by Sarah Hay
‘He won’t be long,’ she said on her return. ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you. I wanted to say thanks.’
He grinned shyly, revealing badly crooked teeth, eyes unable to meet hers. She’d known as soon as it happened, the steering wheel suddenly tugging hard to the left, that she had a flat tyre and that she’d have to change it, out there in the dark on the side of the road. There were five of them in the old Landcruiser, lights on full beam as they came up over the creek bank. The children had been still. Uncharacteristically quiet. Watching her, eyes startled by the spotlight. When the men got out of the Landcruiser the boys thought that one of them might have
Texas been their father. The men told her they were shifting camp, up to the station. Three of them stayed sitting on the back of the vehicle, talking in low voices, spitting, a match flaring, briefly illuminating the features beneath the hat.
‘Where you from?’ the driver had asked.
She told them.
‘John’s missus?’
There was a murmur and the others chuckled. They were stockmen from the neighbouring station. She didn’t get home until after eight.
Now the man turned away from the house to meet John as he came up the path beside the laundry. They both wore fawn-coloured hats that showed the dirt, with brims turned up on the side and flattened at the front. She couldn’t see their faces and anyway it was difficult to tell them apart with their checked sleeves rolled up to reveal capable forearms, brown boots beneath the long straight length of jeans, hands tucked into belts, and standing with their legs apart, leaning back, shifting their weight to the heels of their boots. The other man backed away and turned towards the yards. She could see he wasn’t happy about something her husband had said. She watched John cup his hand around a cigarette and light it. When he came through the kitchen door she was wiping the table. He took off his hat and placed it on the chair.
‘Ready for smoko?’ he asked.
‘There’s fresh bread and jam.’
‘No rib bones left?’
‘No.’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘Playing, I think, in their room.’
‘When did that fella say the truck was coming?’
‘End of the week.’
‘Yeah but what day?’
‘I don’t know. He just said end of the week.’
John squashed his cigarette into a saucer. ‘I want those bastards to get on with it.’
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘Mike, fella from next door. He reckons our mob have mustered some of his cattle. They’d be cleanskins if they were.’
‘So what’s he doing?’
‘He’s gone to have a look.’
They sat in silence drinking their tea. John buttered two slices of bread and layered the jam thickly. He held the whole concoction up to his mouth. Without looking at him she could see the jam oozing over the side of the bread, forming a drop which was about to fall. He swallowed noisily. She continued to look up at the top row of louvres, thinking how the sky was framed into bricks of blue.
‘You all right?’ he asked with his mouth full. He wiped the corners with the back of his hand.
‘Yeah fine.’
‘Boys been good?’
‘Yeah, pretty good.’ She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, turning them slightly so that she faced him.
She saw he was easily satisfied. He ate the rest of the bread and drained his tea. She took his plate and cup and put them
Texas in the sink and turned on the water. A little frog leapt from the sink to the windowsill, lightly brushing her hand with its cold skin.
‘You watching them when they’re outside? Don’t want that joe blake coming back,’ he said as he moved towards the door, putting on his hat.
‘Of course,’ she said without looking at him.
She washed up and dried the dishes. Paused, the dishcloth in her hand, hearing the drone of the lighting plant and the bored call of a crow, a corella shrieking for its mate, the sound of wings pushing through the air as they flew low over the garden and then silence and she imagined she could hear her own heartbeat.
John was returning. He poked his head in the door. ‘Forgot to tell you. I said to Mike we’ll give him a feed when he gets back.’
She looked at the clock on the wall. For some reason lunch was called dinner in the north. And then after that everyone knocked off for a couple of hours. It was something they all did, to escape the heat of the day. The face of the clock was like the one above the dining room table at the farm: black numbers on a white face. The clicks became louder, so much louder, eliminating all other sounds. Her mother used to say she thought too much about things. The lino pattern on the table moved, its red and yellow rectangles shimmering. What else was there to do but think? Her fingers felt the blood move through the vein in her throat, pulsing like time.
A child was crying. She returned the paperback to the bottom of the cupboard with the others. How long had it been?
Outside cicadas sizzled and the light was harsh. She reached the boys’ bedroom and found Ned leaning up against his bed with the stripy sheets. Clothes spilled out of the drawers into the middle of the room and in the corner were three cardboard boxes for the toys. They were empty and the toys were all over the floor. She moved carefully between a front-end loader and a ute and then over a farm animal. Her feet stepped on something that scraped the floor like big grains of sand. She looked down and then at Ned, catching his wet, frightened look. They had broken her necklace of seed pearls, a gift from her mother for her eighteenth birthday. Ned started to whimper.
‘What happened?’ she asked quietly.
‘Ollie did.’
‘Did what?’
She stared into her son’s glassy eyes. They were so clear they could have been fake. His lips were a shiny pink. Slightly open, they showed his small white milk teeth. She hated him.
‘Pulled it,’ he said and his mouth formed the words slowly.
His fist came up to his chin and he pulled down his hand.
She noticed the red mark around the skin of his neck and the cotton thread hanging over one shoulder.
