‘Righto then,’ she said and watched him swagger off towards the crowd clustering below the agents.
‘What is it about blokes wearing their pants halfway down their bum?’ she muttered to Dags who panted by her side, his big mouth stretched in a wide kelpie smile.
By the end of the sale, as the sun sunk below the peppertrees and the cockatoos cried out from the powerlines, Bec had a cold beer in hand and a job as a jillaroo on Blue Plains Station. It was part of a chain of properties owned by Australian Rural Company, better known by the workers as AR. Blue Plains was 160 000 acres of mostly downs country, which historically ran merino sheep. In more recent years the company had diversified, introducing minimum tillage grain cropping and eight hundred head of breeder cows. Alastair said the season had been good for the past few years so stock numbers had been lifted and 30 000 sheep now grazed the flat plains and crackling yellow wheat stubble. He leaned against the side of the agent’s ute and swigged on his beer.
‘You could be just the girl for the job of preparing the rams for show season. They’ve been downsizing the showing, so we’ve done away with our full stud crew. But the company policy has been to support a few key shows. We’ll be needing someone when the season gets underway.’
While Bec was a bit wary of stuffy sheep shows and the tweed-coat cronies they attracted, she nodded keenly at Alastair’s words. She thought back to the infertile stud ram her dad had bought and the hairy, up-himself man who’d bred it.
‘Sure!’ she smiled. ‘Great, Mr Gibson. That’d be great!’ Bec knew they often ran sheepdog trials at the sheep and wool shows. It could mean she might be able to give her dogs a run in the trials when she wasn’t handling the rams.
She raised the stubby in Rodney and Alastair’s direction. ‘Thanks for the shout and thanks for the job.’
‘Looks like you owe me one of your pups when they’re born,’ Rodney winked.
‘Looks like I do,’ Bec said as she clinked her stubby against his. Then they all drank. Ice-cold liquid ran down her throat. It was the best beer Rebecca had tasted yet.
CHAPTER 4
Tom pushed the door of the pub open and Mick strode into the throng of people. From behind the bar a pot-gutted man threw up his hands.
‘Woo-hoo! The Saunders boys are in town! Look out girls!’
The steady volume of the crowd dropped a little as heads turned to see. From the corner of the pub a group of girls leaned forward and whispered excitedly to each other behind cupped hands. Their eyes ran over Mick. He was much taller than Tom. He held his shoulders square and his head high. Stubble lined his strong jaw and his blue eyes glinted beneath dark lashes as he glanced about the pub, his gaze remaining on the table of young female drinkers. He continued on to the bar through the crowd.
The girls’ eyes followed the shorter brother. He too was handsome. But there was something less confident about him. An aloofness in his large brown eyes. Despite that, they were the best-looking boys in the bar.
As the Saunders brothers made their way through the crowd, some of the local lads let out a cheer and some slapped Mick on the shoulder or held out their hands to him. Tom followed quietly behind.
‘Dirty Weatherby! How would you be?’ said Mick as he rolled up his shirt sleeves and leaned his strong arms on the bar. Mick pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans while Tom sat on the barstool he always sat on during their Friday night drinking sessions.
‘The usual, thanks Dirty,’ said Mick pulling out a $20 note.
As Dirty pressed a glass up to the pourer on the Bundaberg Rum bottle he called over his shoulder. ‘Any word from your little sister?’
‘Nope. None. She could be anywhere,’ said Mick.
‘What’s your dad doing about it?’
‘Not much he can do,’ Mick shrugged.
‘Well, tell ’im she’s safe and sound, no thanks to him.’ Dirty pulled down a postcard which had been stuck on the brown tiles that lined the bar. He slid it towards them. ‘This came last week.’ He walked away shaking his head.
Tom grabbed at the card. It was a photo of a large saggy-skinned Brahman bull. He turned it over and noticed the northern postmark. Mick read Rebecca’s writing over Tom’s shoulder – about the drive north, about the dogs and the promise of a new job out west.
‘Geez! She’s gone way up the woop woop!’ said Mick.
She’d written a p.s. Tom turned the card sideways and squinted to read it. His full lips closed in a thin line. A muscle tensed in his jaw as he read the tiny writing.
