About the author
Ben Rumsey was born in Perth in 1986. He is currently studying a writing and advertising double major at university in between chasing never-ending distractions, couped up in a small house in Coolbinia that he rents off his girlfriend.
Shotgun Handle Beat
By Ben Rumsey
Copyright 2012 Ben Rumsey
You know who I am. Everybody knows me. Or at least, you think you do. I have no voice in this world. I am spoken for by you.
You can call me Max. My life started on a farm in Mississippi, one of five children born to two black parents who were bought at a young age by a man I knew only as Boss. During the day he would take them to the fields and put them to work, at night chain them up so they couldn’t escape. Not that they would have. They always did as they were told.
Without them around, in a way we were raised by the fields – a seemingly endless playground of grassy scents and mellow sunshine, rolling hills like swooping birds. You could waste a day and not even know it, run around til you collapsed on your back in the long grass and be soothed into a glorious coma by the sound of humming bugs and talking crickets – the sweet freedom of childhood. But it had to come to an end. We were being groomed as workers too.
Once we were old enough, Boss put us up for sale. Including the others, there were eleven of us locked up in the old machinery shed that day, sitting in dull light, waiting. It was exciting in a way, but still my stomach churned. In the afternoon the prospective buyers filed in through the sliding wooden door, the boss standing guard as they approached and inspected us. It was the firmness of their hands that made me feel the most uncomfortable. If I hadn’t have wet myself, maybe I would have been chosen early. Instead, I watched as one by one the other children were led out the door, cash bundles exchanging hands til there was no one left but me. I sat there all alone for two days locked up in that that shed – a reject, unwanted goods. It hurt thinking about it, which I did a lot of, sulking in my solitude.
By the time the silhouette of a large, burly man appeared in the doorway, I felt so sorry for myself that I was open to any taker. He didn’t size me up like the rest. He simply walked over and looked at me, said something like, ‘Yep, he’ll do fine,’ and that was it. Thrown in the back seat of his pick-up truck and carted away. At least I was wanted, I thought. I remember turning backwards, watching out the rear window as the fields slowly disappeared from sight.
I sat on that seat for days, watching as the scenery evolved from swamps to desert to mountains. I slept a lot. It was night time when the truck finally stopped and the man opened the back door to let me out. The first thing I noticed was seeing my moonlit breath, followed by the sting of cold. The man headed to a weak light coming from a cabin porch nearby. I waited in hesitation. He got about ten paces away before he stopped, turned around, and looked back at me with an expressionless face. ‘C’mon’, he went, and gestured with his head toward the door. I didn’t think twice.
I was directed to a small room tucked away at the back of the cabin, wedged between the laundry and the boiler room. It was empty, but for a rusting bucket of water and a frayed towel pushed up against the far corner. The man threw an old blanket on the ground and shut the door behind me, the hollow sound of a key turning a lock initiating the night’s silence. I didn’t protest. That’s how it goes. I was his now.
I felt so small on that scraggly wooded property – it made the fields seem more like a suburban park. The man’s old log cabin sat amongst an industrial yard of rusting cars and broken glass, tucked away amongst scattered pines and fallen needles, stretching for miles. Out there you could scream at the top of your lungs and nobody would hear. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. In winter it gets cold, so cold you can’t think. The woods tower over you like shadows of strange men. I would stay awake at night, peering through the small window in my room, making sure they wouldn’t creep up on me.
It took a while to understand my role. I naturally assumed I would be put to work. But there were no fields out there. For the first weeks I was left alone, locked in my room. I barely saw the man, other than when he would slide in a meal for me. I came to assume I was to have no role at all, save a strange distant sort of friendship with him. Once I worked out his character I felt somewhat comfortable. He was obviously lonely. It was also clearly in his nature to be cold and evasive, but he did what it took to build my trust in his own sort of way. He used to take a van out deep into the woods a lot. I’d usually be left behind, although every now and then he’d allow me to come along. I found out he was visiting an old, collapsed shed, abandoned years ago, where he would fossick about for interesting things. Once he found a gold bracelet. Mostly he brought back sheets of tin.
Gradually he softened. Sometimes when he brought in my dinner he would ‘accidently’ leave the door ajar and I would slip out, cautiously, and slink to the foot of the open wood fire. It was a rare treat on those cold nights. I would just sit there quietly, while he filled the air with cigarette smoke. I knew not to push my luck. He had an easily-irritated temperament. The bellowing of his voice was enough to scare me back into my room. Although it was no heaven, I felt safe under his care. He was hard-nosed and unsympathetic, but he was all I had. And the more the days fell away, the more a bond grew out of an understanding. I trusted him. I loved him.
Maybe it was all part of a plan. It seemed to come out of the blue, like one day he just lost all self control. He began paying me visits every day, the door swung open, eyes fixed on me curled up in the corner, bottle of bourbon in one hand, shotgun in the other, and just stand there, staring me down in silence. At first I thought I was doing something wrong. But I wasn’t. He’d approach me slowly, swinging the gun by his side. He would hold it by the barrel, cursing and yelling in his coarse, gravel-throat voice, eyes shadowed by a heaving brow, lips dry and blistered amidst a smear of greying stubble. I would cower in a heap on my rag bed, often damp with urine and vomit from the days before. ‘Come here you little shit,’ he would spit, and I’d be yanked away by the hair on my head, beaten with the gun’s solid handle, the wood forced hard into my chest and swung into my cheeks til my screaming dulled to a gentle sob. In the early days I used to try escape for the door. But the echo of the gun firing taught me better – a beating with the gun was better than a bullet to the head. And so it went on. Each day, mist fogging the windows, the smell of chimney smoke lingering in the air, I would hear the stomp of his old leather boots walking down the corridor. And I would wait for the shotgun handle beat.
