‘Yep.’ Lew, watching what Painter was doing, continued to speak. ‘There’s an old bloke out there, past the Drysdales’. I heard about him. He’s got some gear we can use. Way out by that abandoned town, Thompson’s Find, something like that.’
‘That’s what they call wajil country son.’ Painter shook his head as he returned to the campfire. ‘Mulga, jam tree. Useless bloody land. Good for bugger all and no one in their right mind goes there.’ He placed a few more small pieces of wood on the flames. ‘I know about that old bloke, scratches a living fetching sandalwood. Fossicks for gold. Old Dingo Smith, some of the farmers call him. There is no gold, but he needs a reason to make butter. A top dog man, shooter. That’s how he gets by for the most part. Taking dingo, there’s the name.’
‘I thought he was a gold miner.’
‘No. He is a dingo hunter, gold was an excuse, why else would he stay there? He loves being alone and he loves killing dogs. Some say he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, drinking and barking at the moon, dances with one of them goats he keeps. Calls her Eunice, everyone knows. But as far as cleaning the place up? Best there ever was, some say. Wanted to be a miner, no good at it.’
‘Eunice? Dances with a goat? Cut it out.’
‘Well.’ Painter looked directly at him. ‘I dunno. But when it comes to gold and goats and women a lot of blokes go a bit silly in the head.’
Lew nodded at the swag on the ground. ‘Get fucked.’
Painter’s laughter as he turned away. His mouth open, imitating Lew, repeating what he said, ‘Get fucked.’ Scratched the side of his face, still with the fork, and touched what was left of his nose. ‘Young Mr McCleod. You growin’ up son. Yes you are.’ Laughed for a while longer.
A small camp oven hanging from a hook and chain on an iron tripod. The lid just tilted up on the rim to let the steam escape. On a nearby fold-out table, two enamel plates. Flour in one and a bloodstained white cloth covering something on the other. Flies circling. Painter waved his hands over the plates. ‘I am cooking this underground mutton here. You are welcome to it son.’
Lew had closed the truck door and sat on the running board, put one ankle on his knee. Took off his right boot and sock. Crossed his leg, removed his other boot and sock, put both feet on the ground and rubbed them into the sand. ‘How many you get?’
Painter, kneeling next to the fire, held up three fingers as he took a flat black-iron pan and placed it into the fire on an iron cob. Spooned in some mutton dripping and watched as it began to melt and slide. Lifted the muslin cloth and picked up a back quarter of the rabbit, laid it in the flour and then into the hot pan. He did this with three more pieces and waved his hand above the cooking. The sound of the rabbit frying in the pan. A small wind blew across the river. The riverside bulrushes and cumbungi rustling.
‘Smells good mate.’
Painter took a black kettle from the side of the fire and dropped in a handful of loose tea. Wiped the fork on his pants and used it to stir the tea-leaves into the hot water. Put the kettle to one side in the sand. Nodded towards the swag. ‘Might as well unroll that, son. Go on now.’
Lew had his elbows on his knees. He nodded and watched his bare feet in the dust.
Maureen said that her husband Peter had been in Libya with the Australian 6th Division. He was a hero, she said, and a corporal. He’s still there, she said, buttoning her dress, leaning down to put on a shoe. Two fingers in the heel, hopped on one foot and held Peter’s old workbench for balance. The Shell Oil calendar on the wall.
I married quite young, she said. A row of spanners above the bench. She couldn’t bring herself to take down the sign over the garage. He had loved the East Fremantle Football Club, she said. The mighty Sharks. His brother was one of those lifesavers at Cottesloe. Didn’t know it was your brother-in-law, he told her. That’s why they were so bloody angry at us. It was you Maureen. It was you, I thought it was us being there. That too, she said.
‘She knew what to do, Painter,’ he said to his feet.
Painter cleared his throat and used the fork to turn the frying rabbit. He nodded and turned the other three pieces. ‘That’s good.’
‘What’s good?’
