Texas

by Sarah Hay

  In the afternoon she sat on the grass beside the children as they paddled in their plastic wading pool beneath the yellow fingers of a rain tree. Her eyes traced the papery flowers of a bougainvillea climbing over the roof of the washhouse. It was a small shed separate from the house and the kitchen and it opened out towards the clothes line. She’d discovered earlier that it contained a twin-tub washing machine and a hand-operated wringer beside two concrete troughs. The vine above it was in full flower, its soft bright petals hiding the long thorns that grew along its branches. The grass was short and spiky beneath her bare legs.

  The boys were splashing in the pool. She hadn’t noticed Ollie climbing out but when she looked back towards them he stood with his bucket, pouring water over what seemed to be a long brown stick on the grass. Then it moved. She watched the diamond shape of its head, poised. Ollie was flinging his bucket and the snake struck the blue plastic and she was running to his side. She had Ollie then, scooped up in her arms, grabbing the other one too. Ned squealed, squashed against her body as she ran into the house with them. She could have left them in the kitchen and gone back to kill it, she’d killed a snake before. When she was much younger, on her parents’ farm, she’d taken the saddle out of the shed and was walking towards her horse as a dugite slipped through the grass by her feet. She’d dropped a rock on its head and thought no more of it. This time, she shook by the louvres, peering through the slotted glass. The worst of it was she couldn’t imagine where there might be other people; the workmen, John, or another

  Texas woman in a homestead beyond the hills. The snake had gone. But as she glanced through the window she saw in her mind what might have happened. She didn’t even know how to contact the Flying Doctor.

  They wanted to go outside again. Their demands brought her back and she was reminded that she was their mother. Ollie’s face was striped with dirt. Ned, the smaller of the two, was dark-haired like his father. She felt a surge of warm responsibility. It didn’t happen often. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her. Ollie turned to his brother and moved his fat hand across his brow in a way that an adult might. Ned watched his mother too. When she brought out the blocks, he stood at the window while Ollie sat down amongst them. He looked back over his shoulder. Just as she thought he would sit down, he turned back to the window and asked: ‘Who planted the trees?’ She didn’t answer for a minute. She didn’t believe in God, not after what had happened to her mother. Her mother would know what to do with this place. It would be clean. She might even have baked some bread by now and the smell would have leaked into the corners and softened the sight of paint peeling from the walls. She began to answer but realised she was talking to herself since Ned was sitting down and playing with Ollie. Long shadows striped the dirt and the colour of the trunks of the bloodwood trees had deepened. John would be home soon.

  That morning she’d unpacked the food from the esky and the boxes bought from a dirty supermarket in a small town they’d passed through, and stored it in the cold room, which was a large refrigerator with shelves and hooks that hung meat.

  When she opened it now it smelt of stale blood and she took out a wooden crate and leant it up against the door so it wouldn’t close behind her. Rather than hang a whole beast, someone had cut it into chunks. She wasn’t sure whether the piece she picked out for dinner was rump or something tough like blade. She closed the cold-room door and walked back into the kitchen, slapping the heavy slab of meat down on the benchtop. She looked under the bench to the shelving below where pots and pans and crockery were stacked. Beside them was a plastic tray separating the cutlery, which normally would have been kept in a drawer, except there weren’t any. She couldn’t find any sharp knives. She went back to the cold room, wishing she’d started dinner earlier. She looked along the shelf.

  She couldn’t even find the stone that would be used to sharpen the knives. Boots scuffed the concrete. She jumped and turned.

  It was Gerry, the bore mechanic. His eyes sidled sideways, shyly.

  He touched his hat.

  ‘I can’t find any knives,’ she said.

  He took off his hat. He was smaller without it. His dark hair was plastered flat in a sweat crown. When he spoke, he looked at the ground: ‘There’s a killing knife on the back of the ute.’

  Ned was crying because Ollie had taken the block that he wanted. It didn’t matter that there were more of the same shape and colour in the box. He wanted that one. Then Ned hit Ollie with a blue block. Ollie screamed and then more loudly when he saw his mother. She stood and rubbed her arms, clasping her elbows tightly. Shit! Her face was tense with a

  Texas frown. Sometimes she could stand outside it, the tight feeling that would cause her to erupt noisily or physically. But when that happened it was more dangerous than if she reacted, for she knew it meant she didn’t care. She turned her back on them.

  Gerry handed her the knife through the partly open door, clearly not wanting to step any further into a place that was foreign to him. She found a big stewing pot under the bench and set it beside the meat. She cut through the black outer crust, chopping it into pieces for the pot and slicing off the thick yellow fat. It was a smell she had grown up with: the fresh smell of raw meat. She liked it and it took her back to when she stood at the table with her parents while they were cutting up a killer, bagging diced meat and chops and labelling them for the freezer. The sheepdogs lolled panting outside the flywire door, saliva dripping from their lips, leaping onto all fours as soon as they heard the rusty spring of the door. She found tins of vegetables in the pantry, some musty-smelling onions and a few sprouting potatoes and Vegemite for stock, and placed them in the pot and covered it all with water.

