Shearers' Motel

by Roger McDonald

  Young derro is the wrong person. He knows this for a cert from the first knock on the door. Who would ever come for him? The skinny old guy is looking for Bob, the flatmate, who’s living at Cunnamulla putting in road culverts and sleeping under a caravan like a dog. But Bob ain’t here. The CES offers two jobs to the one bloke.

  Tell you what, says young derro, looking hard into his can of Fanta, anyone can do it. I seen it done back home in Kiwi. Just glorified garbage collection, eh, plucking them scraps of wool from the floor.

  More or less, nods the old guy, draining his beer, jingling his car keys now that he sees young derro on the hook. Let’s hit the road.

  Young derro is driven south at high speed. Quite a ride. They go through Cunnamulla in a blur. ‘They your feet or something, mate? You oughter do something about em.’ Hundreds of kilometres they burn, whomping the gravel, stopping on the hour every hour for a smoke so as not to smell-up the insides of the car. ‘The name’s Alastair,’ the old bloke puts out a hand. Young derro gives him the dirty palm — ‘I’m Wade.’ Young derro observes the fittings with the eye of a connoisseur. Digital radio, cruise control, substantial two-way. Roo-bars courtesy Mr Bullbar. No doubt about it, there is a degree of buttering a guy up. He could get used to it.

  ‘How come you guys like Kiwis?’ He relaxes.

  ‘What do you mean, Wade?’

  ‘Like you’re heavily into employing Kiwis, that’s what I hear.’

  ‘You’ve got that wrong, Wade,’ the guy says with a tired smile, glancing sideways at young derro, trying to decide if he’s worth giving the usual line on this, whether he’s got the brains to listen. ‘We’re not heavily involved in employing New Zealanders, or black fellas, or Australians or anything. We’re heavily involved in employing anybody who can get to work in a workmanlike manner for us. It don’t matter whether they’re black, white, brindle, New Zealand, Japanese, Chinese or what they are. If you want to work, and you’re a good tradesman, and you don’t cause us no trouble, we want you to work for us. We don’t discriminate against anyone. The only one we do discriminate against is the one that don’t want to work.’

  ‘Fair shit?’ says young derro. Jesus. Why did he ask. If he had wanted a sermon he would have gone to the pastor, who wouldn’t have laid it on thick like this fella, no way, he would have just given him his soup and his stew and his plate of bread and said, ‘Have a nice day, brother.’

  Into the sulks goes young derro. Sitting hunched up against the door, the bloke sending him looks, What’s the trouble sonny, can’t hack the possibilities?

  What would you know, ya grazier down on ya luck. Just remembering private thoughts, I am.

  They stop by the roadside.

  Jesus. Hurts to piss. Out in the open here in this flat fucking country is like standing up close against a bonfire. The heat burns your eyeballs up, smites your cock, it’s so bright you have to squint to look anywhere. Not that there’s anything to look at. Them trees are just weeds. Eat em, sheep, chew wood or die because grass won’t grow here, thinks young derro — flicking his butt away into the dirty sand and making the old bloke Alastair do a dance on top of it, screaming, Don’t you Kiwis know nothin?

  Way past the New South border they stop at the Fords Bridge pub asking for directions to the shed and Alastair sinks a beer while young derro chalks a cue, sucks a Fanta, lines em up, sends em down one after the other till he gets the call again: ‘Let’s go’.

  Young derro eats a pie that’s still frozen in the middle, and he’s still hungry. Alastair says the cook they’ve got at the shed is a good one. It won’t be long now. ‘I’ve been in sheds where you haven’t been able to eat,’ he says. ‘You live on bread and butter, it’s the only safe thing. We picked up a cook one time. We’d come over for lunch and the bloody chops would be sitting in the fat, the potatoes would still be in the fat, it would be half cold. The only dessert was a bread and butter custard. The cook must have made the custard and turned it out of one pot into the other and turned it upside down. The shearers told me to go and chip him for being flaming dirty, and we had to have our meals hot at lunchtime — he’d cook at about nine o’clock and let it sit on top of the stove. He had to clean himself up, and he had to agree to get us hot meals. And he had to get onto another sweet other than bread and butter custard, we were sick of it. So I went over and told him. So we came over for lunch. Yes, the meal’s hot but it’s all burnt up. The bread and butter custard, instead of having the bread at the top, it was in the bottom. So they got their change.’

