‘Now slide it along the vaginal cavity parallel to your arm. You’ll feel it hit the cervix. A bit of pressure and you can insert it halfway into the cervix. Now gently and slowly inject the semen.’
Rebecca rolled her eyes at the gathering of boys on the fence who whispered, laughed, smirked and punched one another.
‘Are we all watching?’ Ross said sternly. ‘Some of you …’ he turned to glare at the disruptive students, ‘may one day need to apply the techniques learned today to other areas of your lives, so I’d be paying attention if I were you.’
The boys sniggered as Paddy Finnigan made jokes about finding the right hole. Ross calmly ignored them.
‘There. Well done, Rebecca. You seem to have the technique right and you were nice and gentle with your stock. Now if you could let her go and we’ll have the next practice cow up.
‘Finnighan and Faulkner-Jones. You two are next. Get your gloves on and your smiles off your faces and get down off the fence.’
Pulling the glove from her hand and throwing it in the bin, Bec turned to Gabs.
‘I could think of more romantic ways of getting up the duff.’
‘Yeah. Cold steel and a shot of semen. Not as nice as a big bully-boy with dangly balls,’ laughed Gabs. Both girls climbed onto the cattle-yard rails with the other students to watch the rest of the group go through the motions of artificial insemination.
From up on the fence Rebecca could enjoy a sunny view of the college farm. For the moment she was relishing the outdoors. She knew her afternoon would be spent inside a lecture theatre. She had an accountancy lecture, followed by a computer tutorial.
She thought back to Blue Plains. This time last year she would’ve been riding behind a mob of ewes and lambs, bringing them in for marking. Lambs trotting along bleating for their mothers. Ewes turning their heads back to look at the rider and the horse before letting out a long deep-throated call and sniffing at each lamb running past. Rebecca looked at the yards. They were so small compared to the cattle yards at Blue Plains. The B&S committee had put in a new sand arena for this weekend’s rodeo, which was to follow the night of the Wet Sheep Walk-Out, which was the college’s annual B&S ball. The university had tried on several occasions to ban the event from campus, but a few diehard lecturers ensured the event stayed on the grounds because it ‘taught the organisers some useful lessons in real life’. Sally was actually taking time off from her ag economics studies to come down for it and, to Rebecca’s surprise, Tom had emailed her to say he was thinking of coming too.
‘Right,’ came the voice of Ross, ‘another two students please. Emma and Richard … ahh, I mean Dick.’ Rebecca watched another practice cow walk slowly into the race. She felt sorry for them.
‘What a job!’ she said to Gabs and nodded at the cow.
‘You’re not wrong! I’d hate to have Dick’s big arms shoved up my arse like that.’
‘You’re a shocker,’ said Bec.
Rebecca smiled to herself. By the time she finished the course, she would be accredited to preg-test and inseminate her own cattle on Waters Meeting. She imagined she and Tom picking out progeny-test semen from canisters and injecting into the finest herd of glossy black Angus cows. But marching into her daydream came Mick and Trudy and her father. She knew her qualifications after the course could lead her anywhere, even a lofty position up in the AR management chain, but she knew her heart wasn’t in that. Each time she discovered more knowledge of what was achievable in farm business she burst with enthusiasm and energy, directing her grand dreams and plans into the sheltered valley of Waters Meeting.
She looked across from the college yards to the dog pens. It had taken half a day and $80 to fix them up. They weren’t ideal and they were too far from her room in the dorms, but at least the college had allowed her to keep her dogs on campus, and thankfully the pens were lockable, so that drunken boys couldn’t let her dogs out after on-campus bar nights. From where she sat she could see the squiggling mass of Moss’s pups romping, rolling and growling in play, while Stubby, Dags and Moss sat upright, motionless, their eyes fixed on her.
‘Look at them watching you,’ said Penelope Stirling as she adjusted her floral print Alice band. ‘Those dogs are obsessed with you. If only you could get a man to look at you like that.’
Someone should tell her Alice bands are out of fashion and look downright wallyish, thought Bec, but instead she said, ‘Would you like to buy a pup, Penny? They’re dirt cheap at $400.’
