Painter picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. ‘Done just right this rams fly Jimmy.’
Jimmy’s shoulders tensed and he spun to face Painter, who was dipping a fold of bread into his egg yolk.
Lew was eating, not looking up as he forked the eggs, bacon and kidney into his mouth. Nodding. ‘Good mate.’
Jimmy relaxed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Okey dokey.’ Laughed.
Painter and Lew continued to eat and Jimmy finished the washing-up.
‘I have to go now. You get your own lunch. I make you mutton sandwiches for morning smoko. Mango chutney I put. Broome special recipe very beautiful. Ipoh spices.’
They both looked up from their plates and nodded. Lew said, ‘Should be good then, the sandwiches. From Ipoh you say?’
‘Yes Mr Lew.’
Raised their hands to Jimmy as he left. Forks still in their hands.
He poked his head back in the room. One hand on the door. ‘They there.’ Pointed at two brown paper bags on a side bench. ‘There there. Morning smoko Mr Drysdale he bring more. See you. Thank you boys.’
They waited for a moment, listening to Jimmy’s departure.
‘You think you are a fuckin’ comedian,’ Painter said, ‘don’t you? Sandwiches from Ipoh.’
Lew was smiling as he ate his breakfast. ‘What about you?’
‘That was different.’
CHAPTER 20
The dog crows squabbled over the remains of the bold two-tooth ram hogget but the dingo bitch had gone, carrying with her a back leg and some of the meat attached to the articulated spine and rib cage. Now she was resting in the lee of a small dry creek bed about a mile and a half from the woolshed. Flies covered the raw meat and she slept.
It was the smell of another dog that woke her. She didn’t move, only her eyes opened and she watched him, then quietly opened and closed her mouth.
He was a deep red adolescent. A proud head, and now he crawled nose down with flat ears towards her. Downcast yellow eyes looking away. He adopted a subservient posture and stopped about five paces away. Began to inch forward, chin on the ground, his tail wagging stiffly.
She rose and the hackles on her neck rose with her. She recognised him: a strong youngster from a tough clan of kangaroo hunters. They had control of the land near the valley of the yate trees. A nearby wide flat valley with white quartz and clay banks. Screens of trees and winter water. The country was prized hunting land, sought out by mobs of heart animals and most lately the sheep and walking cattle. Everywhere they go, they are lost.
The yate valley clan was an impossible and dangerous confederation, hated to death by her and those of her remembered pack, two or three days away. The presence now of this young male was an aberration and something must have become very wrong in his world. She growled, showing her teeth, gnashed at him in a feint and her savage tongue flickered.
He licked at his lips, blinking and pushing his chin deeper into the earth. His tail stopped wagging. He lay on the ground and rolled over; his tail shot between his legs. Bent feet in the air, he swallowed and offered his throat. This was the complete surrender. A remarkable and entirely unusual display of desperation. Nothing like this had ever happened to her.
The bitch walked on stiff legs to where he had prostrated himself. Stood over him and ignored his pathetic throat but looked instead to where she thought he might have come from.
He had been wounded with a shot in the back leg on the point of the left buttock, blood streaked his fur down to the hock and inside pastern. His pads were torn and also bled. She looked away and back again. All the pads except the foot of the wounded leg.
She once again overlooked his wound and continued to study the ground he had crossed to her hiding place. Her nose raised above the stench of his terror. Ears pointed and straining for any hints of danger pursuing this idiotic pup beneath her. She knew he must have carried that leg, tearing as fast as he could away from whatever it was that had done this.
She bent her head and smelled at the blood welling up from the clean shot gash. Licked at it. Recognised it. The young dog flinched as she licked his wound, pulling his leg away. She raised her head and yet again looked towards the valley of the yate trees. The same thing had killed the black dog who had covered her. The sire of her whelp. The old man with a blue car and guns had shot him to pieces, dragged his body behind the car, gutted him. His open mouth and protruding tongue, pink intestines and flapping lungs becoming a smear of blood in the road. Wired his outstretched body to a boundary fence. She could smell him for days until the wind and sun dried him out.
After a few minutes the bitch bent her head, opened her mouth and took the young dog’s offered throat in her mouth. He was passive, unresisting, a penitent and would never now be without her. He swallowed as his life was offered to her to take.
She let go of his throat, sniffed at him between his legs. Licked his penis and licked the wound in his back leg. Once again he flinched but as she kept her mouth there; he eased and allowed her to clean him as a mother would. She continued to patiently lap at the wound and the young dog lay, stretching his head out, and after a moment he blinked. Opened and closed his mouth. He was as pretty as a weaning pup. So far at least. If he could keep up; if he could run with her, then they would see. There would never be names.
CHAPTER 21
They were on the second run of the first morning when John Drysdale came into the shed.
Chains of wet dust in the wrinkles of his neck. His Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed. The burnt side of his face had white zinc cream on it. Some dust had stuck to the cream. Lines the colour of bloodwood through the zinc. He stood at the end of the board holding a teatowel-covered basket in one hand and a black tea kettle in the other. ‘I’ve brought the morning smoko boys,’ he said.
