Short story: The Bullpit, by Laura Borrowdale

2026-03-06 - 17:07

Edward watched his brother and sister as they ran across the paddock. They’d gone to play war. From where he sat on the veranda steps, he could see their battleground, the bullpit. His mother said that it used to be a quarry, but his parents used it now as a place to graze the steers before they got sold. The bullpit was dark and shadowy, separated from the golden summer grass that filled the rest of the large field by a dense pine plantation and a fence. It had been dug out for shingle by the previous owners, leaving a deep earthy hole in the ground. That was a long time ago though, and the steep sides of the quarry had slipped down and grown into grassy slopes the children could roll down. It seemed very far away. As Lucy and Jim ran side by side, the wooden rifles on their shoulders lifted and bounced with the movement. Lucy’s ponytail swished in an arc behind her, flicking up against the point of the gun. Edward tucked his hands between his knees. The others got further and further away, and he was by himself. He stood up, his feet slipping inside his hand-me-down gumboots. He turned to look back inside the house where his mother was resting. She’d be sleeping for a while. He could just go down to the edge. He didn’t have to go into the pit. Maybe they’d come out to play with him. He set off across the lawn. He gripped the insides of his boots with his toes and swung his arms. He was brave. Lucy and Jim were still visible, small figures in the distance. Soon they would be swallowed up by the pine trees, but not yet. As the lawn turned into paddock, the stalks of grass began to reach over the tops of his boots to tickle his bare legs. Edward knelt to scratch one of his calves, and to hook out a grass seed that had slipped inside a boot. When he looked up, Jim was straddling one of the posts of the boundary fence, and Lucy was bent over, wedging herself between the invisible strands of fencing wire, her sun-bleached hair spilling forwards towards the ground. “Hey,” he called out. “Hey guys, wait for me.” He started to run, but his boots slapped around his ankles and he thought they’d fall off. He looked around anxiously, then hobbled forward, walking as fast as he could. Lucy and Jim had disappeared. They were somewhere amongst the trees, which got increasingly bigger as he got closer. Edward could make out details in the shadows now; the reaching branches above the fence, the long grey wires, the black and white coat of a magpie roosting high above him, the pine needles. He came to the edge of the sunlight. Behind him, the paddock glowed in the afternoon heat, but he faced a no man’s land of shadow. He took a step, then another. He felt his scalp cool as he moved forward, leaving the sun behind. He shuffled forward up to the fence. The top wire fizzed quietly. It was hot. He’d grabbed an electric wire before, when he leapt across a water race and lost his balance. He was frozen, his hands unable to let go for the second it took for the pulse of electricity to stop. He collapsed backwards into the water. He wasn’t going to try it again now. “Guys?” Edward said. “Guys?” There was nothing except a magpie’s rolling call. The ground by the fence was covered with fallen pine needles, rust red and bone dry. Edward shifted his weight and listened to them snap under the soles of his boots. He turned around to see his house, its white weatherboards brilliant in the dusty paddocks. What now? Edward put one hand on the third wire down. He pushed on it and a gap opened up that he could fit through. He put one leg through, careful to avoid the electric lines; the low one for sheep, the high one for cattle. He slipped into the bullpit. He stood at the edge of the trees, separated from the house, and his mother, by the electric fence. Somewhere beyond the trees was the huge hollow that made up the bullpit. Somewhere inside the hollow were the steers. Edward had seen them close up in the cattle pens. His mother had taken his hand and put it against the wet warm flank of one of the cornered animals. He felt the muscles, bunched and heaving against the metal bars as the steer surged past him, and he dreamt about it that night, soaking his bed in sweat. It hadn’t helped when Jim told him how he had been chased by a cattle beast last summer. Jim, who could walk along the top rail of the horse yard and fish for worms in the water troughs with his bare hands. Even Jim admitted he had been scared. “Of course,” Jim said, “I was wearing red at the time, but the bull came at me so fast, its head down and eyes rolling, that I barely got through the fence in time. Lucky I’m such a fast runner,” Jim added. “If it had been you in the red t-shirt, Mum would’ve had to bury your gumboots, cos that’s all they would’ve found.” Edward knew he was telling the truth. There was a long shriek, then laughter filtered through the trees. The game had started; he wondered who was winning. He moved towards the sounds of Lucy and Jim shooting at each other, and then stopped. It was dark under the pines, and he didn’t know where the steers might be. He edged through the trees. On the other side, he looked out over the bullpit, a bowlful of yellow grasses and gorse. Although the edges of the pit had slipped over time, they were still steep. On the far slope, Lucy ran up on an angle, positioning herself behind a bush. Edward wasn’t sure how to get her attention without giving her away, so he stayed still, waiting. The tree beside him was old, and when he leant against it he saw a hole in the trunk. Inside the tree, drips of amber sap hung like stalactites, or ran down the sides. He reached in a finger to touch. The drips were smooth and he snapped one off. He lifted it to his nose. It smelt spicy and clean. He wondered what it would taste