Uncle Jasper and the Eighty Acres

by Lindsay Johannsen

fair took the nettle by the horns (so to speak). Jolene protested, claiming it was a dead-set emergency with no option but to get her dress off quick like, and how she was just about to put it back on. She showed her father all the bite marks, too, to prove her point.

  —Well not all of them, you understand, because ... Well, you know.

  Old Jackson wasn't overly happy with her explanation. He reckoned the welts bore a striking resemblance to the time Miss Jolene was little and got a bee sting on her belly. Her mother had to suck out the sting – rest her soul – like as if she was giving it a really big kiss ... except that it left this big red sort of blotch there, see.

  About then Uncle Jasper put in a few words of his own. He was a busy man, he explained, what with all this inspection stuff and everything. Schedule-wise he was in no position to wait around for the outcome of this interesting family discussion. Instead he just issued Rack with an on-the-spot Clean-Bill-Of-Health Certificate and went about his business.

  But mad swine pox is a persistent pathogen and follow-up inspections had to be made. And so as not to get under Jackson’s feet or inconvenience him too much Uncle Jasper would hold off going up there until getting a phone call from McCutcheon’s Garage And Mcchinery (as the partially vandalized sign proclaimed).

  Old Skeeter McCutcheon was the acting Council Transport Inspector at the time. Sometimes when Jackson pulled his truck into the fuel depot there Skeeter would just happen to notice something unserviceable – a dud sidelight or cracked mirror or whatever – requiring him to defect the vehicle.

  Jackson would then be held up for a couple of hours while the apprentice drove over to Bungleup for the necessary part. Course until the young feller arrived back Old Skeeter would have a bit of time on his hands, so he’d give Uncle Jasper a ring – you know, for a yarn.

  (Interestingly, these goings-on had a totally unintended consequence: Mister Rackworth Jackson finished up with just about the greatest looking, best maintained, most roadworthy old truck in the whole of the Bungleup Shire. Later it even won him a couple of prizes at the Bungleup and District Show.)

  Anyhow, one day Uncle Jasper gets a different sort of phone call from McCutcheon’s Garage and Mcchinery. He’s going to have to come up with some other sort of scheme, Skeeter tells him, on account of it becoming mighty hard to find anything wrong any more to pull old Jackson up with. Impossible even.

  Uncle Jasper said not to worry; it didn’t matter anyway. Jolene was gone. She’d run off with the manager of the visiting Dingaling Brothers Circus, a you-beaut lair appositely named Manny Flashmann.

  Dingaling Brothers next show after Bungleup was the Royal Easter down in the city, and local gossip held that Manny’s big pink and gold whitewall-tyred Ford Galaxy convertible and the lure of the bright city lights would have been more than poor Jolene’s heart could resist. And on the face of it this certainly sounded reasonable.

  But Uncle Jasper reckoned there was more to it than that. See this Manny Flashmann bloke had a head of hair on him like an alpha-male lion on steroids, and Uncle Jasper was around the back of the animal cages one day in his old Land Rover, delivering a trailer load of hay to the elephants, when something curious happened. Manny must’ve thought no one was about, because he whipped off this mane thing to wipe his sweaty head, then put it back on again quick as a flash.

  Underneath was shiny pink skin, Uncle Jasper reckoned – the best looking bowling ball he’d seen in many a long day. He didn’t think much about it at the time, but how Jolene might have got onto it really had him puzzled. All he could think of was that maybe Manny had heard the gossip and showed her.

  Anyway, not long after this Uncle Jasper gave up being a Council Inspector. Whenever he went up to Jackson’s farm old Rack would want to feed him his latest attempt at duplicating Jolene’s pigs-belly fritters.

  She’d never got round to showing her father how to make ‘em, see. But knowing Uncle Jasper would’ve eaten probably a hundred dozen or so by the time she left, Rack figured he’d know exactly what they should taste like.

  The problem was, Uncle Jasper couldn’t abide the things. But, ever the gentleman, he wasn’t going to cruel a perfectly good umm… friendship … by letting Jolene see anything less than a hundred and twenty percent enthusiastic approval.

  He was a changed man, though, after she left; I mean his chronic indigestion simply vanished. There were other things, too, though I doubt he’d have admitted them. His prized yellow-checked sports coat going in the rag bin, for instance. —Brooding. Outbursts. Most likely I was the only one to notice.

