by Sarah Hay
She became conscious of the tightness between her shoulders.
She breathed deeply and stretched her fingers. Eyes on the road.
Keep your eyes on the road, her mother would say when they drove into town, when she had just got her licence. Keep your eyes on the thin ribbon of bitumen that divided neighbours
Texas from each other, their sown paddocks and the occasional orange flowering tree, the sort of trees drawn by every school-age child for their straight trunk and the simple dense curves of their foliage. They were called Christmas trees, probably for the time of the year they flowered. It was also at Christmas the crops ripened and the air became hazy with heat and dust. Harvesters carved patterns in the paddock like the design made by a shearer’s comb as it peeled the fleece away from the sheep. She could see her mother out of the corner of her eye, sitting where the boys were now, holding her handbag on her knee. She’d be talking about what was needed for the garden, the pantry, her mind too busy to imagine another life.
The sun was directly above when she came to a road sign, signalling that she was reaching a T-junction. Susannah had forgotten there could be other vehicles on the road. She turned onto the bitumen, crossing the white lines which marked the edge of the road, and straightened the wheel, the ute moving smoothly over the hard surface. For the first time since she left the house her body relaxed. She took one hand off the wheel to flick the hair away from her neck. She leant forwards, discovering her back was wet with sweat. The car followed the curve in the road. She noticed tyre marks on the bitumen, then a cow on its back; its feet were in the air, body rounded and solid like a plastic farm animal. A maroon-coloured sedan, abandoned. Its front end crushed. The animal was swollen with gas and she realised that the accident must have happened days ago.
About an hour later they slowed for the speed limit on the outskirts of town. The boys had been kicking each other and now they were hungry even though they’d eaten their sandwiches.
She turned off the road that would take her south and onto the gravel road leading into town. Dust clouded behind as they passed light-coloured fibro houses on stumps and a low-lying motel that seemed to have no windows, palms transplanted perhaps from a desert island, flowering oleanders and a tree she hadn’t seen before with bright yellow blossoms that hung on the end of weeping branches. There were buildings of brown brick and a sign which read Vera’s Fashion. White rendered arches marked the entrance to shops on the corner, and the pavement blocks met end to end over fine red dirt. Above the trees to the north were two craggy hills, their irregular shapes an offence to the regimented lines of the street. She parked in front of the co-op. When she turned off the ignition she remembered she had to drive all the way back again.
The woman in the co-op was expecting her. ‘Do you want any help with the boxes?’ she asked. ‘Look like their dad, don’t they? Nah . . . don’t touch that.
‘How’s the jillaroo working out?’ she continued. ‘She’s from England, isn’t she?’
The shopkeeper’s pencil-thin eyebrows were curved like half-moons. She adjusted her high-waisted jeans over her stomach as she moved away from the till. ‘Are you okay? Your eyes look a bit red.’
‘It’s just the dust,’ mumbled Susannah.
‘It takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?’
The woman had a figure like one of the wide boabs they passed on their way into town.
Texas ‘You don’t hear of many jillaroos around the place,’ the woman continued.
‘She’s had quite a lot of experience on a ranch in France,’ said Susannah.
She didn’t want to think about Laura. The woman’s eyebrows rose a little.
‘What about the people before us? Do you know anything about them?’ asked Susannah quickly.
‘Yes, well . . .’ the shop woman began. ‘The family that built that homestead, they were one of the first mob to bring cattle over the top from Queensland.’ She paused. ‘It’s a shame really you don’t see many owners out here nowadays. Actually there’s a new manager near you. Further out. He’s a horsebreaker and she was the nurse up here. She’s from down south too. I heard she’s got some time on one of the channels, you know, on the Flying Doctor radio, for all you women to talk to each other. I’m not sure how often it is.’
Susannah had been holding the hands of her children tight so they wouldn’t pull anything off the woman’s shelves.
‘Mmm,’ said Susannah, face flushed, feeling slightly disorientated from the drive.
It was the change in perspective; from watching the road as it pulled her towards the horizon, to everything being close-up and closed in. The stores were stacked in cardboard boxes at the back of the shop.
‘I’ve packed a few extra things I thought you might not realise you need. You’ll be in again next month?’
‘I hadn’t really thought. I don’t know.’
‘Ronnie,’ the woman, her name was Marge, called to a man wheeling cartons of toilet paper in. ‘Help, will you.’
She gave the boys a Chupa Chup each and watched as Susannah put the ute into reverse. Susannah smiled carefully as she pulled out, telling the boys to wave. She drove down the end of the street and around the block. The tavern on the corner appeared closed since the benches in the fenced beer garden were empty. Susannah was back on the road they came in on, a gravel road divided by a patch of grass where people sat in small groups. She passed the pub, turning left and into O’Malley’s yard. The children seemed happy enough in the car, sucking on their lollipops. O’Malley came out from behind the counter, his hand scratching a large stomach, offering a glimpse of pale skin beneath a khaki work shirt. She waited while he read the list.
‘What’s he want all this for?’ he said.