‘That’s good son cause you don’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Everybody remembers their first, mate.’ He had placed the fried rabbit onto a plate. ‘Most of us clumsy as a fool.’ He lifted the lid from the camp oven. ‘All back legs and tail.’
Painter let the rabbit pieces slide into the camp oven. Used the fork to move them. ‘And make a flat-out bloody idiot of ourselves,’ he said. ‘The flour will thicken it. Quite a few even run away. Easier, see.’
‘What you think?’
‘About what?’
‘About her? Me?’
‘She’s heartbroken son. Nothing to do with you. Can’t help it.’ Painter took a rabbit shoulder and laid one side in the flour. Turned it over, white side up.
‘Heartbroken?’ Lew rubbed his hand over his face. ‘She didn’t want to see me again, forgot my name,’ he said. ‘Told me she was thirty-seven and called me Peter O’Reilly. Jesus, I think he was her dead husband, then she said I was not him, Jesus fuckin’ wept. Then did it with me…I can’t think of anything else but her…and her legs around me and what she said with her dress up around her waist. Jesus.’
‘Don’t say Jesus like that so much.’ Painter touched a swollen lump on his head where a lifesaver had hit him. Thumb pressing above his eyebrow. ‘You ever see a woman having a baby? Giving birth?’
‘What?’
‘Fucking mess. All over the bloody bed and floor, shit everywhere. Like an animal they are.’ Painter stood up and poured tea into two enamel mugs. Put one next to Lew’s foot and concentrated on flouring the next few pieces of rabbit. Laid them in the shimmering fat of the pan.
‘There was a baby crying,’ Lew said. ‘Couldn’t be her dead husband’s anyway. Too young.’
Painter nodded and began to roll another smoke. He put the unlit cigarette in his mouth and prodded the browning rabbit with the fork. Spooned in more mutton fat, turned the pieces and lit his smoke.
CHAPTER 5
He was about nine feet in the air, leaning over the top of a black conical charcoal kiln and smoothing wet clay on the widening cracks. It had been burning for five days and the charcoal would be ready to uncover, cool and stack tomorrow.
Painter had positioned upright jarrah poles, a yard long and about six inches in diameter, two feet apart, around the base, secured smaller cross branches on top of the poles and was standing on these branches as he worked. Thin white smoke easing out above him. His hands, arms and chest splattered with red clay. A beaten-up Traveller hat on his head and now he was wearing sandshoes on his feet. Balancing on the cross branches, he looked down at Lew. ‘This burn’s finished pretty much, take a day to cool no worries son. Sixteen hundredweight I reckon.’
Lew held a tall Henry Dilston and Sons crosscut log saw and was sitting on one of two cross-pole sawhorses. Four cords of jarrah and marri stacked behind him.
They had laid out corrugated-iron sheets to deter termites. This would be ready for the next burning. More sheets of corrugated iron roofed the cords. They had weighed down the iron with logs and stones. Behind Lew, a makeshift workbench with two attached vices. Three Kelly axes lying flat on
the benchtop alongside a stand of wooden-handled flat, fine and half-round files.
The bush surrounding them was olive green, grey and black. Straight, brilliant white trees and blackened bloodwoods. Smoke bush and granite heather. Prickly Moses. Painter had rigged a sharpening stone with a foot treadle and an upturned kerosene tin as a seat. Two canvas tents and an open fireplace with the iron tripod holding a black billy tin. Smoke was drifting from the campfire. Another axe driven into a tree stump. An American.
The truck was parked at the edge of the clearing. Clothes, trousers and shirts laid out on the bonnet and roof to dry. A track through umbrella wattle bushes led away from the clearing towards a wider, two-wheel dirt road running parallel to a rail line. Painter climbed down from the charcoal kiln and slapped his hands together.
‘Abdul and Wahid be here to pick up the charcoal day after tomorrow.’ He took out a round blue tin of Capstan tobacco, opened it, removed a cigarette paper, stuck it to his bottom lip and began to roll the tobacco in his palm.