‘If you see Tom and Mick, give them my love and tell them I’ll send them my new address when I’ve settled in.’
Tom downed his rum and sat a $5 note on the sodden bar mat.
‘Hiiiii!’ He heard a girl’s high-pitched voice behind him. He turned to see Angela Carmichael standing there in a crop-top, looking up at Mick.
‘G’day, Ang,’ said Mick, flashing a charming smile.
‘Mick.’ She kissed him on the cheek just above the dimple she particularly adored. She turned to Tom.
‘Hi.’
‘G’day,’ said Tom as he sipped his rum and coke.
She stepped aside for a moment to let her friend near.
‘Mick. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This is Trudy Gilmore. She’s just started as teacher at the school.’ Angela pushed Trudy in front of Mick.
He took her slim pale hand and kissed it lightly, looking into her eyes and then winking. She smiled a smile that Mick had learned to recognise in women. He watched as she tucked her straight hair behind rather sticky-out ears.
‘Hello, Michael,’ she said.
Tom turned back towards the bar. Friday night had got underway pretty much as usual, except this time Rebecca wasn’t here to keep him company.
From the edge of the darkness Tom looked back at the lights of the Dingo Trapper Hotel as he pissed unsteadily in a bush. It was a sunken old pub tucked in a sharp meandering bend carved by the Rebecca River. Mick liked to call it the Fur Trapper – over the years he’d picked up most of the local girls there. When a local girl wasn’t about, he’d set his targets on the backpackers who occasionally wandered in during boozy, beer-hazed nights. Big-boned Swedish girls or smooth-skinned English girls, all wanting a large serve of Aussie male. Mick played the part so well.
Tom saw Mick dancing now with the skinny girl. They were framed by the window and a patch of light shone into the darkness on the grass outside. Tom watched her hair flying and her mouth smiling as she spun in Mick’s arms. This teacher, this girl, thought Tom, seemed different to the others. She had an agenda. Tom sighed, zipped up his fly and walked back into the pub.
A Garth Brooks song blared from the glowing jukebox and the floor shook. Mick and Trudy were dancing close, pelvis to pelvis. Mick stooped now and then to kiss her on the neck.
Tom sat back on his barstool and stacked up his change again into a neat pile.
‘She’s too skinny for him, that one,’ said Dirty, nodding towards Trudy. ‘That country your old man’s got is rough … if your brother’s looking for a wife to take on that kind of country, he wants a good strong woman who can fence and fornicate. Not a skinny piece like that.’
He plonked another rum and coke in front of Tom and sifted through the coins.
‘What about you, Tommy boy? Where’s your woman?’
Tom turned to watch Mick lean over Trudy on the pock-marked pool table. She let out squeals of delight as the other girls watched jealously.
‘Oh she’s about, Dirty. She’s about.’
But Dirty had already moved away to serve someone else at the other end of the bar.
Tom looked into the dark pool of his drink. He was hooked on Sally Carter. Rebecca’s friend. As if he’d tell Dirty that.
As a teenager he’d hunted around Bec’s room for a letter, a borrowed jumper. Something. Something of Sal’s. After she’d stayed weekends at Waters Meeting, Tom had searched the sheets of the spare bed for strands of
her shining straight hair. He had lain his cheek against the pillow she’d slept on and felt the erection stirring in his jeans. ‘Sicko,’ he’d chided himself.
In the hallways of the old house, Tom had tiptoed. Lurking near doorways. Eavesdropping. Trying to hear if Sally mentioned him. A few times he’d heard her say his name, but it was always attached to another word, like Shy Tom. Little Tom. Quiet Tom. Once she’d said ‘cute little Tom’ and his heart had skipped a beat, but then it had sunk again when she ignored him at the family dinner table and flirted with Mick.
He drained the remainder of his rum with a quick flick back of his head. Screwed-up Tom, he thought and slammed the glass on the bar. He hated the fact that he still dreamed of the quick kiss she had placed on his seventeen-year-old lips in the musty dark of the hay shed. He hated how stuck he felt.
‘Rum on ice this time, thanks Dirty,’ Tom said.