  Ollie was wrapping his arms around her legs. He was hungry. What to feed them? She looked around for Ned. He was playing quietly in the corner of the room with what looked like an old drinking straw he’d found on the floor; he’d need something to eat too, but first they needed to be bathed. She pushed her hair back with her shoulder. Her hands were smothered in onion juice. There was only a shower in the bathroom and she hadn’t cleaned in there yet. It would have to be the concrete tubs in the outdoor laundry. That was where their father found them. His children shrieked when they saw him stride across the lawn, his stockman’s hat covered in dust. She was almost relieved to see him.

  ‘Sit down, Ollie. You’ll fall out,’ she said, tugging the soft round skin of his arm.

  ‘Where can I wash?’ asked John.

  ‘In the bathroom,’ she said, as though that were obvious.

  ‘I need to wash my hands outside.’

  ‘God I don’t know, wherever.’

  ‘It was just a simple question.’

  ‘Can you hand me Ollie’s towel?’

  The flywire door of the house banged shut behind him. She could have said they were his children too but she didn’t.

  She returned to the kitchen with the boys, fresh and pink, smelling of Velvet soap. He was at the table, looking at paperwork.

  ‘You haven’t cleaned the bathroom,’ he said without looking up.

  ‘No.’

  She sat the children on chairs at the table. Ollie immediately stood on his and lunged towards his father’s papers, tearing a corner from one of them. He gathered up his reading material and walked out of the room, leaving her to deal with the children.

  He returned to the kitchen when the room was empty, sitting at the end of the table without speaking. She moved in the same way she always did: from the bench to the table to the stove to the sink to the table, then sat down. He’d already started.

  ‘Is there any salt?’

  Texas She pushed her chair backwards, got up and walked to the pantry. She placed the big red and white plastic salt container in front of him and sat down again. She ate without noticing the taste. A moth flew into the light and the smell of its burnt body filled the room.

  ‘Not too bad here. What do you reckon?’ He placed his knife and for
k carefully together on his plate and looked at her.

  ‘Mmm.’ She stared into her stew.

  When he turned away, she watched him. She had married a bland-looking man but she supposed some would say he was nice-looking. His dark hair was freshly washed and combed. He wore a flannelette shirt, with a creased collar, and he must have found his old tracksuit pants. The clothes were familiar. He leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

  ‘It’s going to be a big muster this year,’ he said with some satisfaction.

  She stood up and began clearing the table. He stood up too.

  ‘Here, love, let me help.’

  He took his plate to the sink and returned to his seat. Her back was to him as she filled the sink with hot water and began washing the dishes.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s three years today since Mum died.’

  Her mother had died on the tenth of May, 1982. She looked over her shoulder at him. He frowned and slammed the tobacco tin on the table.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said crossly. ‘I can’t believe you’re still carrying on about the past. What’s happened’s happened. Got to get on with it.’

  She stared into the soap suds, her world narrowing to the width of the sink, feeling the bits of food swirl around her hands in the warm water. She heard the door slam as he left the room and it rattled the louvres.

  The edges of the window blurred and suddenly she could see the cluster of thin-limbed trees on the farm. They were like a forest even though you could see through them to the paddock on the other side. She and her brother thought there might have been a faraway tree. But once you were in the middle of that lonely stand of mallees it was clear there was no other tree of substance. They found sticks which they rode like ponies, whipping them faster with long strips of bark, leaping over the long grass and the lumpy mounds that were rabbit burrows or which perhaps hid a snake. The wind whispered the leaves and shook the tops and rolled them about. But it was always quiet below and when they were tired of galloping they lay down, panting and watching ants trickle over the leaves and along winding narrow paths. She remembered a beetle with black and yellow stripes being carried by an ant. Gradually the flies would whine more loudly and they would escape behind the flywire door of the small fibro cottage built by her grandfather and father.

  Not long after she met John she’d taken him to meet her mother’s parents. They’d retired to a leafy riverside suburb in the city after selling the farm that had been one of the oldest in the State. Her grandparents were pleased to discover they knew of the station in the Kimberley that John’s family had once owned but somehow lost. She couldn’t remember the

  Texas story or understand why she even thought of it now. John had found her father much harder to please. Her father’s family had been running Collinsville-blood sheep on the edge of the Wheatbelt for about thirty years. They were hardy, robust animals with a good wool yield. It was her father’s idea to run fewer sheep and still fill the wool bales. No one could ever persuade him to increase his stocking rates. He wanted to be prepared in case of a drought. Her father never said anything critical about John but she remembered there was sometimes a look that came over his face when John was talking about cattle. When that happened she’d try to change the subject. She didn’t want John to notice that her father didn’t support his ideas. How stupid she’d been, worrying about John. She placed the dishes on the bench to drain, watching the suds slide off into the sink. He never wanted to know what she was thinking. Despair settled thickly across her shoulders.