Rebecca knew Penelope hated being called Penny and wouldn’t know how to train and work a dog, let alone be interested in learning. She was an acre-chaser. A hectare-hunter. A real gold-digger. She was out to marry a private-school boy with vast tracks of land. Already in first semester she and Hamish Faulkner-Jones had teamed up. Penelope knew how to throw Bec looks that stung like needles when she talked dogs with Hamish.
At first, after Rebecca had set up the kennels, she’d walk into the dining hall and some of the boys had woofed and panted at her. The doggy-style jokes ran thick and fast and, when the kitchen staff served up greasy chops for tea, Bec found her plate being piled high with bones.
After a while, though, the boys came round. They began to ask advice and started to buy a pup or two. And a few of them got together now and then to travel to a dog trial. The day Hamish brought his collie dog on campus for Bec to assess, Penelope seethed.
Penelope was seething now as Gabs forced out a loud fart and quickly turned to say, ‘Awww Penny. That’s disgusting.’ Gabs waved her hand in front of her nose as the students around her laughed. Ross struggled with a straight face as he called Penelope down from the fence and handed her a glove. She took it with distaste.
Bec spent most of the following accountancy lecture doodling on her notebook, sketching gum trees, dogs and high-stepping horses. By the time the lecturer had assigned the reading and closed his books, Rebecca’s head felt fuzzy. She was glad to get out of the room. She hugged her books to her chest as she walked along the pathway past the library and entered the computer room. Like the lecture theatre, it smelt stuffy. The lecturer, Michelle Rogers, tugged on her blue pastel suit-jacket and began writing on the whiteboard. Her gold bracelets jangled as she wrote the heading ‘Farm Software’.
Rebecca slumped down at a terminal next to Gabs and watched with a blank face as a short Nick Dunroan sauntered in wearing scuffed cowboy boots. By his side, towering above him, was the tubby Brendon McKenzie, a college jumper stretched over his belly, making its thick stripes bend in half-circles.
‘Here’s trouble,’ Rebecca said to Gabs when the two boys sat behind them.
Not long afterwards Helen Thompson walked into the room. She hadn’t made many friends at college, so she sat at the front of the class with her brown eyes fixed on her books in front of her. Brendon and Nick looked at her and began to mumble to each other and snigger.
‘What are those dickheads on about?’ asked Rebecca.
‘They’re bagging out Helen,’ Gabs said. ‘Apparently Nick picked Helen up on Wednesday at the fancy dress night. Nick’s just spreading the word that when she took her clothes off she had hairy nipples.’
‘Thrilling,’ said Rebecca flatly.
Helen tossed her black hair over her shoulder and crossed her thick legs. From behind them Nick and Brendon began making walrus noises. Rebecca looked away from the spreadsheet on the monitor and over her shoulder.
‘Huh! What now?’
‘The latest is Brendon listened outside Helen’s door after she’d picked up Warren Beacroft on Saturday.’
‘Not Wozza!’ whispered Bec with her eyes wide.
‘She was really pissed. Anyway, Brendon was listening to them outside the door and apparently she sounded just like a walrus.’
As the walrus noises from Brendon and Nick grew louder, Rebecca swivelled around in her chair. ‘Come on, guys.’
The boys fell silent and waved to her.
She turned to Gabs. ‘Intellectual giants.’
She looked back to her computer screen and began filling in the spreadsheet as Michelle had instructed them to.
After an hour Rebecca heard Michelle say loudly, ‘Right! We’ll finish class early today. We’ve covered enough ground. Some of you can stay on if you like and work a little more; those of you who aren’t committed to your education can go home and grow up.’
Michelle watched Brendon and Nick coolly from behind her glasses while leaning against a desk, her long elegant legs crossed at the ankles. The rowdy boys made their way banging and laughing towards the door.
‘Just before you go,’ yelled Michelle, ‘don’t forget your case study proposals are due in next Wednesday. You have to pair up with a fellow student and outline your selected property, giving a brief description of how you can overhaul the business. The details are on your course outline. No excuses either, Nick or Brendon. Thank you. That’ll be all.’
On the screen Rebecca watched as the messages in her mailbox downloaded from the server. There was one from Sal and one from Tom.
‘Aw cool,’ she said to herself as she opened Tom’s letter and read through it.
