by Sue Orr
Back inside, he searched frantically for the newspaper. He turned to the situations vacant at the back. There was an advertisement in the farming section for a twenty-nine per cent sharemilker job in Fenward. Where that was, he had no idea. There was a number, so he rang it.
‘Jack Gilbert,’ a man said.
‘I’m ringing about the sharemilking job,’ he said.
‘Who am I speaking to?’
‘Ian Baxter. I’m ringing from Silverdale.’
‘You’re farming up there?’
‘I’m on a farm, yes.’
‘What are you on?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What contract are you on now?’
Ian swallowed. ‘Twenty-nine per cent,’ he lied.
‘Well that’s all I’m offering, you know.’
‘I saw that.’
Silence.
‘So why aren’t you looking for thirty-nine per cent?’ Jack Gilbert asked.
Ian waited, unsure of what to say.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes. Sorry … I’d been hoping for thirty-nine per cent, but I’ve … I’ve left it a bit late. There’s not much around now.’
‘No, there’s not, is there?’
Both of them waited for the other to speak.
‘Why so late to look for something new?’
His voice was flat and cool. Ian knew what Jack Gilbert was thinking. That he’d applied for other jobs and been turned down. That he was desperate.
‘I’ve, um … my wife’s just died. Things haven’t … I’m thinking now we probably need a new start. My daughter and I.’
The silence was longer this time.
‘Have you got references?’
‘Yes. I can post them down to you … get them away tomorrow, if you like?’
‘You do that, Ian. Put your phone number on the back of the envelope. I’ll have a look at them and we can take it from there.’
‘Alright,’ Ian said. ‘What’s your address?’ He scribbled it down on a piece of paper.
‘Ian,’ said Jack. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’ ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We’ll see how we go,’ said Jack Gilbert, and hung up.
Ian wrote himself two references. In one of them, he spoke of his absolute reliability and commitment. In the other he wrote how sorry I, Jeffrey Burnside, was to be losing Ian Baxter. I understand his need to move away from Silverdale, due to the sad passing of his wife, but I regret losing a fine employee. Please feel free to contact me for further information. I wish Ian all the best.
Ian knew that this was wrong, all of it. That somewhere along the way there’d be a price to pay for the dishonesty. But the alternative — abandoning Gabrielle — made his actions feel honourable. More than honourable — essential, unavoidable, urgent. He posted both the references to Jack Gilbert.
Four days later, Jack rang and offered him the job. He hadn’t rung or written to the referees, he said. They’d both forgotten to put their phone numbers down. Jack said he’d thought about writing to them, but time was moving on, and given the circumstances …
Ian thanked Jack, offered to seek out the two phone numbers and ring him back with them. He held his breath, waiting for Jack’s response.
‘Don’t worry about it, Ian,’ he said.
Ian loaded the fencing gear onto the tractor and headed for the back paddocks. Here the fences were in better condition, the paddocks underused compared to the ones next to the road. He guessed that Jack Gilbert couldn’t be bothered travelling further across the farm than he had to — that he preferred to rotate the stock in the front paddocks, close to his house. That’s why they were mud pools, and the grass back here was thick and plentiful.
For the first time in weeks it wasn’t raining, but heavy grey clouds were banking up on the flat horizon. Ian watched as they dissolved into a murky wall of mist, far away still, but coming his way. To his back were the Kaimais — Mount Te Aroha, with its television tower, marking the highest point. He preferred to face the hills while he worked; they were less smothering, somehow, than the vast openness of the flat farmland.
He was unravelling a roll of wire between new fence posts. The first spots of rain hit his coat hood in fat flicks.
‘Why don’t you have a dog, Ian?’
Jack was leaning against the tractor, lighting a roll-your-own. He shielded the glowing match from the rain and held it close to the tip of the cigarette. He flicked the match into the wet grass and drew hard on the smoke.
‘Jesus, you gave me a fright.’ Ian looked around for Jack’s truck. It wasn’t there.