She hadn’t looked at it.
He led her out past the shelving that contained pipes and joints and tools and chemicals, and through the big iron sliding door out into the yard. They stood amongst the fencing wire and star pickets stacked beside rolls of poly pipe, tanks and trough moulds.
He turned his square red face towards her. ‘More wire?’
She shrugged. ‘I think he wants a weaner paddock.’
‘Who’s doing it for him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How soon does he want it?’
‘Soon, I think.’
Texas He stared at her for longer than necessary. She blushed as he headed back towards the shop.
‘There’s a truck going out that way the end of the week. Soon enough, you reckon?’
‘That’ll be fine. Thanks.’
She followed him inside.
‘There’s something else . . . um . . . Can I order some chooks?’
He leant on the counter, watching another customer pull up outside the shop.
‘Don’t recommend it.’ He straightened and looked at her. ‘If the heat doesn’t get them, the olive python will.’
‘Oh.’ She gave a little embarrassed smile and looked away.
He wrote up the account and she signed it.
‘Been out to the dam yet?’
‘No we haven’t.’ She didn’t think John would be interested.
‘Go and have a look. Show you what man is capable of.’
‘Yes I will. Thanks. I’m sorry. The kids are in the car.’
He opened the shop door for her. She looked back as she reached the vehicle but he’d gone. Ned’s swollen eyes peered from above the part-open window. He hiccuped with sobs. Ollie was looking guilty.
‘Bloody hell, can’t leave you two for a bloody second.’
The wheels spun on the loose gravel and she turned onto the road more quickly than she should have for they shot over the graded edge. Out of the corner of her eye she saw them fall. Ollie bumped his head on the door handle. Wailing and screaming. Shit. She slowed down and looked over at them. They kept howling, only one of them hurt, the other in sympathy.
She noticed a track to her right signposted Swimming Beach and followed it, pull
ing up in front of a timber bench in a clearing surrounded by long grass and tall trees. Beyond the bench was the river, like a mirror that reflected the few white shapes of cloud. After a little while, ripples panned out from a drop of something or perhaps a fish kissing the surface. She had heard of the man-made lake O’Malley was talking about. There had been an article in the rural newspaper she’d worked for, celebrating some anniversary of the time it was built. The wall would be upstream from here. A dry-stone wall built between hills to create an enormous dam. An engineering feat, it said, with so many tonnes of water pushing hard against it. The dam filled when the rains came and the creeks swelled and fed the river that wound through the country before it came up against the wall. She imagined the water gradually leaking out into the country like a sheet pulled up over the land, smothering its history. Slowly rising above the footprints, the places where people camped, where babies were born, where people lived and died, rising above the grass, the rocks, the trees, fences, yards, bores, windmills, workmen’s quarters, sheds, houses. Each feature of the country, man-made or otherwise, belonged to someone’s memory, never to be revisited or added to. Meanings lost over time. She remembered the dam had filled sooner than expected. There wasn’t enough time for the station owners to clean out a homestead that had been in the valley. Part of it had been transported to another site, but the newspaper story said that if you were to dive down below the surface you would dive through trees, past a windmill, then into what was left of the
Texas homestead. And if you put your hand under the tap in the bathroom, you could still feel the water that leaked from it.
Eventually the children came to her, wiping their mucus across her shoulder. Moist faces tucked into her neck. She patted their backs absently. When did it all start? This feeling of being beneath water: slow and cumbersome, every movement met with something thicker than air, some form of resistance she was unable to see. Memories before marriage had become like blurred, exaggerated images. She seemed unable to speak for herself and she didn’t know what she liked or didn’t like any more. Even the clothes she wore seemed to have been chosen by someone else. The children’s bodies pressed against hers. She patted their backs again without thinking.
The children fed the crusts from their sandwiches to little red birds. Crimson finches hopped and nodded, collected and bobbed, disappearing when the food was gone. Reeds rustled and the water soothed. Downstream a hill lay upside down in the river, its redness reflected precisely against a sky that seemed so deep she sensed another existence. She showed the boys a tortoise as it popped up from the shallows. They squealed and it pulled its head in, slipping back into the depths. She left them to paddle in the soft mud. The dark shapes of fish swirled around further out. She emptied the esky and flicked the crumbs onto the river surface. The water boiled as fish with whiskered mouths rose to reach them. She retrieved the children before they walked too far into the water, wiping them down as best she could. They wanted to stay but she had to get going.
There was one more place to stop. As they sat together on the car seat, one was crying, the other angry.
‘Shush. I’ll get you an ice cream. Anything, just be quiet.’
She drove around to the rear of the pub, parking in the shade. A group of people sat cross-legged in the dirt between her and the door. They were noisy and argumentative and a man stumbled out, clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag.
Speaking loudly and rapidly. Another stood up and pushed him. He stumbled easily on the loose gravel, his arm holding the bottle up and away from the dirt.
‘Eh missus. You got a smoke?’ He grinned and removed the old stockman’s hat from his head with an elaborate gesture. She didn’t know where to look.