  Big deal, thinks young derro.

  They arrive at the place after lunch. The cook is doing the washing-up.

  ‘Oy, Cookie, could you rustle up a little something for the lad here?’ says Alastair.

  Young derro eyes the cook. Dunno what he thinks. Looks like he never lets up — one of them tightarses. Give im a scowl. Cold meat, boiled eggs, pickles, beetroot, lettuce, tomato, and what’s this, would you believe it, fresh crusty baked rolls like something hot from a bakery, with all their insides steaming and pulling apart like string. Sucker brings it to the table like a waiter. Could be worse.

  ‘Ay, Cookie,’ snarls young derro, ‘not bad shit.’

  Show em you’re aware.

  He eyes young derro: sees someone who fell from a Honda into thorn bushes, got scratched and torn, clothes falling off in shreds, T-shirt a relic, filthy jeans, shoes loose, flip-flop, wispy whiskers passing for a man’s beard, collapsed flat carry bag under the table holding something, hard to say what, just the impression of something, a dirty sweater and a box-shaped personal treasure that could be anything. It rattles when young derro picks it up. It’s a chess set.

  Alastair looks at his watch. That’s enough grub. Labour’s fuelled up. Get the ball rolling, Alastair, and be back in home by midnight. ‘Ready for work, Wade?’

  Young derro licks his knife and belches and reckons he might be.

  The guys see young derro coming into the shed with Alastair who introduces him around. ‘Fellows, this is Wade.’

  What the guys see, glancing out from under their armpits as they shear, glancing over their shoulders, glancing behind their backs, is nothing surprising — hairy young fucker looking for a punch, recently done time but would never say so except they’ve seen it all before, they’ve come this route before, they’ve heard the iron gate slam shut behind them before, they’ve clutched their belongings in the cold air, in the heat, they’ve hidden in garbage cans, so to speak, and been collected on street corners and pubs, bundled into cars, vans, trucks, and been driven to Christ knows where and dumped like stray animals in the bush. Cookie, too — he’s had his taste of it. Don’t think he knows what you know, Wade, just by standing on the sidelines and writing it down. The team knows there’s no heaven this side of the grave for the likes of them, six men working a rhythm along the board, creaming the bellies off, despatching the fleece, avoiding the hocks if they can, swivelling up to the switch-off cord, beating for the catching pens for their next sheep like heavy swimmers launching themselves from a low tumble-turn, competitors in a race that never ends: the main event, the work event.

  Best for young derro to stay clear of these guys if he doesn’t want trouble. Don’t get in their way. That’s practical. Give them a clear path, get the wool off the floor before they kick it somewhere impossible, like down the chute, or under your boots, into your face, back on a sheep, because they don’t give a fuck about wool as such. Understand? Or about you, young derro.

  There is a woman at the other end of the shed at the wool-sorting table. What is this, thinks young derro, some kinda women’s joint? Nice-looking piece in T-shirt and shorts, tall, plenty of brown leg and bouncy white socks like a teenager, dark hair tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon. She comes up and smiles at him. ‘Wade? Nice to meet you. I’m the classer. Done this kind of work before?’

  No answer to that. Young derro snarls his hello, wipes his nose with the flat of his hand, doesn’t admit to anyth
ing. Gives her the big cold eye. Young derro doesn’t like working with women, never has, couldn’t say why. Specially wouldn’t take orders from one.

  Things move fast here. Young derro gets a broom thrust in his hands and the classer calls out to him to follow Rosie, to watch what Rosie does and copy her, and adds, ‘Hop to it, Wade’.

  ‘Hop to y’self,’ looking around half-blind, slowing a bloke up, all this women-blah.

  Noisy shouting excitable sort of place this is, shearers hard at it, sweat flying off, pounding back and forth dragging their sheep out, women trying to show they can keep up, competitive bitches, machinery making a din, too bloody hard if you ask young derro, there would have to be easier ways of making a dollar. ‘Get in there, mate,’ pleads a soft female voice behind his ear-hole, and he gets a gentle shove in the small of the back. ‘Watch it!’ So this is Rosie — a woman in her twenties, tight black curly hair, soft dark eyes, jeans, joggers, T-shirt and bouncy tits. Likes her — soft as they come — and he smiles at her, he can’t help it, jaw hanging open a bit, spittle running down and discoloured teeth on show.