‘Abdul. Wahid? They got camels?’
Painter shrugged. ‘Afghans. Probably got camels.’
They sat on a log, drank black tea and ate damper spread with golden syrup. Lew watched one of his bare feet as it made a furrow in the sand.
‘Still like your bare feet in the ground son,’ Painter said.
‘Never had shoes in my life till I started work in the sheds. You teased me, remember?’
Painter took the white paper off his lip, placed the tobacco into the paper. His fingers and thumbs working on the smoke. Nodded. ‘Barefoot kid turned up for work in the shearing gang. That contractor dropped you off. You were what?…Seven? Twelve?’ Painter cleared his throat.
‘Eleven. I was eleven.’
The next day, two Afghans from Coolgardie arrived and asked how’re ya goin’? Trans Australian Transport 1933. Boulder. Ph 613 written on the door of their green Chevrolet.
Painter whispering to Lew, urging him to ask Abdul where his camels were. They were a long way from home after all. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘they’ll appreciate it.’
‘Where are all your camels Abdul?’ Lew was completely black from the charcoal dust. His white eyes and teeth.
Abdul glaring at him as he tied a tarpaulin over the charcoal. Shook his head. ‘You some sort of a smart-arse mate?’
Painter walking into the mallee, bending over and holding a branch; laughing so hard he began to cry.
That night the fire had burnt down to a red glow and Lew was leaning forward, reading a magazine by the light of a Coleman lamp. He was sitting on a canvas camp chair in front of the fly of his tent. His finger followed the words and his mouth moved occasionally as he read. The lamp was between his feet and trunks of large salmon gums were shining behind him.
They had washed with a bushman’s shower rigged up with a Baird hand pump and tin bath. Salvaged water from the railway depot. Sunlight soap. The water was black when they threw it out.
Painter was seated at a fold-out card table and in front of him, spread out on a towel, were cutters and combs, a shearing handpiece. He was examining the gear by the light of the fire and another kerosene lamp on the table. An unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. ‘What you reading son?’
Lew turned the magazine towards him. ‘There’s a story in it. I read it before anyway.’ Pointed his finger at the title. ‘Him.’
‘Who is it? Banjo?’ Painter peered at the yellowed pages. ‘How many times you read that?’
‘Henry. A few times mate. My mother read it to me.’
‘I heard about that poor old bastard Henry. Heard he sung out at the end that he should have been a woman. What you reckon? Cried for it.’
‘He was gone mad and pissed to bits half the time mate. He could have said he should have been a fuckin’ bird of paradise.’
Painter nodded. Threaded some cutters onto a piece of number-eight wire bent into a long fish-hook shape. ‘A bird of paradise?’ He waited, glanced at Lew. ‘Not a woman, then?’ He placed the cutters into a leather bag and began holding each of the combs up to the lamplight.
Lew ignored Painter’s taunt. ‘Our mother hated this story. Flat out looking after us kids and it was every day, mate, every day. Trying to follow Dad all over too. One day it all got too hard and we just stopped. That wheatbelt rail town. Blackwood Junction, we stayed on for a bit there.’
‘I know Blackwood Junction. Never met your father but.’
‘He just left. Nothing. Took off like a dog shot up the arse. Methodists helped us out. Mum’d say, when it was cold she’d say it was cold as charity. But y’know. The women would smile and say Jesus loves you. Give us a lot of food and never asked for anything back.’
Painter was running his forefinger along the comb teeth. Frowning in the lamplight. ‘They all right. The Methodists.’ He was squinting as he spoke. ‘I think I need glasses. She did all right too. Your mum. You always reading whenever you can, seen you read the labels of tins.’
‘Yeah. But not all her dogs barking sometimes, y’know?’ Lew pointed his finger at his ear and made a circling motion. ‘After Dad.’
Painter wrapped his combs in a length of leather and carefully folded them away in the bag. ‘Some things don’t need to be said son. No need.’ He placed a shearing handpiece on the table. It was wrapped in oily rags. ‘The old lizard,’ he said.