  Sometimes he’d explode with angry exasperation. “Lemme tell you something, boy!” he suddenly barked at me one day: “You can take a horse to bloody water by gawd, but there’s sure as hell no fool like an old dog getting stuck with his usual bloody tricks.”

  I’d no idea what he was talking about.

  Another time I discovered him kicking one of his milk pails around the paddock. He was all red in the face and was sweating and swearing his head off. He didn’t know I’d seen him because I’d straight away ducked into the lantana. I stayed there, too, waiting until he’d gone back into the house to bandage his foot before staging my arrival.

  His gout was playing up, he said as he hobbled out to greet me. —Just giving him hell.

  A fortnight later I arrived there to find the place deserted.

  He’d left me a note, though; put where no one else would find it.

  “I’m off to join the circus,” it read. “Keep an eye on the place and make sure the chooks get some tucker.” When I had a look his good pants and shoes were gone. So was the yellow checked jacket.

  Mum said he must have fallen in love with the elephants. Dad said nothing.

  Me likewise.

  A couple of weeks later he was back. At first I thought Manny had turned up for some reason, because instead of the old turd-coloured Mark 1 Land Rover wreck parked by the house there was this big white-topped pink Galaxy convertible. Then half way down from the gate Uncle Jasper came out of the side door.

  That’s when I saw the other couple of other things he’d brought back: the best looking black eye I’d ever seen and a bald shiny head.

  “Well boil me boots,” he said as I pulled up and leant the bike on a stump. “Look at what the bloody blowflies brung this time. —And just the young ratbag I’ve been waiting to see, as it happens. Wait there a sec, me boy…” he added as he disappeared into the tool shed.

  A moment later he came out again with a pair of oxy goggles. “Put these on,” he instructed, holding up a finger to stop any questions. “Right. Now come inside and meet your Auntie Jolene.”

  Auntie Jolene?!! He pushed me through the door.

  “But what are the goggles for?

  “They’re to save your eyes.”

  “From what? I can hardly bloody see!”

  “For when she shows you the diamond ring. I don’t want you getting blinded or nothing.”

  I ripped the stupid goggles off as he introduced us and Jolene showed me the ring.

  I was stunned! Most of the marbles I played with were smaller than the thing she had on her finger! But I didn’t have time to gather my wits or say anything because Uncle Jasper was dragging me outside again.

  “—Men’s talk,” he said, giving Jolene a one-eyed smile back over his shoulder. He shoved me out and shut the door behind him. I was totally bewildered.

  Down behind the shed, he marched me, to the old steel chairs we’d often sit on for a yarn. After pushing me onto my usual seat he sat down himself.

  “Yes, it’s real,” he assured me, “and no, I didn’t rob a bank or anything. But I intended telling you eventually and it might as well be now, because the moment seems appropriate.

  “First up, Aunt Jolene’s ring came from down the well.”

  I just stared at him dumbly. What was he talking about?!!

  “Come on boy,” he went on patiently. “Why do you think I go grubbing around down t
here every couple of months? You don’t really think I’m going to get any bloody water there, do you?

  “—But don’t go telling no bugger, whatever you do” he added hastily. “Not even your Mum and Dad. It’s our secret now; it’s just between you and me.

  “Jolene don’t know about this neither, and I certainly won’t be telling her. She and I don’t want no kids, see, and when I kick the bucket she’ll get everything except the farm – all the stocks and shares and gold investments and the industrial properties down in the city and stuff – five times more than enough to buy the glitzy mansion she reckons she’d like on the Gold Coast.

  “—Not that I’m planning to turn up me toes or anything any time soon, you understand. Actually, in the immediate future we’re jetting off to the Costa Del Bravo or Monaco or somewhere. Jolene’s looking after the bookings and stuff. She’s a good little organizer.

  “‘Anywhere your pretty heart desires,’ I told her. And am I looking forward to promenading her along the esplanades and around the casinos there – and in the best clothes money can buy what’s more, not in me yellow checked jacket.

  “Now if anyone starts asking questions, pretend you don’t know anything. Then let slip about a big Tatts Lotto win. That should keep the buggers at bay. In the meantime I’ll be secretly transferring the farm title into your name and holding it for you in trust – you know, until my demise.

  “You don’t have to worry