‘Gabs!’ Rebecca said, still staring at the words on the screen.
Gabrielle looked up from behind the smudgy lenses of her glasses. ‘What?’
‘It seems brother Tom has hatched a cunning plan to rescue my river and Waters Meeting.’
‘He has?’
‘Yep, it says here he’s put all the farm records on computer. He’s going to email them to me and we’re all going to come up with a saviour strategy.’
‘He is?’
‘Yep. He says Dad knows nothing about it. Neither does Dick and Turdy.’
‘Hey!’ Gab’s eyes lit up. ‘Your place would be perfect for us to do our case study on.’
‘I don’t know.’ Rebecca sighed. ‘It would be too painful to go there. I’d thought of that, but it would be throwing energy into a lost cause. I can’t shift Dad’s view of me, even if I could show him we could make a mint off the place … he’d still hate my guts and not let me back.’
‘Oh come on, Bucket,’ said Gabs, swivelling her chair to face Rebecca. ‘Don’t let him defeat you like that. With Tom as your mole it’d be perfect. Besides, can you come up with a better idea for a case study? Why don’t you get your friend Sal to help us. She’s the economics guru. This assignment is a biggy – if we fail this, we fail the lot. Come on, trooper.’ She punched Bec lightly on the upper arm.
Rebecca looked back at the screen for a while. Her mind raced back to her days with Tom at Waters Meeting and the hours they’d spent talking through dreams and plans. Dreams that never seemed possible. At least now they could start to put something on paper. Suddenly goosebumps ran over Bec’s skin.
‘You know, you could be right, Scabs, you ol’ dog. The first thing we need to do is to set Tom up with a Hotmail address so that we can email him without Turdy seeing it. I’ll try and catch him on the phone this Sunday, but he’s never inside the house while Turdy’s there.’
Rebecca frowned and looked back at the computer screen and read the rest of Tom’s email.
‘No! Wait.’ She grabbed Gab’s forearm. ‘He says he’s definitely coming up for the Wet Sheep Walk Out and rodeo this weekend! Oooley Dooley!’
‘Great! Is he cute?’
‘As cute as … except business comes first. You’re not allowed to snog him until we work the assignment out!’
‘But we’ll be too smished-pisched to do any study.’
‘When aren’t we drunk, Gabs?’
‘True. We’ll work it out. Good. Well, now that’s sorted, let’s go and find Emma in the library. She owes us a bottle of Passion Pop.’
‘Okay. I’ll be with you in a minute. I’ll just check Sal’s message.’ Rebecca scanned the text and said to Gabs, ‘Sally’s coming to the B&S and the rodeo too. It’s a bloody miracle she’ll take time out from her studies and her new boyfriend! The only thing is Scabs, if Sal rocks up here, you won’t stand a chance with my brother.’
‘But you just said she had a new boyfriend,’ Gabs protested.
‘I did. But as if that would stand in Sal’s way. Tom’s got it bad for Sally. I think he’s been saving himself for her since he hit puberty.’
‘Bummer. Looks like good ’ol Scabs has missed out again,’ said Gabs as she packed up her books. ‘Come on Tart-face. It’s been a long day and I need a drink.’
That evening, as Rebecca walked to the dog pens to give her dogs a run and to feed them, she stared at the setting sun and the spread of pink clouds. She stroked each dog lovingly and handled the wiggling pups one at a time. A noise made her look up from her intense concentration on the pups, and in the dusky light she saw two figures on the hill and the glimmer of a shopping trolley. It was Gabs pushing Emma down the hillside over the road towards her. Emma sat with her rounded knees collected up to her ample chest and held her bottle of Passion Pop in her outstretched hand.
‘Come and have a drink with us, dogwoman!’ she called to Bec. Emma raised the bottle against the skyline. Rebecca smiled at them, whistled her dogs into the pens and trudged up the hill to meet them so that the three of them became silhouettes in the evening sky. Three young women, a shopping trolley and a bottle of Passion Pop.
CHAPTER 19
Charlie Lewis sat slouched at the dinner table as he pushed the potato around in the gravy with his fork.
‘Sit up straight, Charlie,’ his mother said as she scooped the leftover potatoes onto his plate.