  Early evening. Tea postponed for an hour because it’s too hot for anyone to eat. Hot with dogs flat on the dirt, their tongues flopping out, flies buzzing around, long shadows across the red sand, everything baking. The smell of roast meat coming from the cookhouse, hot and greasy. Young derro sits on an old car tyre and scrapes cartridge cases from the dirt with his toes. Roo shooters must have used this place once — they must have let off a million rounds here, the stupid arseholes. Young derro hasn’t chosen a room yet. He doesn’t want one. The guys tell him to get in the shower or they’ll drag him in but fucked if he will have a shower. He will sleep out here in the dirt with the dogs. The cook sleeps out here, his truck parked under the stars away from the quarters, where he can’t hear the racket at night. The guys sleep out here themselves, they’ve dragged their beds from their rooms to the bottom of the steps, it’s so hot. Who needs a fucking room? They’re like stinking boxes anyway, two beds to each, windows you can’t even open, dark as pits. What if he woke in the night screaming?

  Young derro watches the guys go in and out of the tin wash-house. The shower water is practically boiling from the polypipe delivering it from the dam up at the windmill, because the pipe lies out in the open, on the ground. They all complain.

  When the guys come out there’s a friendly call: ‘Ay, girls’. Then the women go in, it’s their turn, all clutching their shampoos and body soaps and creams and combs and perfumes. The showers are all so quietly organised it’s like some kind of family affair. Young derro hawks and spits. The atmosphere sickens him.

  Young derro doesn’t know what to do. He’s trapped. This is one place you can’t walk away from unless you make the choice to die out there on the sandy roads all branching out from each other like crazy, without any signposts, all looking the same. Never-never land they call it and he knows what they mean. Young derro hangs his head between his knees and stares at an ant clambering across grains of sand. Swathes of matted hair cover his face. The sound of laughter reaches him. The guys are passing each other ice-cold stubbies. Young derro has learnt that he’s a rousie now. A change has happened, a door has opened and he’s invited out to face the shit. And of course he has to fight his way out, move forward through life defending himself from what’s trailing behind, all that other shit, all them garbage containers thrown at him that he’s climbed into, hidden in, curled up and weeping.

  If this change that is being thrust on him could be made to be true young derro would clean up, dress up, shed the old skin, do anything — he’d roll the garbage can down the longest hill he could find and watch it busting to pieces.

  Young derro waits for somebody to come over and offer him a stubby so he can refuse it with a snarl. But no one comes over. They just leave him sitting there on his car tyre in the hot air until the women finish in the shower, then two of the guys bring him a clean pair of jeans and a shirt, and ask him if he owns underpants, and tell him to take a shower and clean himself up or they will fucking well do it for him.

  Get back to your work, why don’t you. What are you just standing still for? Move the wool away, you hopeless cunt. Or I’ll move you.

  A roo in the headlights was like this.

  A drunk was like this.

  Someone trapped in a mirror was like this, not knowing left from right, wondering who was there.

  It was like having a stroke.

  It was like being dumb.

  It was how Wade was afflicted, trying to work things out too fast, to show he was in touch. He couldn’t get the hang of anything. But he would.

  It was time to slow down, to make the mind go blank.

  You with us at all?

  Davo heard Bertram Junior yelling and saw Wade standing motionless on the shed floor, and wondered how to make him into the person he could be if only he recognised it in himself. You couldn’t have people wandering around scratching themselves like this. Not in a shed, where everyone depended on everyone else and the pace never slackened. People had to be made to recognise the thinker in themselves, and go on from there, if they could.

  Which way to move, and when, was always the question for Davo, who was back after his holidays with a vengeance.

  Go carefully, he thought. Not too fucking fast, that was for sure — as the living disaster swayed like a wombat on its hind legs — or Wade would go back to being what he was before, the hopeless young derro on the banks of the Warrego that old Alastair had shanghaied for no other reason except he was the one who had answered the door. Davo thought Wade might be a thinker. He needed rescuing before Bertram Junior whose temper was up came at him from the side and knocked him flying into the engine room.

  Fast was what was needed, though.

