just ah sec." Colin disappears over the embankment. He comes back with a jerry can of diesel and wades out to me.

"Fack me," he says when the smell hits him, "sweet babe christ lad. You fart?"

"Just pour 'er on then an' we'll be done with it."

I douse the hole in diesel.

"Don't tell Don yah?"

"Yah."

He tosses in a match and we watch it burn for a moment before leaving the whole rotten mess behind us.

Back in the truck. More smokes. More music, ‘Kid A’ this time. More talk. More heat. More Outback. Colin and Ruth tell me about their home in Scotland, the Isle of Muck.

"Maybe you should be the one down in all the mud then," I say.

They give a chuckle.

There are two in the next hole and another four in the hole after.

Dig dig dig, clink clank clunk,
thouwaaaap.

At the sixth hole, I trip. Wading up to the last corpse, a steer, I lose my footing and trip. I don't fall well, I don't know how. I put my arms out in front and try to catch the ground coming at me. This time I catch the leathery side of the steer. My palms hit the hide and 'POP' punch right through till I'm shoulder deep in the corpse.

"FUCK," I scream.
The inside is a moist furnace. Way hotter than the surrounding air.

Colin is laughing.

"God damn it," I can feel things moving deep inside the oaful womb.

Seemingly solid objects turn to jelly as I grasp for purchase. My chin is rubbing against whatever brittle fur remains. I don't want to touch anything and I'm trying to push myself out with my knuckles and it's not working.

"Are you FUCKING kidding me," I bellow, a truly despairing, atavistic, yawp.

And, for a second,
I panic.

I think I might go deeper, head first into the beast, maybe even drown in rotted guts before Colin can pull me out. Collecting myself, I open my hand and find a bone. I work myself up and out. Liquified meat drips from my elbows.

Maggots dribble down my chest.

I throw up.
Four times.

I know if I go rinse my arms, they'll just get dirty again.
Colin is still laughing. I don't blame him.

"Yuck it up man," I yell, digging out the neck with my hands.

Wrap the chain.

Climb out.

Thouwaaaap.

Colin's got the jerry can of diesel and pours it over my arms. Then I rinse with some water. Ruth picks a maggot from my hair and I throw up again.

"Got a drink," I ask. Colin rolls his eyes, sighs, and fishes an end of day beer from the cooler. He holds it out and I stare.

"A real drink,” I say.

"Attah boy," he says and Ruth pulls her flask from a pocket. Scotch has never tasted so good.

"Thanks," I say and hand it back. "On to the next one then, lets just get'er done."

"Good lad," Ruth says, "you'd make a proper scotsman."

"I'm half scottish already," I say, "the good kind too, not like those damned Campbell," and I spit for effect.

"Whohoah," they say, more or less in unison.

"Shall whe find yah ah log tah toss?" Ruth asks and we climb back into the truck.

Drive, talk, music, smoke, dig dig dig, clink clank clunk, thouwaaaap. 

The rest of the cows are easy. I dig, they pull, onto the next hole. No more tripping.

One cow disintegrates as we pull it off the embankment. The tendons wont let go and it stretches out into a 30 foot long abstract impression of bovine. Ruth threw up that time.

Another drops a fetus on it's way up the side. The half rotted calf rolled through the dust and settled at Colin's feet. It's eyes, bizarrely still there, looking up past him. A few dry heaves, but he held onto his lunch. The man is a rock.

The last hole had the freshest steer we'd seen yet.

"That can't have been here more than a day or two," I say, making my way into the pit.

"Maybe we can cut some steaks out of it."

Ruth grins weakly.

I'm wrapping the chain 'round it's neck when the eyes open.

"Holy shit," I yell and fall back onto my ass. "This one's still alive!"

"What?" Colin yells.

"Still alive. Not dead. Breathing. What do we do?"

"Still need to get'er out. Chains on?"

"Yah, but let me see if I can dig it out a bit more."

I do my best to dig around it, to give it a bit of path and purchase, but it keeps struggling, sucking itself deeper.

"Nothing doing down here, might as well pull, just try and take it slow."

I hear the truck start. Ruth puts it in gear. The chain tightens. The steer kicks forward with the chain. For a moment I have the perfect illusion of a steer swimming through solid earth. Then, then it's neck begins to pop and stretch.

"Slow down! Less power! Take it easy! Colin! Tell her to take it easy!"

Colin is yelling at Ruth.
Ruth is yelling at Colin.
The steer is kicking and stretching and popping.

It bellows.

Then thouwaaap and it's out. 

Red mist and blind panic and terror bleeding from it, out into the world. It scrambles, hand over fist, up the dirt side. Chain still around a neck that hangs to the left at an impossible angle. It's head is all wrong, twisted backwards and upside down and I don't understand how it's still alive. 

I chase it up the embankment and it's bellowing but it's more of a horse wheeze. Still loud, but a pitiful, mournful, rasp of a bellow. A true death rattle. We're all yelling. The animal is clearly fucked and panic has it's grip in us all. The steer bolts past the truck and then, reaching the end of the chain, snaps itself backwards. It lands on it's haunches, sitting like a giant long horned dog. Colin is just standing there, slack jawed, and Ruth is near tears and I'm yelling at them to shoot the fucker before it hurts us or destroys the truck.

I check that it's still dazed, run to the truck, and grab the thirty-aught-six.

"Ammo." I say, Colin has the rounds.

"What?" he asks, still staring at the steer.

"Ammo."

"You're going to shoot it? Can't we just get the chain off somehow?" Ruth asks, a near wail.

"Ammo."

Colin hands me a magazine. I chamber a round. Take aim. Slow breath. Hold and squeeze.

CRACK.

The steer's head explodes out the front and it drops like an unstrung marionette, a total jumble of inanimate parts.

"You shot it." Ruth says quietly. I clear the chamber and hand the magazine back to Colin. I pick the spent cartridge from the red soil and slide it into my chest pocket.

"You shot it." she repeats. I set the rifle back in the cab.

"I shot it." I say, meeting her eyes. “It’s neck was broken, dead either way.”

Now it's dusk and I'm out at MacDonald Downs, the satellite station. I reek of charon and sweat and the others asked if I wouldn't mind staying somewhere else till the smell was off. I don't blame them.

I'm sitting on the edge of a meteorite crater, a six pack of Victoria Bitter between my feet, one in my hand. The crater is ancient like the desert around me. There's a spring at the bottom and a grove of eucalyptus trees have grown over the bowl. It's something of an oasis and I like it here.

The sun is just kissing the western edge when I hear foot steps on the trail. I don't turn around, no need, I know everyone for 200 miles.

Old Bill sits down beside me. Leather boots and double denim and his felt hat.

“I hear you took down a steer today," he says. That thick red mud of his outback dawl.

"Yah. It's neck was broken. We fucked it up pulling it from a watering hole."

''faack," he says, drawing it out, "those damn holes. 'ell of ah job."

"Yah," I say and take another sip of beer. I hand one to Bill and he cracks it. He takes that first sip. That really good sip, the one we're always chasing.

"Ey done 'em ah few tymes mehself." That second sip, just a shadow of the first. He smacks his lip. "Don told yah y'er tha new kid yah?"

"Yep."

He smiles.

And we sit, drinking the six pack, chasing that first sip, watching the sky turn black.

-Mason Anderson-Sweet

This story inspired one of our “Places I’d Rather Be” cards. We hope you found it as evocative as we do! Check out the whole series of cards here. Look for more short stories, monthly, right here on our blog!