‘Sorry. Usually your dogs would bark. You’d hear me coming that way.’
Ian nodded and turned back to the wire roll.
‘Which made me suddenly think — why is it that you don’t have a dog?’ said Jack.
Ian put the wire down and walked towards the tractor. My dog died. My wife died and then my dog died too. Of grief. No.
‘I never had one, Jack. Not at the last place.’
Jack held out the yellow tobacco pouch. Ian took it and rolled himself a cigarette. The rain made the paper soggy, difficult to handle. He persevered.
‘Whenever I needed a dog, I used the boss’s. He was an aggressive little bastard. Great with the stock, smart. But wouldn’t tolerate another dog nearby.’
Jack handed him the matches.
‘What brings you out here? On foot?’ Ian asked. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘Everything’s fine. Just thought I’d see how you’re getting on.’
‘Fine … fine thanks. I’ll push on, if you don’t mind. Before it gets too wet.’
‘Never too wet for fencing, Ian. Never too wet for most farming work. Eh?’
‘That’s right, Jack.’
Jack watched Ian return to the fence line.
‘You won’t want to bother doing five wires. Not down the back here,’ said Jack. ‘A waste of money. Paddocks down here don’t get used enough to make five wires worthwhile.’
‘The stock will get out, with only four. Don’t you reckon?’ Ian said.
‘As I said. The stock’s hardly ever down here.’
‘If I do five, we can put the stock in safely. Use these good paddocks, knowing they won’t wander. I don’t mind the extra legwork, bringing them up to the shed from here.’
‘Four wires, Ian. Happy to make it five, however, if it comes out of your wages.’
The herd grazed in the next paddock. Most of the cows had rushed over to the tractor when Ian had arrived, hopeful for hay. They’d hung around for a few minutes, then drifted away again when they saw the load was wiring and tools.
‘Another couple of weeks, we’ll have our first calves,’ said Jack. Ian pretended not to have heard him. He felt sick, thinking about it. About what he knew about calving. Nothing.
One of the cows was bellowing. It stood away to the left. Its spine was buckled and its back legs splayed. Ian looked again. Two slimy thin black legs protruded from the beast’s back end.
‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.’
Ian looked at Jack. Jack threw his cigarette on the ground.
They ran through the mud to the cow. Its eyes were white and rolling back in its head. Ian didn’t know what to do. He stopped short of the beast, his arms hanging at his sides.
‘Turn it around,’ Jack yelled at him. He’d grabbed the heifer around the neck and was holding it tight. The cow put up no resistance but kept up a low keen.
Ian couldn’t see the point of turning the cow around, but followed instructions and moved towards the rear of her. Then he saw what it was he had to do. Not turn the cow around. Turn the calf. Turn the calf inside the heifer, so it came out head first.
He rolled up his sleeve and grabbed the spindly, hairy legs. He clutched them together like a handful of kindling. Then, pushing, he eased the legs slowly back inside the cow.
The calf was aliv
e. Its legs slipped out of his grip. They slid apart. He thought about the time he’d tried to eat with chopsticks, the time Bridie and he had gone to the city and, drunk, visited a Chinese place for dinner. They had a life of their own, those chopsticks, flicking themselves and the salty sauce from the dish all over the table.
‘Fucking get on with it,’ Jack yelled at him.
The calf was alive, that was the main thing. He regained his grip on the legs and kept pushing. His arm was almost entirely inside the cow. He felt the legs buckle and bend away from his hand. He’d managed to force it back into the uterus.
‘It’s alright,’ he called out. ‘I’m turning it. It’s turning now.’
He let go of the legs as he felt another part of the calf brush up against the back of his hand. Repositioning himself behind the cow, he turned his arm and grabbed. An ear, he was pretty sure it was an ear in his hand. His hand felt its way down the back of the calf’s head to the neck.
Slowly, he pulled. There was a tiny pulse under his hand. The head moved, inch by inch, towards him.
He grinned over the back of the heifer at Jack. ‘I’ve got it. It’s coming now.’