‘Getting serious, are we?’ Dirty scooped up the glass.
From out of the crowd Mick and Trudy, arm in arm, stumbled up to Tom. When Trudy saw Tom’s blank face she pulled away from Mick. She straightened the pale pink collar of her shirt, pulling it up. Then she smoothed down her neatly bobbed hair and fiddled with a silver fob chain around her neck.
‘Having a good night?’ she yelled over the crowd.
‘Great.’
‘Tommo mate.’ Mick slapped a hand on his shoulder and leaned towards his brother’s ear. ‘I’m in. She’s asked me to stay at her place tonight. Reckon you can come and pick me up in the morning.’
Mick winked and was gone.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 5
Rebecca wasn’t the kind of girl who usually had time to paint her nails, or would even bother. But she had the feeling tonight would be special. The dancing glossy nails seemed to belong to another person as she wrapped her hand around the metal handle of the bucket. Still-warm sheep guts slushed inside. A white cockatoo screeched from the sun-struck gum. The tree’s gnarled old limbs hung tiredly over the creaking tin roof of the killing shed. Squinting into afternoon sunlight, Rebecca looked up at the bird before summoning her strength. The pig bucket was always extremely heavy when it was filled to the brim. She strained as she lifted it onto the front of the four-wheeler bike. The guts wobbled jelly-like inside and made little sucking noises. Her dad’s voice came into her head, ‘Don’t burst your pooper lifting that, Rebecca.’ She tried to banish the thought of him. It had been ten months since she’d seen him. And here she was on Blue Plains, getting eighty bucks a day and tucker.
She remembered the day she first drove into the station. Despite the heat, goosebumps covered her arms as her Subaru bumped over the wide grid and she looked up at the white glossy sign that read, ‘Blue Plains – AR Co’. As she drove along the drive, she studied the pastures, the fences and the stock-watering systems, noting the windmills and huge concrete tanks.
‘I bet I’ll have to go on water patrols and climb one of those bloody things,’ she said to herself.
As she drove over a rise, to the east she saw a D-6 bulldozer labouring up the side of a huge mound of dirt in a distant paddock. Black smoke puffed from its stack. She found out later that Stumpy was the driver. In the machinery shed during her first tour of the property’s many buildings and houses, she had shaken Stumpy’s hand firmly and quickly discovered the reason for his nickname. After ten months she was sure she’d heard every far-fetched story about how he lost his fingers. But Stumpy still insisted on telling her a different tale as he held a rollie between the two remaining fingers and puffed smoke from his cracked lips.
The machinery guys were okay to work with, Rebecca thought. She had enjoyed their company when they were burning off stubble. Stumpy was there with the dozer to carve out a firebreak. He was so proud of his machine, and Rebecca had learned a lot from him. He treated her as though she was part of the team. But there was one machinery bloke she had to be careful of. If the stockmen had a breakdown with the four-wheel drives they would call on long, lean and very alcoholic Jimbo. She’d learned to avoid Jimbo. He was a leering, oily mechanic who took time out from under vehicles to stare openly at Rebecca’s breasts, and he’d attempt to flirt with her at every chance he got. She’d been tempted to mention it to Alastair Gibson when he next flew in from the city, but she decided it was all part of the job. So long as Jimbo didn’t touch her, she’d put up with his innuendo.
Bec had been glad to discover the head stockman, Bob Griffith, was a decent man. It was hard to tell his age. Bec guessed about early forties, but he could’ve been in his late thirties. There were laughter creases around his eyes and on the sides of his mouth. His face was so brown it made his blue eyes stand out. He had large square hands and never wore any colour other than varying shades of brown. Brown boots, tan belt, brown Wranglers and a beige checked shirt. He said very little, and sometimes when droving a large mob of cattle Bec was sure Bob must think she was a mind-reader.
At first Bob had been furious with Alastair for sending him a female worker, but when the first week came to a close he had knocked on the door of the quarters with a cold beer. His wife Marg stood behind him holding a basketful of biscuits and cake. At the table of the jackeroo’s quarters, Marg sat quietly as Bob began to ask Rebecca questions about how she had learned to ride so well.