‘I don’t want any more, Mum.’
‘Nonsense.’
He threw down his fork and shoved his plate away. At the end of the table his father looked darkly at him. ‘I’m going to bed.’ He stood up from the table.
‘But Charlie! Dessert.’ He left his mother standing there with a tea towel in her hand, holding a dish of golden apple pie.
When he walked into his bedroom and looked around he breathed, ‘Bloody oath.’
She’d been in there again. His pyjamas were folded neatly and placed on the foot of the bed, and she’d changed the sheets again. The fresh ones were tucked too tightly into the bed and smelt strongly of lemon washing powder. Angrily he pulled off his work shirt and jeans and threw them on the floor. His arms were dusty up to his elbows and his feet sweaty, but just to annoy his mother he decided not to have a shower. Worn out from a series of too-long, too-hot, mundane days in the tractor cab, he just wanted to sleep. He switched on the bedside light and climbed naked into the cool, too-clean sheets.
Rolling onto his stomach he reached for his bedside drawer. Sliding it open he pulled out a glossy brochure. His fingers ran over the gold embossed lettering, tracing an A and an R in a swirled font. He flipped to page four of the annual report and rolled over onto his back.
He held the image of the girl above his face, arms extended towards the ceiling. His eyes roamed over her and he drank in her beauty. He read the caption. ‘AR employee Rebecca Saunders and champion ram Blue Plains Alpha 655.’ He looked at her blue eyes. The sun spilled across the blonde waves in her hair and lit up the peppertree so it shone. Her skin was golden and Charlie imagined kissing it. He touched a finger to her smiling face and felt his erection stir under his mother’s newly washed floral sheets. He closed his eyes and felt the desire flood into him.
‘Charlie, darling!’ his mother’s voice sang out from behind the door. He slapped the report down on the bed covers. ‘Geez,’ he sighed and then called out in an annoyed voice, ‘What?’
‘I’m making your father a hot drink before bed … would you like one too?’
‘No,’ he said gruffly, then lamented, ‘thanks anyway, Mum. Goodnight.’
‘Night.’ He heard her move down the hallway into the kitchen where she continued to chat endlessly to his father who sat staring at the television in the next room.
Flipping to page four again he said goodnight to Rebecca’s photo before putting the booklet back into the drawer
. He could feel it coming on again … that urge. The urge to blast off in his ute away from the stifling judgement of his mother and father. The urge to become once again ‘Basil, B&S legend’, to be hailed by his mates as the king of party animals and wild stunts. Not some frustrated little mummy’s boy who was too afraid of getting the sheets dirty. Charlie banged his head against the pillow in frustration. He’d tell his father tomorrow. He’d tell him he wouldn’t be available next year on the farm.
Charlie Lewis said to himself, ‘I’m on a mission,’ and he closed his eyes and fantasised about a girl with blonde hair, the bluest of eyes and a cheeky grin. And then Charlie Lewis switched off the light, rolled onto his side and laughed at himself for wanting to wank over a girl with a sheep in an annual AR report.
CHAPTER 20
The gate swung open with a loud clang and a rocking Garth Brooks song blared out from the speakers. The bell hanging under the bull’s brisket clattered with tinny-sounding rings as it bucked, spun and snorted. The rider threw one hand in the air and spurred his legs along the tree-trunk girth of the bull. Spinning violently, the bull whiplashed his giant body so that the young man was flung into the air, hand still bound in the bull’s rigging. His slim body hung from the bucking brindle bull.
‘Wow! Hung up!’ cried Rebecca from the crowd.
In the small arena the rodeo clowns danced close to the beast. Amidst a flurry of sand and hooves, they undid the tight strap from around the bull’s flank. Its release seemed to settle the bull a little so the rider was able to unhitch his hand. Hitting the sandy surface of the ring, the cowboy rolled on his back, jumped to his boot-clad, spur-jangling feet and stooped for his hat. He held it up to the crowd, while the commentator read out the score of seventy-nine points with a nasal twang. Rebecca watched the rider’s Wrangler-wrapped butt saunter away towards the chutes. The fringed leather chaps were wrapped over his thighs and held by a strap across the base of his backside. The chaps seemed to highlight his small, pert behind and tiny waist.
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