like. There was a rustle behind him, and Edward turned, thinking he’d see Jim. Instead, a steer blinked back at him. He was close enough to see the curl of hair between its nubs of horn, and the wet cracks of its nose. It breathed, snorting the air out, and shifted its weight from left to right. “Bang!” The steer bellowed and spun awkwardly away on its hind legs. It launched itself down into the pit, its legs splaying out as it went. Edward leapt to the side to get out of its way, his heart racing, but as he stumbled away he lost his footing and fell down the shallow slope into the bullpit after the steer. Above him, Jim shot his wooden rifle at the animal for a second time. “Bang!” Edward lay on his back. The breath had been knocked out of him, and his panting was loud inside his head. Above him, white clouds tumbled past each other and the seed heads of the grass shook. “Hey, Edward! You okay?” Jim’s voice was loud. Edward turned his head in the grass to see Jim. He was standing up from his crouched hiding place, and Lucy, seeing that the game was at least paused, stood clear of the bush she had been hiding behind. “I’m okay,” Edward said, sitting up in the grass. “Hey,” called Jim, “we could play with him. We could get Edward.” Edward felt his muscles tense up. “Nah, he’s no fun, he won’t do it properly,” said Lucy. “Oh, come on, we can stalk up on him.” Jim ducked back down again. Edward looked around. They had both disappeared. He got to his feet, stumbling in his boots. The bullpit was quiet, just the grass rustling and the occasional magpie call. “We’re coming, Edward. We’re gonna get you.” Lucy’s voice was shrill, calling out from behind him, but when he spun around, only the grey bushes waved back. He stood still in the bullpit. The sun had cleared the trees and the long grass was crushed and bent where the steer had crashed through as it ran away from Jim. Edward followed the threshed tracks to the far slope. Above him, Lucy’s hiding place stood, prickly and grey. Pulling at the grasses for grip, he climbed up to the bush and crouched beneath it, the thorns digging into his scalp. He clutched his green stained hands in his lap. His bladder felt huge and full. He knew that at any minute something would erupt from the quiet and get him. He hoped it wasn’t the steer. He waited. “Bang! Bang! Bang!” Jim screamed above him, his quarry driven into the ground. Lucy and Jim danced in a circle, whooping with joy. Jim hit his open mouth with the flat of his hand, the sound compressing and expanding, while Lucy pointed her rifle close to Edward’s ear, recoiling it in time with her screams. “Bang!” Lucy shouted again. “We got you, scaredy-cat. You stupid baby, hiding in the dumb bush.” The rifle slipped out of her hand and shot forward, buffeting Edward behind the ear. He was knocked sideways, and something trickled down his neck. His brother and sister stopped their dance. Lucy bent over to pick up the wooden gun. “Look, Lucy, you made him bleed. You’re gonna be in so much trouble. You should apologise,” Jim said. “He’s not bleeding, are you, Eddie?” Lucy looked at Edward, daring him to say otherwise. “And anyway, it was an accident.” “Yeah, but as if Mum’ll believe you. Now he’s gonna cry. Poor Eddie.” “So? I don’t care. He’s just a baby. I told you it wouldn’t be fun chasing him.” Lucy’s face was red. Edward felt the tears squeeze out of his eyes. He could hear the blood in his head push against his sore ear. He bit his lip but he knew there was no chance they’d let him play next time, even if he didn’t cry. “Anyway,” Lucy said, “I’m hungry. I’m going home. You stay here and play with the baby, if you want to.” She walked off, thrashing the bushes ahead of her with her rifle. Jim looked at Edward, bloody and dazed. He took a step towards Edward, then looked at his big sister and followed the wake of broken branches and flat grass out of the bullpit. Edward sat and watched them go. He took a deep breath, and prodded his fingers into the egg shaped lump behind his ear. A tear inched down his cheek, and he pushed it away with a grubby palm. He wondered whether his mother was awake yet, and if she was wondering where he was. Stupid Jim. Bet he’d been lying about the steer. He wasn’t even that much faster at running than Edward. He got to his feet and started walking. Near the fenceline, Edward saw the steer again. It stood in the shade of the trees, swinging its tail from side to side. He walked up to it slowly, making sure he kept the fence between him and the steer, just in case. Holding his hand out like his mother had taught him to do with dogs, palm down, Edward waited for the steer to smell him. It just looked at him, then took a half-step back. Edward was glad he was wearing his blue shirt. He moved forward, his heart beating just a little faster, to try again. What if it turned on him? He got closer, keeping his hand out. The steer snorted, puffing small flecks of wetness against his skin. Stationary for a moment, it looked at Edward, but when he lifted his hand to touch it, the steer flinched away and shuffled backwards. Edward watched it turn and amble away. High above him, the sky was ringed with the tips of pines reaching towards each other, and somewhere, underneath them, was the steer. Edward kept walking. Taken with kind permission from the short story collection Dead Ends by Laura Borrowdale (Tender Press, $30), available in bookstores nationwide. Commentary by Airini Beautrais: “There is discord between siblings, parents and children, and romantic partners, the threat of AI artbots, annoying ghosts, and the menace of authoritarianism. This collection is filled with what ifs—what if you had to physically lose a limb to be allowed a divorce? What if a potter puts too much of her soul into her work? What if a pregnant woman’s thoughts literally shape her baby?”