‘Where’s Ollie?’
‘There.’
He pointed towards the door that led to the hallway. She could smell perfume. Further down was the main bedroom.
Texas Ollie was crouched beside the old dresser. To his left was the window that looked out onto the veranda. Light shone from under the frayed edges of red curtains and over some of the clothes from her wardrobe which had been pulled from their hangers and onto the floor like a lumpy bridal trail: her orange backless dress made out of cheesecloth, her striped cotton pantsuit with the lace around the collar and the sleeves. She stepped into the room and nearly slipped on something oily on the wooden floor. Nearby was a bottle of Opium. Ollie grinned at her. She stepped back, gripping the door carefully, and closed it on everything.
She used the leftover meat from a roast the night before last, cutting it up finely and mixing it with curry powder, fried onion, apple, Worcestershire sauce, marmalade and milk. The curry was cooked in half an hour and she served it with boiled rice and a salad made from lettuce, tomato, onion and tinned beetroot. She placed a pile of buttered bread on the table and poured the boiling water onto Bushells tea in the teapot and left it to brew by the stove. She heard the men’s footsteps before she saw them. They went around the outside of the kitchen to the laundry to wash their hands in the concrete tubs. She’d remembered to leave a towel for them. Boots thumped the floorboards as they took them off. John opened the door and rubbed the sweaty hair from his face, standing aside to let Mike in. Mike nodded in her direction but kept his head down as he placed his rollie stub on the edge of the table. The flywire door banged shut behind them. She put plates in front of them.
‘You’re not eating,’ said John.
She had no appetite. He filled his enamel mug with black tea. Static and muffled voices seem to seep from th
e rectangular box on the edge of the bench.
‘What’s that?’ asked John.
‘What? The radio?’
‘That,’ he said. ‘Is it the kids? Sounds like crying.’
‘Oh yes. I hear it now,’ she said. ‘Could be.’
‘Aren’t you going to check on them?’
‘I need to serve up.’
He looked across at Mike and then stood up, scraping his chair across the floor. She poured Mike his tea and asked if he wanted some milk. He nodded and she could sense he was uncomfortable being left alone with her.
John returned with the two boys: Ollie clutching his father around his neck and Ned holding firmly onto his hand, both with red wet faces and making small hiccuping sighs.
‘They must have closed the door on themselves. Made a bloody mess of our room. They won’t do that again.’
He sat them at the table and she could feel the children watching her but she concentrated on making their sandwiches.
Gradually they seemed to regain their shape, like grass that has been stepped on. When one of them knocked over the sauce bottle and the other put his fingers in the sugar, John asked if she could take them outside; he needed to speak to Mike.
Sitting on the veranda with the boys’ plates beside her, their sandwiches cut into small neat squares, she watched them run through the sprinkler, laughing and shrieking. She felt so far removed from them, as though they might have been someone
Texas else’s children. Her anger was gone and she was surprised that she didn’t feel anything. She was on the edge of it all. Sometimes she could hear the men’s voices, slow and low, but she wasn’t sure whether it was Mike or John. The door slammed and one of them was putting on his boots and footsteps moved the boards beneath her.
It was that time of the day when nothing much happened. No banging sounds from the work sheds or movement in the yards, but clothes still soaked in the tub, the soapy water turning brown. She lifted the wet clothes through the hand-held wringer attached to the concrete sink and water slopped down the front of her shirt and shorts, making tracks through the dust on her legs. She had her shower in the evenings now like her husband; even though she couldn’t see the dust blowing, it was there, in the air, attaching itself to everything.
III
Susannah was hanging the washing and the camp cook appeared on the other side of the shirt she was pegging on the line. She only knew him as Cookie, as did everyone else. She stepped out from behind the clothes, a cool wet leg of a pair of jeans brushing her shoulder. He told her that he’d come back to collect more stores, and since she had the key in her pocket, she left the washing where it was. He walked ahead of her, stepping lightly and quickly. She noticed because it was different from the way everyone else seemed to move, as if they were conserving energy, and it reminded her that it was weeks since she’d seen anyone except her husband, and occasionally Irish.
She thought briefly of Laura. She made a note of all the things he was packing into a box.
‘The young fella, Tommy, he’s always asking for beetroot.’
He reached for another tin. ‘You heard he come off his horse the other day? They reckon he was chasing a micky when a big old scrubber turned back on him. Jimmy threw his hat down to take his attention and Texas picked him up out of the dirt before that old bull knew what was going on. They reckon Tommy’s old man got a bit of money and sent him over from Queensland to straighten him out. Done something bad on speed or something. He’s not going home now. It’s in his blood.
Adrenalin they reckon’s the best drug of all.’
He was a small skinny man with a black singlet trimmed in red that was tucked into a belt with a large silver buckle. He looked up from the box he was packing. She noticed the outline of a bare-breasted woman drawn on his shoulder and a dagger running up the inside of his forearm.
She remembered the last time they spoke, when she’d asked him why he was here. She’d thought he wasn’t going to answer.
‘This tattoo on me chest,’ he said and looked down. It was just below his neck. ‘That’s the date I went into Pentridge and on me back is the day I left.’
