King of pain

While walking to the hide today with an empty pack on my back and the jerry-rigged rifle strapped over one shoulder, I thought about the animal I knew I was going to kill. I thought about its delicate nostrils and soft brown eyes. I wondered if it lay down to sleep at night. I wondered how many years it had lived in this world. I wondered if it still had a mother and father or siblings it was close to. I wondered what thoughts passed through its mind, what its essence was that I was going to destroy.

My feelings were in familiar conflict. I felt some empathy, even a kind of love, for the imagined animal. At the same time, I wanted to kill it and eat its flesh. The eternal dance of life and death, the violence inherent in all existence — these are conundrums I have not yet come to terms with and suspect I never will. What compels us to kill other forms of life, even those we admire, even those we can relate to and see as fellow travelers? And what compels us, periodically, to kill each other in large numbers? Is it an evolutionary imperative or the ultimate form of tribalism? Or just survival of the fittest? And might that simply translate into survival of the deadliest? In a world loaded with nuclear weapons, where does it lead?

In the hot sun, my thoughts wandered back to my first consequential experience of killing. I was probably ten years old. I was with a boy a few years older than me, Duncan Cameron, the farmer’s son who lived across the road from my Uncle Rodger’s place. It was late afternoon on a summer’s day. We were walking among grazing sheep, along the bank of a shallow river, looking for rabbits. Soon enough, a small rabbit appeared. Duncan stopped and handed me his father’s .22 caliber rifle. He told me what to do. I went down on one knee, quivering with excitement, hastily took aim, and pulled the trigger. Unsurprisingly, I missed, but, surprisingly, the rabbit did not run away. On Duncan’s instructions, I fed another bullet into the chamber, took aim again, but this time more carefully. The second bullet found its mark. The rabbit’s small body rose up into the air, a twisted leap of death, then fell, limp, to the ground. In that instant I felt a burning sense of pride and power. Also, a taste of remorse.

Rabbits were introduced to New Zealand by early English settlers. They multiplied rapidly, as rabbits are wont to do, but even more so than usual because they found themselves in a temperate climate with mild winters and an absence of predators. Before long, they were deemed a pest, especially by sheep farmers who wanted all the grass they had sown on previously forested land to be eaten only by sheep. Even at the age of ten, I knew all this.

Rabbit

Still, I liked rabbits, their cute faces, their furry four-legged bodies, the way they hopped about and often ran into their burrow when humans appeared. At just eight or nine years old, I had accompanied my Uncle Rodger, who was keen to shoot as many rabbits as possible. He had been in the navy in the Second World War, even during the invasion of Normandy, and had many stories to tell. It excited me to be with him, but often when he took aim at a rabbit, I secretly hoped he would miss. On that summer afternoon with Duncan Cameron, I killed my first rabbit and entered a new phase of life.

When I arrived at the hide above the pond, not wanting to probe my feelings any further, I took position with a measure of coldness and resignation. The sun behind me was already low in the sky and had turned into a rich orange ball. The air was still. The land before me had a soft pastel hue. I waited for what seemed a long time, observing only birds and insects and occasionally hearing the splash of a jumping fish. A peacefulness settled on the world. Even the flies were quieter and less bothersome than usual, their buzz more lazy.

The first kangaroo that appeared was probably a mother, because right behind her, almost on her tail, came two little ones. Not far behind these three was a very large kangaroo I assumed was the father or at least a male. They paused as a group for a few moments, then separated. The larger of the young ones ventured forth alone, almost to the water’s edge, then took cover behind some scrubby bushes. The mother and the smaller of the young animals cautiously hopped off together, approaching the pool in a more circuitous way that afforded better cover. The presumptive father remained where he was, sitting back on his hind legs. He appeared to be using his short front legs, or arms, to clean or scratch his face, not unlike what a cat, sitting on its haunches, might do after licking its bowl clean. Periodically, he raised his head and looked around, as though to be sure all was well with the others. After five minutes he hopped toward the pool, but only one hop at a time.

I watched for several minutes, fascinated and deeply absorbed. At the same time, the thought that I might shatter the peaceable world I was observing caused me some distress and second thoughts about my mission. Of the four animals, I decided the only one I might be able to bring myself to kill was the larger of the small ones—the one that was still behind brush at the edge of the pool, too obscured for a clean shot. The large kangaroo was now in clear view at the water’s edge. If all went well with the gun, there was a good chance I could put a bullet in his head, but something in my gut or heart prevented me from doing this. Perhaps it was because I saw him as a father who must have experience and wisdom unknown to me. The younger animal, once it emerged from behind the bush seemed a more fitting victim.

