Vernon opened the door and the kid fell onto the road, stirring dust, jarring his arm. He didn’t speak. Maybe he was unconscious. ‘Mate?’ Vernon asked, and flipped him onto his back. ‘You alright?’

The kid didn’t answer, holding his arm to his chest, moaning.

‘Let me look, mate.’

Vernon tried to move the arm but found it gripped there with a strength he had not guessed at in the kid. He tried to coax it and was reminded of the war. The kid held it steady.

From his position he looked at the roo. Its legs had slowed, but it was still grunting, breathing hurried like the kid. It would be in pain.

‘Bloody hell,’ Vernon said. ‘Bloody hell.’

He scratched his head and sat and thought on his options. He looked at the roo again and walked round and opened the back door of the car and found his shotgun. He brought it out, looked around, looked at the kid. Levering down the barrel, he upended it so the two shells fell into his hands. He reloaded them.

The roo in its glassiness regarding him with all of its life and the life of its ancestors and all that it had been and all that it might have become. Vernon put the shotgun right on that bulging eye and thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger. The animal bucked as the pellets sprayed into its skull and all that it had been and all it would become became a sodden mess, soaking the dirt. The sound so loud in the still night Vernon thought he’d woken the dead. The kangaroo’s skull was no longer there. Just bits of bone, some flesh, in a strange mosaic. Its chest still moved. The horrifying sound of its windpipe still sucking air. Vernon swallowed. Limped to the car and threw the gun on the boxes in the back.

He returned to the kid and sat down on the track. ‘You right, mate?’

Still nothing.

‘You reckon the car’ll go?’ He studied it. The headlights were off. One was smashed in by the look of it, but the engine was still idling. For a moment he just watched the breeze waft the leaves. He shook his head, scolded himself and hobbled to the car.

Sinking into the vinyl of the driver’s seat, he put the car in gear. It groaned forwards; the sound, briefly, of scraping metal. There was something stuck beneath one of the front tyres. It scraped over the road as it travelled, but soon came free. He flicked the headlights on and was surprised to find the left one still functional. The dirt road before him now white-washed with dark shadows and nothing else behind the trees on either side. He put the car in neutral and walked back to Sidney in the dirt.

The kid struggled. Vernon levered him up by the crook of the arms and Sidney groaned and kicked weakly, still gripping his arm to his chest. He was a big heavy dangling weight to drag around to the passenger seat. Again, the war. Too old, damn it, too old. The small of Vernon’s back was dogging him and his bad knees grew more and more pained. It took him some time, and all the while he was worried that beneath the kid’s shirt there was a cavity of open wounds, a beating heart. Because if this kid was dead then so was Vernon and so was his family, and beyond that he had done something awful, hurting this kid. Bloody hell. He stopped and stretched his back, a slight relief from the weight. Don’t worry about the next bloody thing during the thing you should be worrying about. Worry about the next thing next.