When he walked out she saw the date above the neckline of his singlet. There was five years in between. This time she
Texas followed him out to the Toyota and watched him load the boxes onto the back.
‘So how much longer have you got out there?’ she asked.
‘Dunno. Depends how long the muster is. Whether they get all the cattle first time round.’
Susannah missed the routine in the evening when the men had been mustering the home paddocks. There was a different head stockman then. It was a couple of months ago. Cattle sounds would drift across the thick afternoon air and later the men would come up to the homestead for their nightly allocation of alcohol. She was supposed to open the cans so they didn’t stockpile their beer, but if John wasn’t around she didn’t bother. She remembered the night she discovered that some of the men had left. The trees and fences had darkened against the soft rosy glow of the horizon. She unlocked the cool-room door. As always their eyes were shielded by hat brims and they muttered their thanks, gathering in the cool air of the lawn. She noticed some men were missing.
‘Reggie’s shot through,’ said John at tea time.
‘Has he?’
‘Took Alex and Sam with him.’
‘How?’
‘Had his ute here. Parked out the back.’
She meant how was it that her husband had let it happen, but perhaps she should have asked why. But then she already knew the answer. He hadn’t listened to what the men had been trying to tell him. He didn’t know the country like they did. He had all the theories but none of the practical knowledge. Her eyes traced the familiar shape of his head and the tiny moon-shaped scar on his forehead. A chicken pox scar, she learnt not long after they met. She noticed the skin on his face had darkened even though he never went anywhere without a hat, and in places around his mouth, his eyes, there were lines. She realised they were both getting older.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What do you think?’ he said defensively. ‘I’ll find someone else.’
It would be difficult to find another head stockman in the middle of the season. She reached over for his plate and stacked it beneath hers and backed away from the table.
And then Laura arrived. It was about a week after the other men had left. Susannah had just put the children to bed when John’s vehicle returned from town. The headlights switched off with the engine and the sound of car doors closing seemed to echo afterwards like the ring of light she could see in her eyes after the bright beams had gone. There were men’s voices, low, husky Aboriginal murmurs and another that sounded like a woman’s voice. Susannah walked out on to the veranda. The insects were thick around the globe and she flicked them away from her face, distracted for a moment. They came closer, the man, her husband, and the woman who was perhaps no more than twenty, her skin like a child’s, smooth and shiny. John was looking at the girl and so was the tall stockman standing beside the vehicle. Susannah was suddenly aware of the differences between them. It was as though the woman had held up a
Texas mirror and in it Susannah could see her own reflection. It showed Susannah what she’d become and she hated it.
The fan whirled above them giddily as she made tea. Susannah pulled at the thread on the seam of her T-shirt, watching the stitches of the hem unravel. What should she be saying? She was furious, almost speechless with rage, unsure yet at whom to direct it. She tried to keep her head steady but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed she couldn’t control it. She could see what the men saw. A singlet stretched tight and a gold chain disappearing between the curves.
‘It took forever to get out here. The distances are amazing.’
Susannah blushed, realising Laura knew she was staring at her breasts. Laura stirred the sugar into her cup. Susannah noticed the leather bracelet around her wrist a
nd her English accent. The door opened and John stepped back into the room.
‘The new head stockman’s called Texas,’ John said. ‘He’s worked out here before. The others are his relations, Gary and Jimmy.’ John nodded towards Laura. ‘I left your pack by the door to your quarters. My wife’ll show you where to go.’
What was she doing here? And John looking so pleased with himself. Susannah caught Laura’s glance and saw her eyes were soft like a young animal’s.
The dust stayed suspended above the track long after the cook’s vehicle left for the stock camp and Susannah remembered what he’d said about Laura. That Texas was looking after her.
It was such an absurd name: jillaroo.
IV
Ned pushed open the kitchen door with his tricycle and rode out onto the veranda. Ollie followed, whining that he was thirsty. They saw their father and the bore mechanic Gerry.
Ollie was pushing Ned’s bike around the veranda, faster and faster until it crashed into the kitchen wall. They giggled madly.
Susannah locked the cool room and pulled the boys inside. The light was bright in the kitchen, white and obvious. She poured two glasses of milk. Voices leaked through the half-shut louvres.
The sky lost its colour. She stood over the stove finishing off the mashed potato to have with their steak and thought of what she still needed to do for tea. The evening air reminded her of the farm; walking home towards the lights of the farmhouse, the mallee-root smoke spiralling into an orange sky, leaving her boots by the door and washing the grease from her hands.
During the years between school and journalism she sometimes worked for a shearing team contractor. She’d spend the day sweeping the woolshed floor, sorting the stain from the dags, picking up the fleeces and throwing them for the classer or threading the needle for the shearer to stitch a sheep that had had its skin split. Her father would have been drenching or treating flystrike or mending fences. She’d tell him where the team had been and what the sheep were like. They’d drink their beer and stretch out their legs and her mother would ask when they would like to eat. Susannah wondered if she’d asked and how was your day? Would her mother have said that she spent