Free Pig Boy by J.C. Burke Page B

doing?
    It seems ages before I venture out of the car. The only reason I do is because it’s obvious no one’s home. But the silence is intoxicating and I find myself walking towards a white box in the distance.
    The Pigman lives in a caravan. It’s not the ‘happy family let’s go camping’ type. It’s more the ‘psychotic freak loner, knock at your own risk’ caravan. I’m relieved that I can’t hear screams from the inside.
    I walk a wide circle around the house on wheels yet every little thing makes me stop and look. Closer and closer I find myself until my hand is touching the cloudy glass of a window.
    Now I am standing outside the front door. A tap is dripping into a jumbo-sized dog bowl. The water spills over the rim, making a puddle of brown slush. Next to it sits a saucepan, a lid of humming flies hovering over it. They look like a flying carpet paused for a rest.
    On one side of the caravan, under a canopy of tin sheets, is an outdoor kitchen. It’s dark inside but like the rest of this place it has a strange pull that reels you in.
    Everything is neat and in its place except for a dusting of flour and bits of dough littered along a bench. The Pigman’s been cooking. I lean across and peek under a tea towel. Small triangle-shaped pies peer up at me.
    A table is pushed into the corner, away from the draught. There’s something on it but the thing lies so flat against the surface that the shadows swallow it up. I edge closer and see that it’s as I thought. On the table, camouflaged against a piece of black felt, is a grey rifle.
    It’s a hunting rifle. I know that because Archie had one almost identical. His words come back to me as if he’d just said them: ‘This is a powerful rifle. One shot and you have a clean humane kill.’
    My eyes run up and down the length of the barrel. The smooth grey surface tells you it means business. A clean kill – that’s if you don’t miss. But humane? How could Archie be so stupid?
    â€˜Certain animals are vermin,’ he’d said. ‘Their numbers need to be controlled.’ It was the standard hunter’s excuse.
    â€˜Hah!’ My sudden laugh ricochets off the tin sheets. Strathven is overpopulated with vermin. Their numbers need to be controlled.
    I could pick up that rifle and walk away. It’d make my job easier; easier than using what’s stashed in the wardrobe.

    The tyres slip on the dust. I know I’m driving down the track too fast but I want to get away quickly. The Pigman doesn’t need to know about my visit.
    In a few minutes, the car has zoomed past the turn-off to Pat’s place and is back on the highway, purring along the black bitumen. Now all I need to think about is following the white line to Mereton. There is no one behind me and no one in front. I feel the relief settling into my bones.
    I wind down the window and suck the air into my lungs. At this moment out here on the road I am free.
    I reach into the glove box and take out the old girl’s stash of peanuts and my John Butler CD. I cruise through to Mereton with the music blaring and a mouthful of nuts.
    As I turn into College Street, I slow right down. The Mereton TAFE is a series of apricot-coloured buildings sprawled across a few blocks. I need to stop and grab some enrolment information. That will get Mum off my back and buy me some space. I also urgently need to buy a padlock.
    I drive around and around. It’s impossible to get a park in these big towns. Mereton, like other places this size, is delusional, thinking it’s a mini-city. The Mereton folk have always thought they were better than everyone else because the town houses the local court, a pompous stone building. They think they’re so fancy that a few years ago they banished the industrial area to the south side of the railway line. Even some of the shops that sell second-hand goods had to go with them.
    An