  III

  The nights had suddenly gone from being mild to cold. A brittle wind blew every morning across the flat, making her eyes water and nose run when she stood at the edge of the lawn. She would look out towards the hills, watching the bleached grass ripple as though it were solid like water. A stray cow might bellow and a dingo might howl from somewhere out there. By mid-morning the wind would have dropped, the sun would be strong and the light would have washed out the colour of the earth. By then she would have been up for six hours. She always started before dawn because that was when John wanted breakfast. Sometimes he’d drive out to where the men were mustering, but most of the time he went with the bore mechanic to learn where there was water. Half a million acres, much of it stony country where rangy cattle clustered in small mobs. They were wily beasts, difficult to muster, and the terrain was hard on the horses. That’s what he told her when he came home at night.

  Susannah looked down at the diary left behind by the previous manager. John had been studying it over breakfast. It told him where cattle had been found last year, how many head had been sold and where they’d gone. The men’s wages were listed at the back. She hadn’t seen any of the stockmen yet, only Gerry now and then. They were still out at the camp. Before John left this morning he told her there was a cattle truck coming. The driver would drop off some fruit and vegetables from the co-op in town. Then the truck was to continue out to the yards to pick up some bullocks for the meatworks. At least there would be a change in the routine.

  John had used the Flying Doctor radio, a thin metal box with black knobs which sat at the end of the bench in the kitchen. Static crackled and then there was a sound like a sigh breathed into the microphone. But other than that it was silent.

  She hadn’t told John she didn’t know how it worked. She turned the knob marked channel. It clicked heavily into the next slot.

  A woman’s voice spoke loudly through a whining, celestial noise.

  Texas ‘She said she’d manage. There was nothing more I could do for her. Over.’

  More static before the woman replied.

  ‘Yeah. He took her to the races. What more could you ask? Over.’

  She clicked onto the next channel. It was a male voice.

  ‘To be picked up Monday. Over.’

  Back to the woman.

  ‘Knew when she didn’t come on that she was gone. Wouldn’t go to hospital. Had the men to look after, she said. They sent out the plane to pick her up. But it was too late. Over.’

  Crackle.

  ‘Yeah. Don’t know how he’ll cope. Or the kids. Over.’

  She switched it back to the other channel and moved across to the other side of the kitchen. She gathered up the papers and the diary and returned them to the old table that was pushed against the wall in the sleep-out. John was using it as a desk.

  A truck rumbled over the cattle grid into the station paddock. She stood at the edge of the veranda as the boys tore across the yard. Dust caught up with the vehicle as it stopped. A hand swung the door closed and a man in a blue shearer’s singlet and stubbies emerged from behind it. He pushed his hat further back on his head. She was at the fence with the children.

  ‘I have the map. My husband said the cattle are at number eight yards. He said to follow this race.’ She pointed to the stony track that led away from the homestead. It wound around the work sheds and the homestead yards and down towards a creek.

  On the other side of the creek was a wire gate. The track continued over the hill. ‘You need to go through that gate and then follow the map after that.’

  ‘I know it,’ he said.

  He was looking at her instead of where she was pointing.

  Ollie was trying to escape through the fence. She let him go, gritting her teeth. Ned pulled to go after him. She gave up on both of them, conscious of the man watching her. The children crawled through the fence.

  ‘Come back. Not outside the yard,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Where do you want this stuff?’ asked the driver.

  ‘I’ll show you.’ She spoke over her shoulder.

  They reached the step up to the veranda.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Her face reddened. It would be rude not to offer.

  ‘The cattle won’t be ready,’ he said, following her into the kitchen.

  She moved awkwardly, aware of him behind her. He set the stores down by the cupboard. The kettle had boiled a little
while ago. He pulled out a chair. Through the louvres she could see the boys playing in the dirt beside the truck. The fan creaked above her head. Red brown hair coiled moistly above the neckline of his faded singlet. He seemed vaguely amused about something.

  ‘How’s your old man doing?’

  She looked blankly then realised he was referring to John.

  ‘Fine. I think.’

  Texas ‘He was up here before, wasn’t he?’ He paused, watching. ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Oh, did he? Yes I think so. Before we were married.’

  She wondered why she lied. There was something about his manner which irritated her. She straightened her shoulders. He leant back in his chair, smiling.

  ‘He thinks he knows this country. He’s just had a taste of it. That’s all.’

  She brought the mug of tea up to her mouth and swallowed noisily.

  ‘Have you always been a truck driver?’

  He moved in his chair, leaning forward as though to get up, but settled back in it again.

  ‘Done all sorts. Carting cattle, ringing, horsebreaking.’ He looked into his mug. ‘It isn’t the same now. Too many cowboys.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘They were ringers back then.’ He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘Now you wouldn’t pass the time of day with any of them.’

  He looked out the window. There was a long pause. A cricket started up in the corner. She would look for it when he was gone.

  ‘You know things have happened up here. Things you lot know nothing about.’

  He folded his arms and crossed his ankles. She couldn’t contain herself.

  ‘What?’

  He looked at her and shook his head slightly.

  ‘Nah,’ he muttered. Not telling.

  ‘I don’t know anything about this country.’

  She was pleading. His eyes narrowed. She was stripped bare.

  ‘You see them old yards by the turnoff from the main road?’

  She nodded.

  ‘There are yards like that about every ten mile or so through this country. You don’t know how they got there, do you?’ He was waiting for her to react but when she didn’t he continued.