Then random chance or just dumb luck intervened. Another small animal that I guessed to be a wallaby came jumping out of the brushland, all caution to the wind. It came directly to the water. Without thought or hesitation, I took aim and very lightly squeezed the hair trigger. To my relief, the rifle did what it was supposed to do. The animal went down but managed to move away. I fired again, hitting it, I think, a second time. It still moved but very slowly.

I grabbed my daypack and ran downstream beyond the pool to a place where I could cross in shallow water. I worked my way back to where the dead or wounded animal should be. I searched the shrubby ground without success. The sun was almost gone. The colors of the vegetation were grayer, more subdued. Trees and bushes were softer in shape, less distinct.

Suddenly, I heard movement not far away. Scanning the high grass around me, I made out the shape of a small kangaroo or wallaby. I assumed it was the one I had shot across the pool and that it was wounded but still alive. In the low light, I raised the rifle and fired. The animal went down immediately. It was dead when I reached it. Taking a quick look, I could see no evidence of prior wounds. Was there another wounded or dead animal nearby?

Dragging the carcass with me, I scanned the ground for a few minutes, but it was getting too dark to see clearly. It was time to head back to camp. I leaned the rifle against a tree, took off my empty pack, and crammed the dead animal into it. Then, when I reached to pick up the rifle, I saw another animal, a few feet away, lying still on the ground. Even in the low light I could make out a bullet hole in its chest. It was dead. There was no room for this second animal inside the daypack, so I lashed it to the outside with a piece of rope.

With the rifle in one hand, a small flashlight in the other, and a bloody pack on my back, I set off for camp at a fast pace. The idea of bedding down for the night near the big pool did not appeal to me. I wanted to get away from that place and the trauma and violence I had brought to it.

Within minutes, the half-light was gone. I moved like a man possessed, bursting through low brushland, clambering over rocks, descending into dry creek beds, crashing through tangles of vine. More than once, I tripped, stumbled, almost went down but somehow managed to stay on my feet. Oblivious to danger, an uncommon speed and purpose urged me along. My face was dripping with sweat. My torso, too, was soaked. I did not care. I felt intensely alive. In a shallow side gorge, I dislodged a boulder, causing a small rockslide that could have brought me down. Somehow, I leapt through the tumbling rocks. A wild momentum carried me.

Halfway back to camp, I stopped to catch my breath and make some quick adjustments. I slung the rifle over the pack on my back and gripped the small flashlight in my mouth. This freed my arms and hands to break any falls. Though scratched and bruised and peppered with burs, my body surged and knew a great intensity. For some reason, I do not know why, perhaps the movement and rhyming of the words, perhaps because I had been reading him a few days earlier, a verse from one of Algernon Swinburne’s poems kept running through my mind:

If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain
We’d hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were Queen of pleasure
And I were King of pain.

After the descent to my camp on the gorge floor, I set the rifle against a rock, unhitched the backpack, and removed the flashlight from my mouth. Hastily, I shed boots and clothes. Then, without hesitation, I dived, mouth wide open, laughing out loud, into the blackness of the pool so that the water at once ran into me and around me, cooling my body and quenching my thirst and desire.

Under the light of the kerosene lantern, I worked late into the night, gutting and skinning the animals and cutting strips of meat for salting and drying. When done with all that, I lit a fire and put on a billy of water to make tea. Then I fried some thin pieces of flesh for just a few minutes on each side and hastily devoured them with sprinklings of salt. They were good.

At last, fatigue overcame me, and I felt a strong urge to lie down. The moon’s rays slanted into the gorge and a gentle breeze wafted over me as I fell into a deep sleep, nourished and satisfied in an elemental way.

Decades before New Zealand-born Keith Stewart landed on his 88-acre farm in Orange County, NY, where he would grow organic vegetables and herbs for 34 years and teach up-and-coming farmers, his personal pilgrimage included a Thoreauvian stretch living solo in the sparsely populated Australian outback. Now retired from farming, Stewart has been cleaning up a roughly scribbled journal he kept during that formative stretch in 1972, thinking he might turn it into a book. Meanwhile, his wife, artist Flavia Bacarella, is working on woodcuts to accompany the journal. They have invited Dirt to publish excerpts of ‘The Alone Trip’ serially. This is the sixth part.