Jack didn’t smile back. ‘Hurry the fuck up,’ he said.
He saw then that the cow was shaking. Convulsing. It was ready to collapse.
One last tug and the calf slid out of its mother. It lay on the ground in the mud, twitching. ‘We’ve saved it,’ Ian said.
‘Saved what?’ asked Jack. ‘Saved a half-baked fucking calf? Fuck it.’
The mother lay next to the calf. Her breathing became shallow. Her eyes were all white, no pupils to be seen.
‘What have you got?’ shouted Jack. ‘What have you got with you?’
‘Nothing. I only came out for the fences …’
‘Grab your gun then. We’re not going to save her. Grab the gun.’
Ian had no gun. Not on the tractor. Not anywhere.
‘It’s not here either,’ he said.
‘Jesus.’
Jack marched over to the tractor and picked up a fencing post. He strode back. Then he stopped. In those few seconds between walking away and returning, the cow had stopped shaking. Its eyes were wide open, glassy. It was dead.
‘Jesus,’ Jack said again, shaking his head.
The calf was barely moving. Ian bent down beside it, pulled away the placenta, clearing its nostrils and mouth. Its eyes were closed.
‘Get out of the way.’ Jack was standing behind Ian.
Ian stood up and stepped backwards.
‘Further. Get out of the fucking way.’
Ian thought Jack was going to put the calf on the tray. It was still alive. He thought they’d take it to the vet. Gabrielle could rear it by hand. She’d love that.
Jack lifted the fencing post high above his head, then brought it down onto the calf’s head. The calf didn’t move. Again, he lifted the post. Ian felt bile rise in his throat. He turned away.
The wall of black cloud had moved across the acres of land. The rain was only two or three paddocks away now. Ian imagined being caught in a vice — the vertical plane of the coming deluge forcing him backwards, jamming him up against the mountains behind him.
Ian heard the wooden post come down hard again. How many times had it been? The calf had been dead after the first blow, he was sure about that.
When Ian finally turned around, Jack was walking away from the mash of bone, blood and black hair.
After Gabrielle and Ian finished their tea that night, Ian started the washing. Two sets of clothes lay in the corner of the bathroom — his thick woollen singlets and pants and shirts, smelling of shit and silage, and Gabrielle’s smaller pile.
He thought back to the first few days after Bridie’s death. He couldn’t remember how the ordinary household jobs had been achieved. The washing, food, cleaning — had there been cleaning?
It must have been the women, Bridie’s friends. The ones who had slipped in and out of the shadows, quiet figures who touched his shoulder as they brushed passed him, set to heating meals and folding clothes.
He gathered the clothes and took them to the wooden shed near the back door. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, its cord hanging next to it, cobwebs draping to the corners of the room.
There was a short red hose attached to the single tap over the concrete tub. He flicked the end of it into the white agitator drum and turned the water on.
As he threw his clothes into the washer, the death of the animals came back to him. The sleeve of his shirt was covered in rusty, clotted blood and shit. The stench of it turned his stomach. The water clouded immediately to a rose pink.
He was about to put Gabrielle’s clothes in too, but stopped just in time. Unthinkable, her pretty, frilly things soaking in the residue of two violent, ugly deaths. She would never know what had happened in the back paddock.
He finished the washing of his clothes and put them through the wringer before starting over with Gabrielle’s. Except they weren’t her clothes. They were Bridie’s.
He was less shocked by his daughter wearing her dead mother’s clothes than by the fact that he hadn’t noticed it. He strained to remember the familiar fabrics against Gabrielle’s small body but couldn’t. And now, now that they were just garments laying lifeless on the floor, they were so painfully Bridie’s that they may as well have been lifted off her warm, living body just seconds earlier.
He bent down and lifted the top item from the pile. It was a blouse made of seersucker, white and blue: the blue of a policeman’s uniform. He held the blouse to his face, breathed in as deeply as he could.
It was still there. Through the sweet, fresh scent of Gabrielle’s shampoo, he could smell the duskiness of Bridie.
