Winning Story: The 2025 Marjorie Barnard Short Story Award

Swinging Gates 

Catherine McElroy

From the clothesline, Megan watches a distant cloud of dust. A car approaches along the gravel road that borders the farm. Not many people have cause to pass along this road: a car seen out here is either nearing its destination, or lost. The western sky is aflame, all the colours draining and swirling towards the horizon; the surrounding paddocks are shrouded in a soft light. The vehicle appears to slow as it nears her driveway entrance. For one long breath Megan is certain it will turn. But the car passes by, the sound of tyres hitting gravel receding as it continues south. She exhales, and reaches to feel the clothes on the line; they’ve caught the damp. She turns to go into the house, sees Neil and his boy, Clancy, walking up from the shearing quarters, the two sheepdogs trailing behind. 

It’s Wednesday evening. The dark steals in quickly now; daylight savings has finished. Neil and Clancy prefer their meals early. Megan serves their dinner and sits with them in the sunroom, a glass-enclosed section of the verandah Angus built ten years before when they first bought the place. The boy is ruddy and fair-haired, while Neil is wiry and dark. Clancy stays close to his father. He must barely be fifteen. At dinner he is so quiet, you’d forget he was there, only for the displaced air and the way those dogs watch him, like he is the only real thing around. The two kelpies plant themselves belly down in the open doorway, eyes on their master. 

Megan slices lemons and puts them in the water jug, takes it through to the table. ‘Out!’ she orders, but the dogs don’t take a scrap of notice until the boy gives some signal, then they pick themselves up and lie on the dark lawn.

Neil tells her they will have the shearing finished on Saturday, which means she’ll be able to send the remaining stock on the farm to the saleyards the following week. 

‘It’s all the same to us,’ Neil says, when she asks if he’s okay working the weekend. She agrees; she needs the job done. It makes little sense for them to travel home to Dubbo, over two-hundred kilometres, only to return for a day or two the next week. On Saturday she will be turning thirty-nine. She registers this, then pushes it away. 

The room seems too small for the three of them. With soft fingers, Clancy picks at the sunburn scabs at the hairline on his neck. 

In the shed Clancy is fast and skilful; he does the work of two people, effortlessly leaping onto the boards to pen up, then back to Megan’s side to skirt and roll the wool, sweep up the locks, gather and throw each new fleece. Neil shears. Star, the older dog, rests quietly, head on her outstretched paws. But Jet, Clancy’s young kelpie bitch, shadows her master everywhere, ears sharp whenever she senses he’s on the move. She’s a sleek young thing, still a pup really, like Clancy. Her nerviness irritates Neil, who has words with her if she gets too near while he’s shearing, disturbing the sheep locked in between his knees. 

‘She’s stuck on you,’ Megan says to Clancy, and he half-smiles. With some invisible gesture from him, Jet has retreated to the back of the shed, disconsolate. 

With just one shearer, Megan doesn’t need to be in the shed. She lends a hand skirting, and she does the wool classing, but all the heavy-lifting and running falls to Clancy. The doctor has told her to take it easy; she’ll need to conserve her energy now. But she hates feeling like she’s doing nothing. 

It’s the first time she has hired Neil and Clancy, though they are regular workers in the district — that’s how she found them, asking around town for someone who could come at short notice, help her tie up loose ends. Something cheap and quick. She’s not sure about Neil. She has no complaints about the work. There’s something hard in his eye, though. He’s probably heard things in town. 

‘You’ve got to let it go,’ her sister says, down the phone from Sydney. ‘He’s not coming back. We’re worried about you.’

At smoko on Thursday, Clancy disappears and she knows he’ll be in the shed, checking the pens. Neil has packed the sheep in; he’s worried about the forecast of rain. The shed is small and he’s penned them too tight. Clancy will be moving amongst them, finding space, spreading the sheep out evenly across the shed. Making sure that no weaker ewe has slipped down between the flanks of the other sheep, legs buckling, in danger of being suffocated in the hot press of bodies and fear. 

Angus would have called it stock sense, but she thinks it’s more than that. It’s an uncommon gentleness Clancy has. Megan sees how the animals calm around him. Or does she imagine it, is she searching for things that don’t really exist? Some respite from the relentlessness of farm life, the way things ultimately come down to an exercise of power. 