The more it continued, the more I came to accept it as normal. I reasoned it as his way of keeping me in line, stamping his authority on me. That’s the arrangement when you get sold as a child. You do what the man tells you to do. Don’t react, try to please him. He put a roof over my head, didn’t he? So I put on a brave face and took my punishment, made it a goal not to let the water bucket empty.
The months passed, my body slowly wasting away, I realised I would surely die in that room. I began slowly scratching into the cracked floorboards with my nails, splinter by splinter.
I’ll never forget the sound of his battered pick-up truck grumbling and choking in the cold, then fading as it disappeared down the long dirt track that lead out of the property. It was like being immersed in a warm bath. I knew that the man only ever left when he needed supplies in town. If he left in the morning he usually wouldn’t be back before dark, it was that far. It was my opportunity to get out. I slid through my hole in the floor and crawled along the damp dirt beneath to a break in the wooden slats that line the porch on the high end of the cabin, straining as I forced myself through. The freshness of the cold air burnt my lungs. I hadn’t felt it in months.
I began to live f
or that opportunity. It was never my intention to escape. I knew he would find me. And probably kill me. I just wanted to be outside again. And I needed to eat. Something. Anything. Even if it meant rummaging through his rubbish bin. It was also a way of salvaging my sanity. Sometimes I would venture out into the woods. Deep down I knew there was nothing out there. If you walked until the yard was out of sight, it felt like standing between two mirrors. But I liked the silence. And I liked the light. Some days the sun would crack through the cloud and mist, splash on my face, and just for a moment, I felt safe. My favourite thing to do was play in the old Kombi wreck. It had no wheels and smelled of wet carpet, speckled with tiny bits of windshield. But I used to push against the gas pedals and watch them suddenly spring back. I always climbed in through a hole that had rusted through the passenger seat foot-well. It used to scrape my back trying to squeeze under. Then one day I stumbled against the door and it popped open, spilling me out onto the ground, much to my surprise. From then on, I always made sure I was careful not to let it close.
Things went on like this for months, the same process playing on loop – I would take my daily beatings for weeks, patiently waiting ‘til the man left the property again, then sneak out during the day, be back by night, return to my torture room. But as the strangle of winter began to take hold, the opportunities became few and far between. He would stock up on canned food, meaning he could survive on the property for months on end. Eventually, it took its toll. My already thin body shrank like a vacuum-packed quail, skin stretched tight over fragile bones, my sorry eyes sunk deep into their sockets. I was dying.
I had collapsed in the dank corner of the room that night. The man found my limp body the next day, striking me with his shotgun when I failed to respond. I regained consciousness in the back of his pick-up truck. As I opened my eyes, I remember seeing the streak of warm glowing light passing across the rear window. It felt strange. I had almost forgotten there was an outside world. I tried to raise my head. The man was driving, muttering to himself like a chainsaw on idle. I kept my eye on him as I slowly lifted my tender body, careful not to make any sound. Peering over the rear window, I could see it was streetlights we were passing. We weren’t in town. But we were close. As we approached a bridge that passed over what looked like a dark flowing river below, I could see the bright lights of the town ahead. For all his horrendous faults, the man was going to save my life.
Then the truck stopped.
It must have been late, or early in the morning, because there were no cars on the road. The man opened the rear door and an icy wind bustled in, displacing the warmth inside. His solid arm reached under my shoulders and lifted me up. The way he handled me was curious – firm, but somehow gentle. I didn’t resist. Not that I could have anyway. I was pressed up against his chest, staring back at the truck as he walked, the rhythm of his steps comforting me like a lullaby. He stopped, a disruption to the beat. It woke me. I looked around, past the truck, and saw the white-painted bridge railings. What was he doing? I felt cold air rushing against my body. For three seconds or more. Then my senses fell silent to the impact of rocks and dirt as my body pounded against them.
I didn’t die that night. Some would call it a miracle, others fate. I was discovered in the morning by two early-rise hikers, lying in a crumpled heap amongst the dark rocks of that riverbed. They took me to hospital where I spent months in rehabilitation being treated for critical injuries, including multiple broken bones, a crushed liver and internal bleeding. That was on top of a long process of attempts to return me to a normal weight after being diagnosed with severe malnutrition.
I often replay that night over and over in my head. Why the bridge? If he wanted to kill me he could have just shot me on the property. Or was he taking me to the doctors? They would have been closed at that hour. I don’t know.
I’m currently being looked after in foster care, but I have no permanent place to call home. I get moved round from place to place – they take it in stints. Although I’m told I am loved by those who care for me, I feel unwanted. I shouldn’t though, right? It’s in my nature to put my trust in people. I would do anything for you if I had the chance. My loyalty knows no boundaries. And you know it, don’t you? You can take advantage of me, abuse me, swear at me, neglect me, grind me into the dirt. Even try to kill me. And I’ll forgive you. That’s what I do right? I’m man’s best friend.
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Thank you for reading.
You can contact me at
[email protected] Take it easy
Ben Rumsey