‘Sorry.’
‘You know,’ he called after her as she moved quickly past, ‘when I been a young fella I ride like cowboy.’
She quickly entered the dark, cool interior of the bottle shop where a man read a newspaper on the counter.
‘Yeah.’ His eyes stayed on the page.
‘Ten cartons of Gold and five of Pepsi. And five bottles of Bundy.’
He reached for the rum and placed it on the counter and then left through the side door. She waited. A few minutes later he returned with some cartons stacked against a trolley.
‘You close by?’
She led him to the vehicle. As he moved out the door he locked it behind him. The same man who asked her for a
Texas cigarette lurched towards them. ‘Eh mate, you got five dollar?’
‘Come on old man. Don’t annoy the lady.’
They reached the back of the vehicle. He turned to Susannah.
‘That old fella, he used to ride bareback at the rodeo. Won it every time. They called him the Eagle.’
‘What station was he on?’
‘He worked all around. The other fellas did too, they don’t work like they used to.’
‘Why’s that?’ she asked as he stacked the grog on the back of the ute.
He shrugged. A light breeze twitched the butterfly leaves of the bauhinia tree and passed through the open windows of the car. Ollie was in the driver’s seat making engine noises, pretending to drive, and Ned was kneeling on the floor, lining up a Matchbox car and a truck along the vinyl folds of the passenger seat. Through the windscreen she could see the group of men they’d been talking about by the door of the bottle shop. They were all standing now. The old guy was facing a younger man, who also wore a stockman’s hat, and she could see from the way he was gesticulating that he was angry about something. Others in the group looked on and then occasionally they glanced back towards the bottle shop door. Someone appeared in the doorway and they moved away. She suddenly felt guilty for watching.
The sun was low when she pulled out onto the main bitumen road. She’d refuelled and organised fuel supplies for the station. It would be dark now when they reached the turnoff and she hoped she’d be able to find it. As she drove, she realised there was something she’d forgotten. She ran through the places and the items she’d either ordered or collected but nothing came to mind so she turned up the volume of the country and western tape that she’d retrieved from the floor. The vehicle rattled over the stones and then she remembered that she hadn’t phoned her father. She’d promised to get in touch in her last letter. He’d be feeding the chooks and putting the dogs away now, although Lucy, the border collie, was allowed inside these days. She used to think she was close to her father, and after her mother’s funeral she’d tried to tell him that she wasn’t happy. ‘You have to make the best of it,’ he said. ‘It’s what your mother would have wanted.’ She didn’t mention it again. But sometimes she wondered why they’d bothered to pay for her education.
She could see her mother helping them move into the married couple’s house on the property where John had been working. Turning over the dirt by the back fence and planting some vegetable seedlings, leaving instructions in her neat rounded writing on how to look after them. She also planted pink geraniums in pots they placed by the door and seeded the lawn. There was no sign of the cancer then. But her mother had known. She said she hadn’t wanted to make a fuss. Not when there had been a wedding to organise. Susannah had brought her mother’s Country Women’s Association cookbook with her. The pages were well worn and there were notes in the columns. It had been her mother’s before her. Not only were there recipes for food but there were instructions on how
Texas to make a tanning mixture for skins, how to wash a fleece, and how to calm the nerves with stout and beetroot. She remembered the title of one of the chapters: Hints that Help in the Home and Preserve the Temper.
She couldn’t think of her mother without seeing the outline of her body under the hospital issue blankets. It was such a shock to see her like that and to realise that her mother was never going to help her plant anything again. Someone had said, or perhaps she’d read it, that the moment before the end was peaceful. She’d tried afterwards to confront it, the destruction
of the body. Her mother beneath the ground. It was supposed to be the cycle of life, like the dead lamb in the paddock with its eyes pecked out by crows. But facing death was like looking into the sun. You had to turn away.
Beside her in the red dusk light, the children lay on the seat. Bodies and heads twisted at odd angles while they slept. She envied the suppleness, their ability to contort, seemingly without pain. The sun slipped behind the earth. The trunks of the bloodwood faded, the leaves were less vivid and the dirt became ordinary in shadow. She wondered sometimes, if she hadn’t married, perhaps her mother would have saved herself. Perhaps she would have gone to the doctor. If only she’d known she was ill. But her mother wasn’t the sort of person who talked about herself and it was only when Susannah rang and discovered her sleeping in the middle of the day that she began to worry. By then she was pregnant with the twins. By then it was too late. Before her mother’s last visit to hospital, Susannah drove to the farm on her own. She’d wanted to talk to her but when she got there she didn’t know what to say. The messy detail of her life had seemed so insignificant compared to what her mother was facing. Through the kitchen window the sun had fallen behind the land and Susannah had wondered how the sky would look when her mother was gone.
II
Susannah recognised the man at the veranda door. He touched the brim of his hat.
‘John around?’
‘I think he’s in the house.’
She left the man standing outside the kitchen. She couldn’t remember his name, even though she’d only met him the night before.