  At his number one stand — Davo could see it building — Bertram Junior was getting ready to kick Wade into the shit and dust, and maybe flog him out there under the water tank in the time-honoured fashion. Get back to your work, why don’t you. What are you just standing still for? Move the wool away, you hopeless cunt. Or I’ll move you.

  Subtle, thought Davo, who saved his fists for a little later in the piece than this.

  Davo had about thirty seconds, he thought, to influence the situation. He kept looking across at Barbara, trying to signal what he had in mind. It would be for her and for Davo’s picture of what a shed could be — and sometimes even was — that he would do this. Wade had kept sneering at Barbara all morning until she mutely appealed, Can you do something here? It wasn’t Davo’s function to put things right in Bertram Junior’s shed, but someone had to take the pressure off.

  Sweat ran down Wade’s blistered nose and dripped to the greasy floor. Wade wouldn’t even look at Barbara, wouldn’t take orders from a woman. He would rather look at the toes of his leather shoes with the uppers coming away, that he had been given in the op shop at Blackball. Every night the guys crept into his room and stole those shoes, no matter how carefully he hid them, so every morning he wasted half an hour looking for them. Yesterday they’d been in the rafters of the laundry. This morning they’d been in the cold ashes under the boiler. Tomorrow they’d be in the shitter, no doubt.

  From the dim recesses of the shed Davo headed up through packed-tight sheep towards the transfixed Wade, loping the fences of the catching pens with his long legs as if maybe he was the one who was going to deliver the punch — get an eyeful of him — the one who would get the four-by-two in his fist, work up a rhythm, teach the young derro a lesson by direct application, instead of Bertram Junior.

  Bertram Junior paused from the long blow and watched as Davo made his approach. Okay, Davo old buddy, you try first.

  Wade didn’t see him coming. His eyes were on the other rousie, Rosie, doing something different whenever he blinked — what, he couldn’t exactly get the hang of, wool here, wool there, and anyway, how was he to know she wasn’t making a fool of him deliberately, dragging him into a situation
because she and that Davo’s Barbara were both women.

  ‘Jes go slow, eh?’ Rosie dragged the words out as she slid past with her friendly smile.

  What the fuck’s going on here? Same old theme in the life of Wade. Everyone cooking up something for themselves, and making use of Wade in it. Chewing him up, spitting him out.

  ‘Hey you.’

  Davo grabbed Wade by the shoulder.

  ‘Don’t just stand around, mate. Prepare the fleece. One thing at a time. Now pick it up. Yeah, that’s right. Fuck me, mate, you’re quick. Now a little sweeping. Then you go in again. Look at Rosie. See? She’s only trying to help you. Fine. Spot-on. Now you’ve got three things in hand when you only had one before.’

  ‘Spose I do? What’s it to you?’

  ‘Not a fucking thing if that’s your attitude.’

  Davo raised the flat of his hand, let it hover.

  At smoko, Davo had a quiet word with Wade who listened, eyes on the floor. Nothing particular, nothing extra special, nothing heavy or even work related, nothing all that hot and friendly — just a word to make Wade feel he was not shit so much as someone from somewhere, who had done something already, who was brought here in a fast car, after all, by a man wearing a Wool Board tie, and was not just another piece of Kiwi opportunism like everyone said a bloke was.

  At smoko, standing at a bale with food things on top of it, Davo spoke to Wade as if they were equals in a situation. ‘You go first.’ Wade took hold of a glass jar, and poured streams of sugar into his tea. ‘Here y’go, mate.’ Then Davo sugared his tea in the same fashion. They ate sausage sandwiches smothered in tomato sauce, and squares of sticky chocolate cake dipped in desiccated coconut. Davo told Wade about the troubles he and Barbara had around the sheds. Told him about the time they had the water hoses leading to their caravan tied in knots. About the time no one spoke to them, not even the overseer. About the time Davo’s dog had been crucified and Davo had weighed into the shearers with a plank of wood, and they were still looking for him, shed by shed. ‘They could walk in any time,’ said Davo. About the heatwave at Leopardwood Downs when they first had Cookie for a cook, and Bertram Junior and Barb had a barney and a half. About how they sorted that one out. About the times they arrived at sheds knowing no one, bang-in for the seven-thirty start, not knowing what people’s attitudes were towards taking orders from a woman. The worst times were when another woman was involved. ‘Like now?’ asked Wade, real interested. ‘They can be bitches,’ he said, chomping into a quarter of orange.