The White Earth by Andrew McGahan Page B

the earth. He realised there were more. Brown skin clung to some of them, and they joined at a half-buried spine. The skull lay to one side, its jaws stretched open in one last soundless cry. Ants crawled and picked at dark shreds that lay within, and there was the faintest scent of rotting in the air.
    It was only a cow, he told himself, only a dead cow. But he was horrified, stumbling away in tears, unable to stop the panic growing. They were an awful place, the hills. At home on the plains he had been able to see everything, it was impossible to get lost, but the hills were deceitful, they tricked and misled and were full of dead things, gravestones and creeping trees on walls and empty eyes set in skulls. Why had he ever left the House? And then all of a sudden there it was, rising before him. He gaped at it. He had come the wrong way round, because now he was approaching the House from the rear. He could see the tumbled ruins of the outbuildings, and beyond them the familiar grey slate roof. But even through his relief, the House looked grim and cold and ugly. He remembered the interior of the church, and it came to him that the upper floor of the House would be the same, dark and filthy, and that his uncle slept on a stained mattress in some derelict room.
    But it was his home now. Exhausted, he picked his way through the last of the grass and climbed through a break in the back wall. All he wanted was the safety of his own room. He tramped across the red earth of the car park, and then around to the front garden. And there he stopped short.
    His uncle was sitting on the porch.
    He could have been waiting there just for William, or for no purpose at all, an old man merely watching the afternoon sky. He looked nothing like the wild-haired prophet of the night before. He was wearing work pants and boots, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the gnarled bones of his forearms. Tufts of white hair were visible on his chest, and he cradled a teacup in his hands. William hesitated, knowing that he wasn’t quite safely home after all.
    The old man regarded him levelly.
    ‘You look a bit done in. How far did you go?’
    William lowered his eyes, feeling guilty for no reason he could name.‘The graveyard…’
    ‘Only the graveyard?’ His uncle fixed him with a frown. ‘Something give you a fright, did it?’
    William could feel that his face was flushed. Even worse, his eyes were still swollen with tears. Yes … it was obvious to anyone. The little boy had got lost, and started to cry.
    ‘Hmm.’ The old man drained his cup, then stretched out his bad leg and kneaded the muscles before rising to his feet. ‘Well, never mind. We’ll make a proper start tomorrow.’
    William looked up. ‘A start?’
    ‘It’s a big place, this station. I should have known. No use you blundering about on your own. We’ll go for a drive tomorrow, you and me, and I’ll show you the whole property.’
    William blinked in confusion. He could still feel the itch of grass against his skin, and he could still smell the dead cow’s flesh clinging to bone. He hated Kuran Station, every inch of it.
    But the old man was smiling. ‘At least that way we’ll know what we’re talking about.’

Chapter Nine
    F OR JOHN MCIVOR, BANISHMENT FROM KURAN STATION WAS LIKE an amputation. One moment he had been whole and young and full of hope. The next, a limb had been lopped away and the blood was draining out, leaving him cold and pinched. Elizabeth White had wielded an axe upon his life.
    The last days on the station were almost too painful to remember. The House was stripped bare, the stock was sold off and most of the workers were dismissed. After swift negotiations, the property was bought by a grazing consortium from interstate. The McIvors were homeless. John’s only hope lay in his father. Kuran Station might be lost to them forever, but Daniel had savings, so why shouldn’t they buy some land of their own somewhere else?