at Cooper’s Station. In the dormitory, at the line of wash buckets on the verandah, eating at the long trestle table, out at work on the farm, he kept himself to himself. Even at evening playtime when we’d all be kicking a football around, he’d sit there on his own, gazing out at nothing. Of all of us Wes Snarkey was the only loner. But then one day I found out that he wasn’t really a loner at all. He had a friend – a best friend.
Time and again Piggy Bacon had strapped him for wandering away from his work. No one knew where he went and he didn’t tell anyone. One moment he’d be there digging a ditch alongside you, the next he’d be gone. Strapping Wes didn’t stop him from sneaking off, so I knew that whatever he was doing, wherever he was going, must have been really important to him. We were mucking out the pigs one day when I noticed he’d gone off again. I made quite sure Piggy Bacon wasn’t about, and went looking for him. I found him by Big Black Jack’s paddock. I crouched down behind the trunk of a fallen gum tree and watched him. He was standing by the fence, feeding Big Black Jack with some bread crusts, and he was talking to him as if he was a real person, not a horse at all. I was close enough to see everything, and to hear everything too.
Wes was telling him about a horse he’d known in England, in Leeds, a milkman’s horse, a piebald mare she was, and how every morning he’d sit on the wall of the orphanage in the early morning and wait for her to come, how he’d save his bread crusts to feed her, how one day the milkman had let him sit on her, and they’d gone off down the street, how it was the best day of his life. “Will you let me ride you one day, Jack?” he whispered, smoothing his neck. “Would you? I could ride you out of here and we’d never come back.”
I must have shifted then or maybe it was a gust of wind that rustled the pile of dead leaves where I was crouching. Whatever it was, Wes turned around and saw me there. We stared at one another, not speaking. I could see he had tears in his eyes, and on his face too. He brushed them away hurriedly with the back of his hand then ran off before I could say anything. And I was going to say something. I was going to say that I liked Big Black Jack too, that we could be friends now if he wanted.
As it happened it was only a few days later that Wes Snarkey became everyone’s friend, and that was on account of Piggy Bacon and his whip. Down near the creek, which was dried up for most of the year, there was an old tree stump we couldn’t pull out. We’d been digging around it, and trying to pull it out for a whole day. With all of us hauling on the ropes, and even with Piggy Bacon lending a hand himself – and that hardly ever happened – we still couldn’t shift it. So in the end Piggy Bacon harnessed up Big Black Jack and got him to do the job instead. But no matter how hard Jack strained at the ropes, the stump would not budge. Piggy Bacon shouted at him, but it did no good. Big Black Jack was doing all he could, we could see that. Piggy Bacon took a stick to him then, and whacked him again and again. He was bellowing at him.
“Useless bag of bones! Lazy devil! You good-for-nothing, you!” Then Piggy Bacon used his whip on him. In a frenzy of fury and frustration he whipped him till he bled. That was when Wes Snarkey went for Piggy Bacon.
He ran at him, screaming like a wild thing, head-butted him full in the belly, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sprawling in the dust. They rolled over and over with Wes ending up on top, sitting astride him and pounding him with his fists. And we were all cheering then and leaping up and down, until Mrs Bacon came running out from the house and pulled Wes off him, but not before the damage had been done, not before blood had been drawn.
Piggy Bacon was never quite as frightening to us again after that. His temper could still be terrifying, and we still hated him just as much. But we had seen the wicked giant felled. We’d seen his blood. He made Wes pay of course. He made us all pay. We had no playtime for a week, and no bread with our soup for a week either. Wes got twelve strokes of the strap that night and didn’t seem to mind a bit. He sat on his bunk nursing his hand afterwards grinning up at us, looking happy as Larry. He knew he’d made new friends of all of us, and he was happy. So were we. From that day on there was a solidarity among us. We smiled more. We joked more. All this had been Wes Snarkey’s doing. He’d had his revenge and it was sweet revenge for us all. He wasn’t just a friend now, he was our hero too.
Sunday at Cooper’s Station was the only day we didn’t have to work. We sang hymns and psalms, said our prayers and heard sermons instead. They went on all morning, outside the dormitory usually or inside if it was wet – which wasn’t often. Piggy would stand on a box and harangue us with his sermons in between the hymns. Mrs Piggy, as we’d all come to call her, standing dutifully at his side, her dog lying at her feet fast asleep and twitching in his dreams, which broke the monotony of it. It was a welcome distraction and gave us something to nudge one another and wink about.
Mrs Piggy would play the squeezy box to accompany the hymns, and would sing out, her voice surprisingly strong, leading us all, her eyes closed in fervent concentration. This was the only time you would ever see her confident and full of conviction. She seemed to be carried away on the wings of faith, lost absolutely in the spirit of the hymns. Her piping voice rang out passionate with belief. After every hymn, she would cry out at the top of her voice: “Alleluia! Praise the Lord!” Then she’d lower her head and at once shrink back inside her shell, inside the Mrs Piggy we all knew, timid and tired and terrified, as Piggy Bacon launched into yet another thunderous sermon about the saints above and the sinners below, by which he meant us, about devils and hellfire and damnation. Through it all the dog slept blissfully. We just wished we could do the same.
But we weren’t the only ones at the Sunday services. This was the only day the Aboriginal people, who lived in the country round about and who sometimes came to work on the farm – the “black fellows” Piggy called them – were allowed to come near the house. We’d see them often enough, the children mostly, when we were out on the farm, just crouching there in the distance watching us. Or sometimes we’d catch sight of a group of them moving through a heat haze on the horizon, not walking at all, it seemed to me, but rather floating over the ground. If ever they wandered in too close Piggy Bacon would go after them on his horse and drive them away with his whip, calling them all thieves and drunkards. But on Sundays Mrs Piggy invited them in for cakes and prayers. Even then they didn’t like to come too close, but they’d squat down at a safe distance from us to listen to the hymns and sermons.
Afterwards Mrs Piggy would go over to them carrying a tray of cakes and lemonade, and she’d make the sign of the cross on their foreheads and bless them. None of us had seen that many black faces before, just an occasional one passing by in a London street perhaps, and I’d noticed one or two black American GIs in uniform driving around in jeeps back home. These people went barefoot in ragged clothes and their children ran about naked, and they made you feel uncomfortable because they seemed always so still as they squatted there scrutinising you, their dark eyes looking right into yours. They stared. We stared. But we hardly ever spoke. You could never tell what they were thinking. But I liked having them there. They were company. And in this desolate place of wide skies and wide horizons, where we saw so few people, just their presence was a comfort.
Hardly anyone besides them ever came to Cooper’s Station. A truck coming down the long farm track was a real event for us, because it was that rare, maybe one or two a week, that’s all – delivering animal feed, or fencing wire, or seed perhaps. The drivers often sat on the verandah and drank lemonade with Piggy and Mrs Piggy. They had cakes too. We got cakes and lemonade only on Sundays, our big treat of the week, one each with a cherry on the top. We’d line up and Mrs Piggy handed one to each of us. She’d bless us and sign a cross on our forehead too. I liked that. It was the only time she ever touched us. I always took the cherry off my cake, put in my pocket and kept it till last. Sometimes I’d keep it until I was in bed, and I’d lie there letting it melt slowly in my mouth, my hand grasping