‘She had a copy of Robbery Under Arms,’ Lew said, ‘and Ginger Mick. Jist to intrajuice me cobber, a rorty boy a naughty boy. But Henry, too sad, she said. Too real.’ Lew held the magazine up, shook it. ‘I told her it’s just a story Mum. Not what is. Oh yes it is, she said, that’s the point isn’t it? He must have known.’
Painter picked up the handpiece and turned it over in his hands, put a thumb into the turning gear and rotated the moving parts. ‘You mean the bird of paradise?’ Winked at him. ‘Sad lookin’ bastard, Henry, did you ever cop a picture of him? Maudlin cunt of a thing he was.’
‘Yep, I have.’ Lew laughed.
Painter smoked. Nodded and made a noise of agreement, sniffed. ‘I never knew me mother, y’know. I’m what they call a foundling orphan out of Kalgoorlie me.’
‘Kalgoorlie?’ In ten years, Lew had never heard Painter speak of his past. ‘Your mum?’
‘To be honest she probably a whore, working on Hay Street, y’know? Hawking the fork and thinking about buying corrugated iron.’ Painter winked, his mouth thin. ‘Ever hear the way their head bangs on the wall when you fuck them?’
Lew looked at him. ‘No. Sorry mate.’
Painter waited, shifted his weight in the chair, the canvas creaked. ‘Don’t ever fuckin’ sorry me son.’ Cleared his throat. ‘I’ll knock you down. You hear?’ Relit the cigarette which had gone out in his mouth. ‘You know what a Fitzroy cocktail is?’
‘No. No I don’t.’
‘You drink it. Cheap, see. Methylated spirits mixed with Brasso. Strain the metho through a loaf of bread. Mix the Brasso in, it turns a cloudy colour. Give you an off balance no worries son.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Good company and doesn’t ask questions. Tastes like wet bread and fuckin’ door handles.’
‘Jesus.’
Painter gave a short laugh. ‘I was inside. That’s where I learned that.’
Lew stared at him. ‘Y
ou been drinking haven’t you?
‘No I haven’t been drinkin’.’
‘You were in prison?’
‘I was inside for a while. Just don’t ask me why. All right?’
‘Righto.’ Lew couldn’t look at him, nodded as the old man continued.
‘I got out and I was sent to the sheds. They needed what they called manpower on the land see; most of the men away at the war. I didn’t go. Then I was caught and I went. Almost forty years now gone it’s been. Nineteen fifteen, sixteen. Our vast land they called it.’
‘Righto.’
Painter suddenly growled and held up an impatient hand, moving it back and forth almost as if he was trying to stop the words of an unwelcome visitor. ‘I knew this other bloke was all alone in the cell next door. True as I sit here. He existed. No hope and him knocked about. I couldn’t hear him breathing, see.’
‘Who mate?’ Lew asked. He had heard fragments of this before, mostly when the old man was drunk. Once, when it was very bad, he had wept.
A minute passed. ‘It was me I was talkin’ to, son. Took a while to work it out. I was slapping my hands on the limestone and singin’ out to the other bloke. All the old lags thought the same. Whisperin’ out of the sides of their mouths, they were mostly gone mad and plain stupid with the scars all over them, no doubt about it. But, when you start talkin’ to yourself, they said, you think you are someone else. Ready for Jesus or sideways son, y’know? I got Jesus.’
Painter stopped talking, looked away, embarrassed, realising he had been speaking too much. ‘Fuck.’ He stood up and made his way to his tent.
‘Night son.’
‘Night.’
‘I dunno what.’ Painter turned and knelt to disappear into his tent. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
Later that night, Lew dreamed of his mother. He was sitting on the edge of a veranda listening to laughter coming from a public bar. His feet in the dust and his mother, dancing inside with bare feet. She would never do this, something was wrong. Her shoes in the street, straps undone.
Coming Rain Page 3