To my father’s great surprise, the natives were not carrying him further into the heart of darkness, but instead were delivering him to the destination he had been so desperately seeking, the wide and forgiving ocean, the glittering Tasman Sea. Setting him upon the sandy beach, they could hardly have imagined the doom that lay in their new future. Perhaps they were expecting to receive a warm embrace or a hearty pat upon the shoulders. Perhaps they were expecting my father to speak in their tongue, to blather on about the nobility of jungle living. Heaven knows what such heathens think. Mark my words, though. They were not expecting what they received.
As night fell on the beach, the Aboriginals set up their camp. They bestowed upon my father the honor of sharing his bed with the evening’s kill, a 15 stone kangaroo. Knowing full well how his moonlit habits manifested themselves among a pack of dingoes, they nevertheless trusted the man not to spoil their food. He was ill, he needed warmth, and the kangaroo’s carcass provided. Do not suffer the fool that tells you a savage’s heart is as black as his countenance. The savage does know compassion and practices it liberally. What he does not practice is common sense. Any man of sound mind should know never to draw the shades on his eyes when a Devonshire rascal is about. Yet each of my father’s kind hosts did just that. They slept while he schemed. Furthermore, they slept while he donned the skin of that mighty roo in the way one dons a cloak at a party dedicated to fancy dress. Finally, they slept while the masquerader calmly bit into their malnourished necks and removed their throats with nothing but his teeth.
Surely such a ghastly deed would evoke the manner of howls acquainted with the lunatic asylum or the efficiently run slaughterhouse? Once again, one must never underestimate my father. From the ages of nine to eleven, to repay debts acquired from hours spent in the smoky bellies of opium dens, my father was employed by a pig farmer who carried the name Fenniwick. My good friend Dickens could not have authored such a shoat. The man possessed the odor of a sulfurous bog, the appetite of a tapeworm and a complexion that would have found leprosy a blessing. He was not one to subscribe to a life of luxury. He spent his money on food, drink and little else, certainly not on instruments of ease for the lowly souls to whom he gave employment. From his vile mouth, one phrase perpetually spewed.
“What use in a blade, if you still got you your knashers?”
By knashers, he clearly was referring to teeth. As for the reference to the blade, it is indeed unfortunate. There is one principal use for a blade on a pig farm, and on Fenniwick’s farm a man made due without the aid of steel. Early on my father perfected the skill referred to as the “snap and grumble.” Simply put, he became an executioner of swine armed with nothing but a powerful jaw, a taught and springy neck, and an unhealthy tolerance for the profane.
Suffice it to say, compared to a sty of squealing pigs, a handful of Aboriginals was barely a chore. So trained was he at his calling that my father managed to remove the throats of each sleeping man before those throats had the chance to cry foul. The only sound to be heard was the gentle tumble of their fluids from the canyons in their necks, a sound not unlike a countryside stream in the springtime, though perhaps not as pleasant. I do pity the poor souls. One only has to imagine their final moments. Before descending into the fiery depths that had always been their destination, they were struck mute, staring into the eyes of a ravenous marsupial, perhaps even wondering if their one legged friend was going to suffer a similar fate. If their naivete teaches us anything, it teaches us this. God is not without a sense of humour.