She doesn’t have it, that touch with animals. It’s not that she doesn’t care. But here, you had to turn away sometimes and pretend not to see. 

‘He’s got a knack,’ she says to Neil, over the smoko table. 

‘Yeah, he’s doing alright.’ Neil says this in a grudging way, and she regrets her words — the need to speak and fill a space. She puts the cup to her lips and blows the scalding brew.

Neil pushes his chair back and stacks her plate on his. As he washes up in the small basin, she watches the clean steady movements of his arms and hands. 

In the afternoon she drives into town, leaves Clancy in charge of sorting and classing the fleeces. In the waiting room, to distract herself, she watches the flatscreen television, high in the corner. ‘Every living thing has a heat signature,’ the American voiceover intones. They have thermal maps and drones; they are searching for signs of life in a barren landscape. Megan doesn’t know where the place is, or where it is meant to be. She can’t follow the camera’s rapid juddering. She closes her eyes. The image of the screen is burned there, bright and hot. 

‘Load of rubbish, that is.’ The thin woman seated beside Megan in the waiting room has spoken. Megan opens her eyes. The woman licks one finger and flicks the page on a copy of New Idea. ‘You believe it? You believe in that?’ She nods at the television.

Megan says ‘maybe.’

The woman looks affronted by such uncertainty. She looks down at the magazine, raises her eyebrows. Nothing more can be said.

She’d only ever had modest ambitions for the place. Perhaps she should have wanted more, dreamed harder. It was no protection against loss, if you kept your desires small and acceptable. She drives around the empty paddocks with Clancy late on Thursday afternoon, once she gets back from her appointment. They bring up the remaining stock — one hundred or so wethers — to the shed for shearing. It’s a mean piece of land: long and thin like a blade. Something you could hurt yourself on. Still, to own something. Something you could hold in your hands. That had been the thing. 

They run the wethers down the driveway and into the house paddock. Clancy jumps out of the passenger seat to pull the mallee gate closed. He points. One of the swinging gates lies propped on the fence, barely visible in the long dry grass. Angus brought it home just before he left twelve months ago, and it had never been hung. He’d brought her two gates that day on the back of the ute. It had been a shared vision: swinging gates at the driveway, and the house paddock. He must have already had in mind to leave, and so the gates, what were they — some apology? And what was the point of them any more?

‘White-washed swinging gates, that was the plan, once,’ she says to Clancy as he gets back into the cabin.

‘Dad says you’re sick,’ Clancy says. So Neil does know, he’s heard it in town. She nods.

‘Bad luck,’ he says. She glances at him, and now he looks stricken at the sound of his words. She doesn’t mind. The words are genuine.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Rotten luck.’ She laughs and Clancy smiles uncertainly.

Megan pulls the ute up near the shearing quarters, and he’s out the door, Jet landing lightly off the tray of the ute and following his heels. 

Funny how it hurts to find the gate, buried there under the matted dry grass. She thought she’d given up on the appearance of things.  

In the night Megan wakes. Her pillow is sodden. She brings her palm up and presses the dampness in surprise. In the dream she’d been so happy. She turns the pillow over and lies on her side, pulls her legs up to her chest.

Friday lunchtime the rainclouds roll over fast. There’s a rush to get the remaining wethers in the shed. Megan finds herself out in the yards with Neil, pulling a facemask from her pocket, flimsy protection from the dust. Jet, the young kelpie, is in the yards too. Like Megan, she’s where she shouldn’t be, she’s in the wrong place. Clancy is in the shed, moving ewes, creating more space. The sheep begin to clatter up the concrete ramp and into the shed, but a bottleneck at the door slows things down. Jet is strong and sticky, too strong. The wethers turn on her and stamp their feet. Neil growls, tells her to keep off. One wether breaks and charges for the back fence, slams into it and rolls on its side, stunned. Jet darts in to bite, and Neil runs at the dog, raising his stick. 

‘Get out of there,’ he roars. She cringes, flees across the yards, leaps the rails. But she doesn’t leap high enough: her hind leg catches in the top rail while the rest of her body sails over. There’s a sickening crunch, and the dog hangs with her leg caught, yelping. 