Lew saw him first as he dragged a hogget out of the catching pen, called out above the noise of the shed. ‘Painter.’
Painter, as usual, wearing his blue Jackie Howe and thick cotton trousers with protective padding sewn on the insides of his legs. Bowyangs below his knees and woolshed moccasins made from sacking on his feet. His broken face and muscular arms shining with sweat. Sheeps blood on his left, holding, forearm. Strong, ropy shoulders. The tattoos like a storybook you could look at but not read. He would say nothing or, at the most, I was drunk and I forget. His silence like a closed door. There was wool over the board and with no shed hands, the two shearers had been reduced to doing makeshift roustabout work.
Painter had his left fist pushed deep into the flank of the sheep as he made the last of the back-leg blows. Straight back, bald head shining. No place here for the weary. He looked up at Lew. ‘What?’
Lew indicated with his head to where Drysdale was standing.
Painter finished the wether and pushed it out the porthole. Helped it on its way with a gentle backward kick. Turned off the shearing gear and slowly stood up. Wiped the sweat off his face and neck with a towel and looked at Drysdale with a smile and a look as if to say, please don’t mention your fucking dead wife boss.
An almost silence descended on the shed. Still the clatter of sheep’s feet in the catching pens; the lost blaring for each other, the calls and response of sheep in the tally-out pens. The Bentall generator humming in the engine room and the sweet running of the belts and air whistling through the raf
ters.
‘I know Judith would normally bring it,’ Drysdale said, speaking louder than usual. ‘First smoko of the first morning. Bit of a tradition. Like Christmas. Or Easter.’ He walked down the board. ‘Things she would do now not done, see. Notice it more.’ The sound of his boots heavy on the wooden floorboards and he continued to speak. ‘I just wanted to say sorry how we haven’t been ourselves lately. No pikelets. No Judith; no rain neither. Hah.’ He tried to smile.
‘It’s fine boss.’
Drysdale nodded to Lew, who still gripped the hogget between his knees. Put his hands on hips and watched as he passed him and said, ‘Thank you young man.’
This old bloke is not right in the head, Lew thought. Can’t stop remembering. Repeating the need for rain like it’s a prayer and apologising for her being dead. Bringing smoko on the first morning of shearing and saying sorry she died and could not help it. Jesus wept. Painter would hate this.
Painter waited and accompanied Drysdale until they reached the Ferrier press and placed the basket on a wool bale. The tea kettle on the floor.
Lew heard Drysdale say cups in the basket and saw Painter nod as the old man took off his hat and say something else while looking to his left to the open sliding door of the load landing. His hair was thinning and the top of his head a stark, shining white.
They walked outside onto the landing and Lew continued to watch as Painter took a smoke from the tin and he and the old man spoke to each other. Then another sound; it was high above them and they both looked up. A faraway drone and in the sky a plane. Small as a pen.
‘Probably going to Sydney.’ Drysdale’s voice raised. ‘Or Perth. You know Perth? She came from Perth. Went to that Claremont school there, Methodist Ladies. Like Clara.’
‘Yeah boss I know Perth. Mostly East Perth, but. Never been to Claremont.’ Painter put the cigarette in his mouth, cupped his hands around the match and lit the smoke. The tobacco tin still held between the knuckles of his fingers.
Lew pushed the unshorn hogget back in the catching pen and wiped his face on a towel. He walked towards the wool press and the morning smoko basket.
Dogs were barking way out in a paddock and he saw Clara on horseback pass through a red screen of dust in the sheep yards. She was riding Tom and her team of dogs were working a large mob of sheep into the holding paddock. The sounds of her way-back and stop whistles. Fleet running so fast his back legs looked like they were going round behind his ears. Dee, sprinting to the head and turning them as sure and certain as she was. Good girl now. The surly hoggets veered back towards the shed. Clara dismounted and, holding the reins of her horse and the gate in one hand and a hat in the other, she ushered the mob into the outer yard. As they ran past her, some of the young sheep leapt into the air.
Lew heard her calling to the dogs: stop down there Fleet that will do. Stay Queen. Bring them on King. That will do Fleet. By God Dee good work girl. Down. Down. Beside me now. Speak up the Boof. And Boofy barking and running in circles to push up the lagging animals. Red dust rising around them all. She remounted once the gate was closed and pulled the head of the gelding around.
Drysdale put his hat on and turned his face away from them. ‘Clara come here please, will you girl?’
Clara with a gloved hand held to her ear and head cocked to one side to hear what her father was saying. The dogs still working back and forth. Her lead dog King bounding over the backs of the mob to free a bottleneck at the inner yard gate, biting the reluctant faces of sheep, terrorising them.
She waved to indicate she understood and rode Tom to the bottom of the landing and, again, dismounted. She was covered in dust, her face thick with it. Two clean lines of sweat ran from beneath her hat in front of her ears and across her jawline. Her father was speaking to her and she nodded.