He waited for sadness; he wanted it badly. Instead a hunger grabbed him. He reached up and pulled the cord to the light. In the darkness, he again held the blouse to his face and breathed in deeply, frantically. He draped the blouse over the concrete lip of the sink, careful not to let it get wet, and groped again at his feet, at the pile of clothes. Working by touch, he found a silky fabric. Bridie’s scent was there, too — the cream she had rubbed onto her face at night before going to bed. He calmed himself, made his breathing shallow. Rubbing the silk nightdress against his cheek, he closed his eyes and gently breathed in and out. He was sleeping next to Bridie.
He switched the light back on. The blouse and the nightdress he would not wash, not ever. He folded them carefully and put them to one side.
The rest of Gabrielle’s clothes went into the tub. He needed to talk to her about why she was wearing Bridie’s things. Did she not have enough of her own clothes? Did she need new ones? He would never notice. Would she ask him?
Not tonight, though. He was not ready for the conversation yet.
Car lights shone in through the window of the little shed. The vehicle pulled to a stop near the end of the gravel. The headlights went out. It was Jack.
Ian put the blouse and the nightdress carefully on a shelf and came to the doorway.
‘Ian,’ said Jack, as he walked towards the door. His head was down and his hands were in his trouser pockets.
‘Hello, Jack.’
‘Got a minute? I would have phoned first but your line was engaged …’
‘Sorry … that’d be Gabrielle. She’s got a new friend at school.’
‘You’ll have to remind her you’re on a party line. It’s all party lines around here. She’ll piss everyone off if she sits on the phone all night.’
‘I will tell her, thanks Jack. I’ve left her to it, it’s just good to see her making friends. But you’re right.’
‘Ha,’ said Jack. ‘Tell her other people listen in. The mothers. Tell her that. That should sort her out. Anyway. Just wanted a word about this morning.’
Ian had been waiting for this. Right until he started the washing, he’d thought of nothing else. It was all over. They’d be on the road.
Jack pulled his cap off his head and scratch
ed at the back of his scalp. Then he flicked the hat back on his head.
‘Have you got a rifle, Ian?’
‘Ah … to be honest with you, Jack, no. I had a gun, a while back. But something happened, a bit of a near miss to an accident, and I got rid of it. Brid … my wife, she didn’t want it in the house. Not with a kid around.’
All of that was true. Ian watched Jack shuffle his feet, looking at the ground. Every time Ian mentioned Bridie to another male, the reaction was the same.
‘Well, look, you need one. For situations like today.’
Ian felt the tension seep out of his neck. ‘Yes, I know. You’re right. I should have one. I should have gone and bought a new one, after …’
‘Never mind all that now,’ said Jack quietly. ‘I’ve got a spare at home. You can use that until you get yourself sorted out. You’re supposed to have a licence but. Have you still got your licence from the other one?’
‘No.’ Ian had never had a licence. Again, not a lie, as such.
‘Well, you’ll need to sort that out. I’ll drop the rifle off tomorrow.’
Jack stepped back into the darkness. Ian listened to the crunch of his boots on the gravel. He’d spent all afternoon imagining how the conversation would go. Not once did he anticipate it turning out like that.
‘Oh, Ian?’
Ian looked out the doorway. Jack had stopped at his car door.
‘Yes?’
‘That calf. It could never have lived, you know. So early, half its bloody organs wouldn’t have even developed. I had no choice …’
Ian looked at Jack’s silhouette. It was quite still. Behind Jack, at the bright bare window of the kitchen, Gabrielle was watching. She waved to Ian, he waved back at her. The window was shut. She couldn’t hear what was being said.
‘I know, Jack. It was a bloody shame, wasn’t it?’
‘But you know, sometimes with those calves, even though they’re going to die, there’s something in them.’
Ian wasn’t sure what Jack meant.
‘There’s some kind of will. What I’m saying is that they don’t give in so easily, when the moment comes. Like today, for example. It taking more than one blow.’