Megan feels the first fat raindrops fall.

‘Oh you crazy little bitch.’ Neil moves fast to the dog.

The final sheep clatter up the ramp into the shed.

Jet bares her teeth at Neil as he untangles her from the railing, her eyes glazed and wild with pain. ‘Settle,’ he says. She writhes and nips until he lowers her to the ground. She limps to a corner, whimpering.

‘Broken. She’s clean snapped it.’ Neil runs the palm of his hand over his mouth. The rain starts to come down. He looks around. ‘Sheep in?’

They both look to the top of the ramp, where Clancy is shutting the shed door, no expression on his face. He must have seen everything, Megan thinks; he’s seen the whole debacle. 

The dog won’t let anyone near her except Clancy, who squats by her side, a hand in the fur around her collar.

‘You’ll take her to the vet?’ Megan says.

‘No vets,’ Neil says. ‘I haven’t got that kind of money.’

‘Let me take her in. I’ll pay for it.’ She can’t afford it either. But Clancy — her heart is breaking for Clancy with his head bent over the dog; his frozen face.

No one speaks. She can see Neil working his mouth. He doesn’t like it. She’s overstepped.

‘Please let me take her in.’ Megan says again. ‘It will give her a better chance.’

Neil shrugs. ‘It’s up to the boy,’ he says. He walks out of the yards. 

‘Bring her to the car Clancy, hey?’ Megan feels sick. 

Clancy doesn’t move. Jet has stopped whimpering; she shivers in pain, huddled in the corner. After a while, he slowly puts his arms under her body. She doesn’t resist, although it hurts her, Megan can see, the way she shudders. He stands up, cradling the dog.

‘I’ll get the car,’ Megan says.

Clancy shakes his head. ‘No. No vets.’ An echo of his father. He walks slowly away from her.

‘Clancy. She needs a vet.’ 

The boy does not answer, and Megan feels a hopeless rage. 

‘Oh, come on. What is wrong with you?’ she shouts at his departing back. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

That night she lies awake for a long time. She’s been on farms long enough not to be disturbed by this kind of thing. Still, it’s got to her. A storm blows in, there is scattered rain, lightning. She thinks she hears a gunshot, though it might just be the lightning. She worries about the newly shorn stock, but the storm passes, the rain is light, and there’s nothing she can do, anyway. She falls into a restless sleep. 

In the morning the dog is gone. Replaceable. Like all creatures on a farm, Jet is replaceable. But not for Clancy. 

‘Did you kill that pup, Neil?’ she says, during the morning, when Clancy is penning up out the back. 

‘It doesn’t concern you,’ he says. ‘Stick to your own problems.’

She’ll never know. But she wants him gone. As if he reads her mind, he says ‘We’ll have those last sheep done by this arvo. We’ll be on the road then.’

It won’t be too soon, she thinks. There’s an awful ache in her chest for the boy.

Neil and Clancy leave late afternoon. The day has been clear and warm. Megan is in the sunroom when the ute trundles past the house. Neil doesn’t stop, merely raises a hand through the open window. Just one dog chained to the headboard on the back.

She transfers payment to Neil’s account, sits with a lukewarm cup of tea. Inside the house it’s quiet as death. She stands and stretches her back, with a mind to walk down and begin cleaning up the shearing quarters. A flash of white hits her eye when she rounds the corner of the garden shed, and she stops and stares. It’s the gate Clancy spotted in the grass on Thursday, now white-washed and hung at the entrance to the house paddock. And there — she puts her hand up to shield her eyes from the westerly glare — the other new white gate shines down the end of the driveway. Clancy. She shakes her head. Neil must have helped out as well. She walks over and unlatches the gate, feels the effortless glide under her palm as it swings open. It’s oiled and perfect. She wants to sob. 

She refastens the latch, and then leans on the gate, looking down the driveway. She will leave the cleaning of the shearer’s quarters until tomorrow. The sky is softening to apricot-gold; the air is calm. Beyond the fenceline, the gravel road is empty, not a vehicle in sight. And under her feet, after the overnight rain, she hears the small sounds of the earth sighing and opening up.