Free Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame by Robin Robertson Page A

the car, and we drove one crisp evening with our guns and spotlights towards the back of beyond. Two-horse towns along the road became one-horse, then semi-horse, until finally no town slipped behind us.
    We arrived next morning at the homestead of a sheep station that underlooked a rusty spine of mountains. A pair of large ears bobbed to the door, as if attached to the wrong farmer. We waited as the old boy scratched at a subdued flannel shirt beneath a dutifully knitted, and just as dutifully eroded woollen waistcoat, while his wife, a kindly wraith in combat boots, squeaked comfortingly in the dark behind him. Between them sat the family dog; a kelpie whose quicksilver eyes confirmed that he’d not only run the farm for the last decade, but was the only one in the house who knew how to work the video.
    Then, carefully re-working the sixteen words that had formed their verbal life since the Great War – sensible, God-given words – the couple bade us welcome with such awkward charm that we felt like rocking them in our arms. We couldn’t, obviously, due to country etiquette, which regarded even handshakes as perilously intimate. No, the protocols of outback conversation demanded that we stand on the veranda, arms folded, and stare at the ground until we were shown to our quarters. The shed wasn’t much, but it had a fireplace, and we were glad of that. It’s much easier to fart competitively, and invent new words for genitalia, when not covered in frost.
    We set out in camouflage later that day, the car a hedgehog of protruding gun barrels. But our plan to rid the world of evil hit a snag. Nothing of any size moved in the ranges, save the odd kangaroo. We would have to travel some distance, and beware of sheep resembling goats.
    All alcohol had been left at the shed, that’s how responsible we were, and we kept our guns unloaded in the car, except for one of the mates, Steve, whose name I should’ve withheld. He shot a hole through the roof as we bumped through a creek bed. I spent the rest of the day dissuading him from firing at parrots and crows.
    Spiders and moths were in danger by the second day. A fur of bean skins upholstered our teeth, and clots of instant coffee in tepid rainwater failed to rinse away the sting of a cold night’s sleep. We fell prey to goatlessness, goatlessness and foxlessness, in a big way. At home our women and peers would be waiting, not for triumphant hauls of game, but for their absence. They would be like that illusory strain of public opinion to which a government loses face if it recalls its troops unbloodied, having sent them primed for war.
    The reckless eddies at death’s edge sucked at us. Alright, at me.
    On the last night we stayed out late, relentlessly spotlighting for so much as a rabbit. To no avail. God’s creatures survived us. We finally turned the car toward the homestead, defeated.
    Then, as we passed through the boundary fence, a pair of eyes flashed in the headlights. Textbook eyes, away in a far paddock. The spotlight burst back into life, weapons were quietly loaded. There it was. Fox. Check the ears. Unmistakable.
    ‘Hang on,’ said a voice of reason. ‘We’re in the homestead grounds …’
    ‘Bang.’ Too late. Eyes and ears dropped behind the grass.
    We dispersed on foot to retrieve the kill. It was around here somewhere. Or maybe it was over there.
    After two hours we still hadn’t found the carcass. The spaces were wide and deceptive, it was dark. The animal may have been there, dead, hidden. Or horribly, unthinkably, it may have had life enough to crawl away and die.
    So here, true mortification being such a personal, slow-dawning emotion, I abandon you to the interactive bosom of the written word for the tale’s dread punch-line. Feel this one in your guts.
    Next morning, the bright-eyed, spiky-eared, reddish-brown farm dog, the farmer’s only friend and colleague – was nowhere to be found.

‘Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold.’