‘Dad. Yes Dad,’ she said. Glancing at Lew, the dogs and ground; at her father’s feet; Lew again. He counted. There were at least four times she looked at him and he at her.
Clara was shaking her head. ‘I beg your pardon?’ She put both hands on the pommel and, with a single swift motion, leapt up into the saddle; pulled the gelding’s head up to walk back and come around to the off side. Whistled her dogs and did not look back as she rode towards the homestead.
‘I’ll take the Rover,’ Drysdale said. ‘Clara seems a little terse with me.’ He spoke then to their silence. ‘She is just a young girl Mr Hayes. Not getting any shed hands to help you blokes? Like the old days. Even the way I speak to her seems to annoy her. Hard without her mother.’
Painter shrugged. Smoke trickling out his nose.
He ignored Painter and looked at Lew. ‘And by the way young fella, that dingo you saw last night came back. We found what she left of a ram hogget out in a southern holding paddock.’
‘Bitch?’
‘Yep, old Abraham tracked her. Reckons she is in pup too. Probably why she come so close.’ He raised his hand, nodded and walked down the woolshed steps. ‘He’ll persuade her to move on, don’t you worry about that. No more mutton for her.’
‘Good good. Pups too.’
‘For the best.’ Drysdale said as he walked towards where he had parked the Land Rover.
After a few moments they heard the vehicle start and the whine of the differential as he backed out, changed gears and drove away.
Painter threw out the dregs of his tea.
‘You press out a few bales mate, I’ll sweep the board and start to sort this lot out.’
Lew was looking out the door towards the homestead. He turned away from the door and stepped up into the wool-filled shed.
Painter crossed to the sorting table and began throwing fleeces and skirting the wool. Testing the strength and colour and crimp. Working quickly to catch up. As he finished the skirt he rolled the fleece into a ball and carried it to the first of a line of bins along one wall of the shed. Returned to the table and threw the next fleece onto the table and began to skirt that. He moved along the edge of the fleece, removing the soiled wool and throwing it into the pieces bin. Ancient skills.
Lew took the fleeces from the bin Painter was filling and pushed these into the bale press. Filled one side, then the other. Climbed onto the press, jumped into the wool and stamped down the edges on both halves. He inserted three metal pins into one half to hold the wool in place and, using a pulley, raised that until it was upside down and swung it over onto the bottom half of the press. He took two metal bars with gear teeth along one side; eye bolts at one end and hooks at the other. Connected them to each side of the bale top and, using wire ropes, attached these to a ratchet with a long wooden handle. He began to tighten this, gradually pulling the heavy lid of the bale down to meet the bottom half.
‘Pins,’ Painter shouted from the sorting table. ‘Don’t press the bloody pins son.’
Lew stopped. ‘Jesus.’ He clicked the handle into safe and dipped his head to look. The fear of all wool pressers was to press the forgotten pins. But they came out easily enough, with only a slight bow in them. He had stopped pressing in time. ‘Thanks mate.’
Painter raised one hand, said nothing and didn’t look back. Kept working.
A flock of white cockatoos flew across the open loading door, between the shed and the track leading to the homestead. Lew could see where she had ridden to and he kept looking over in that direction.
CHAPTER 22
; It was around midday when Drysdale returned to the shed. He looked at the stacked fleeces in the bins and the two piles of belly wool and pieces in other bins. The already-pressed bales, piled high at one end of the shed. He nodded. ‘You done well boys, thank you.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea boss?’ Painter said. ‘There must be another cup somewhere.’ He stood and looked towards the machine room.
‘No no,’ Drysdale said. He cleared his throat and scratched his shoulder. ‘We have been a bit stretched.’
Painter nodded. ‘Righto boss, we can wait for the cheque.’
‘Cheque’s good. It’s not that.’ Drysdale frowned and touched his burnt face, the tips of his fingers palping the remains of the white zinc ointment. He was staring at the floorboards and it seemed like a long time before he spoke. ‘Y’know,’ he said. ‘If you lose a finger, with a saw or an axe, they reckon you can save it if you wrap it up in cobwebs and put it back on the stump.’
‘What?’ Lew glanced at Painter.
‘I heard that too,’ Painter said and nodded at Lew. ‘The old spider webs got magic in them no worries.’
‘The grass fires in the bush are tricky bloody things boys.’ Drysdale’s fingers exploring the edges of the scars. ‘Don’t ever underestimate them. No. Do you think it’s true about the missing fingers?’
‘Never know boss.’
Drysdale smiled, touching his burnt face. ‘Could be, you think?’
‘Could be.’ Painter looked at the old man like he wished he would shut up.
Lew remembered his mother saying how she hoped her grief would cure her; it only made her helpless. His father asking what she wanted and she said you, and he said I can’t promise you that. It makes you helpless, grief. ‘It’s all right boss,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’
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