‘You can try Rosie next week,’ he had said, swigging on a beer and shaking his head at his wife’s offer of a biscuit. ‘She’s pure quarter horse. A bit shy about the head, and only a youngster, but she’ll turn a beast on a twenty-cent piece. Have you got a horse of your own at home?’
Bec smiled as she thought of her mare. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to bring her up here one day?’ Bob could tell from her reaction not to ask any more questions about ‘home’. He quickly changed the subject. ‘And those terrific pups of yours. What bloodlines are you on?’
Marg had sat in silence as Bob and Bec chattered on until all the beer and biscuits were gone.
It wasn’t until weeks later that Marg had come on her own to the quarters to see Rebecca. She had settled herself down at the table and talked and talked.
‘I thought you were one of those dreamers from down south. You know the sort. They turn up thinking they can do the job, their heads filled with romantic ideas about what it’s like out here. There are some girls just looking for men … you know the sort.’
Bec nodded and listened, relieved that Marg was at last opening up to her.
‘But I can see you’re so caught up in your dogs and horses that you don’t even turn your head at the blokes. And from what Bob said, you’re handy in the yards. He told me how quick you were on the head-bale when you were tagging those young weaners. And that you didn’t cry when that crazy old Brahman cow kicked you through the rails. Bob’s pretty impressed.’ Marg smiled warmly at her as she ran her fingers through her short curly hair.
‘Can I get you a rum and coke?’ Bec had asked.
Marg had said, ‘Yes,’ and Bob had found the two of them three hours later, laughing hysterically and waltzing to Tom Jones’ songs. After that Rebecca had a fuzzy recollection of spilling out to both of them all the events that had happened at Waters Meeting and about her anger towards her father. Bob and Marg had been so caring and sympathetic. They’d decided she had needed cheering up. So much so, Bob’d declared that another bottle of rum would do the trick. It hadn’t been long before Elvis was belting out from the CD player and the small party of three were dancing round the room.
Yep, things have turned out okay, Bec thought as she swung a leg over the four-wheeler and stretched out a red-nailed finger to press the start button on the bike. The sound of the engine firing and revving was good. She’d done the kill as quickly as possible, within reason. Bob always went crook if she took too much selvedge off with the skin. But the carcasses didn’t look too bad, all tidy pink and hung up in the meat shed.
Bec’s nails looked so out of place on the handlebars and throttle of the bike that it mad
e her smile as she bounced over the dusty red track. They reminded her of the cover of a Jackie Collins novel, not that she’d ever bothered to read one. The only books that lay scattered by her bed were kelpie training manuals and the Department of Agriculture’s guide to building better sheep yards.
She felt the warm wind on her face. The sun was so liquid golden it spread like treacle across the white dry grass. In the ten months on Blue Plains she’d learned to love the flat open country. At first she’d missed home and the hug of the mountains on the skyline, but out here the sky was so huge. Every sunset was a masterpiece on a massive canvas. Extravagant, bold golds and pinks hung for a moment in the air and then were gone.
What this grand western country didn’t have, though, was the rich black soils of Waters Meeting, nor the constant shussh of the river. Bec had first swum in the Rebecca River before she was born, in the warm waters of her mother’s womb. Her mother bobbing on her back with her rounded belly pointed to the sky. Water rippling through outstretched fingers as insects skitted by, hovering over a mirror of deep green. But there was no river out here, just bores and windmills and concrete troughs which sprouted tufts of green grass at their bases where the valves dripped. She tried to keep a check on her thoughts of home.
The pigs were milling around from the sound of the bike. As usual Miss Oink was at the gate first, squealing a greeting as her piglets charged around the back of the pen. The collection of now-tame feral pigs shrieked and bustled, waiting for the bucket of offal to be thrown into the pen. She lifted the lid of the rusted forty-four-gallon drum and scooped out grain with an old Milo tin into the trough. The pigs raced to the trough, bunting each other out of the way, except for Miss Oink who always took prime position.
‘And now for dessert,’ said Bec, as she lifted the heavy bucket over the fence and tossed the sheep guts onto the ground. Forgetting the grain, the pigs ran to rip, fight, chomp and chew at the offal.
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