We should encourage the bush
in pockets right across the land,
and along the water,
to allow safe passage
for our birds.
To my knowledge the kookaburra
does not undergo
a pre-nuptial moult.
Dad though, in early spring,
appears sprucer to my eye
with his gaudy smear of turquoise
at rump and shoulder.
And Mum is plumper, juicier
– the shape of a baked meatloaf.
Aerodynamics seems irrelevant
to these noisy tree dogs.
The sky has sufficient depth
to give each bird
its own strata,
its precise allocation of air.
Yet, like us,
they find it difficult
to live in peace.
Territorial adjustments
are constant
throughout the year.
But land grabs take place
just before breeding,
when more ground is needed to support
the expected chicks.
At breeding time a rogue bird
from a neighbouring family
will run the gauntlet
– crashing across the boundary,
hungry for territory,
for a start of their own.
The rogue is met in silence;
a flying dagger head-on,
from the side,
from behind.
The intruder is identified,
forced out,
better still – pushed to the ground
where the lower beak is ripped off.
Mum, Dad, Club-Toe
break off their
preening,
squabbling,
loafing,
to attack.
They lose themselves in the doing.
I struggle to tell them apart.
Knife-beaked,
cruel-eyed,
vicious;
there is no question
they would die for the family
– that violence is a family act.
‘My lovely hair,’ Betty says aloud as she goes out to collect the mail at Acacia Court. This happens sometimes: an involuntary spill of words. It is, Betty thinks, not ordinary speech where you can identify the recent thinking that produced the words, but the act of ‘being spoken’. When Betty is being spoken the words fall out in false cadence like lines from a play. She glances over her shoulder. The footpath is empty and it’s quiet out, except for the wind pulling at the paperbarks and giving the hydrangeas a clobbering against the fence. It is always just a few words; a snippet – sometimes a question. There are spiders in the rusty mailbox. She balances the envelopes in the crook of her arm and flicks the lid shut. Her other hand reaches up to pat a dry curl behind her ear. ‘My lovely hair.’
Betty remembers an incident from the week before: Little Hazel had been trimming the feathering around Foot Foot’s hocks with a pair of dressmaking scissors when she accidentally cut through the skin. Foot Foot is a heifer Harry brought over for Little Hazel to nurse because her front legs were twisted during a traumatic birth. Little Hazel brushes her and washes her and gives her physical therapy – lifting up one of her hind legs to make her take more weight up front. When the blood came up on Foot Foot’s hock Little Hazel ran across the paddock to fetch Harry. She was still crying when she returned with him, holding the plug of skin and cow hair in her hand and using the back of it to wipe her nose. Michael held the heifer’s head. Foot Foot didn’t show any signs of distress, except for holding the injured leg off the ground. The wound was a perfect circle, the size of an apricot, with the gummy pink meat of the hock poking through. Harry requested Dettol and they got the hearth stool for him to sit on as he worked. The flies were thick. Foot Foot swished her tail from side to side to shift them. Harry asked Betty to hold the heifer’s tail out of the way while he stitched. The next time the tail swished past Harry reached out for the thick swatch of cow hair and grabbed it in his fist. He handed it to Betty. She took it – the hair all tumbled and spilling messy through her fingers – and moved to the other side of the heifer’s rump …
Betty puts the mail on the staffroom table and goes to the sink to wash her hands. The water from the tap at Acacia Court comes from the rainwater tank and is tea-coloured. The wind has brought rain now. As Betty soaps her hands she looks out of the window at the laundry girl stripping sheets from the line with her coat over her head. She interlaces her fingers and pushes the soap between them. Rain splatters against the window. She turns from the tap and stands drying her hands … Here she is in the calf paddock behind the house. There is no heifer, no Michael or Little Hazel. Harry sits on the three-legged hearth stool with the needle and thread in his fingers, but it is Betty he is preparing to stitch. Betty has a cut on her knee. She stands in front of Harry holding her skirt out of the way. Her bare foot rests on his thigh. He bends close. He places one of his hands around the back of her leg to steady himself, squints, angles the needle towards her as if it is a dinky sword …
In the daydream (but not when he really stitched Foot Foot’s leg) Harry wears his glasses. He wears his glasses on Sundays for reading his bird books and doing the accounts. They have silver wire frames and he wears them close to his eyes as if he’s never got comfortable with them, as if he’s trying to wear them in exactly the same place the optician put them on him as a boy. Betty likes the way Harry looks out at her when he is wearing his glasses so she is not surprised he wears them in her daydream. Glasses-Harry cocks his head to line Betty up in the middle of the lens. And Betty knows that she is a little different around Harry when he has his glasses on. The idea of herself viewed through the lenses as if she is being filmed, captured in some way, makes her playful. She remembers an advertisement from a magazine: ‘Things look better behind glass …’ And then there are his eyelashes. Magnified blunt and stubbly, worn down somehow.
Betty flicks through a catalogue on the staffroom table. She steadies herself with pictures of fancy tablecloths and Christmas napkins. She knows the daydreams and the involuntary speaking are a flaw – a childish indulgence, an immaturity. It reminds her of an argument she had with her father as a child. ‘Why should I eat peas?’ she demanded at the dinner table. ‘I like cake best. Why can’t I only eat cake?’
Her father shook his head and smacked her wrist with his spoon.
‘Because it will ruin you, child,’ he said. ‘You’ll be filled up on nothing and have no room for the real food you need to eat.’
For two weeks Michael assaults Little Hazel with the word ‘mucus’. He whispers it in her hair, he scribbles it on her school books, he uses his knife to write it in the gravy on her plate. He calls her ‘mucus head’, ‘mucus brain’, ‘mucus face’. As soon as she becomes immune to it and stops cringing and trying to block her ears, he gives up.
Little Hazel steals the shell of a huntsman spider from the nature table at school. It is glossy and perfect with all of its legs and fangs still intact. She wraps it in her handkerchief and carries it home in the palm of her hand, being careful not to crush it. Even though it is just a shell (the spider having extracted its body to grow a larger covering), the skin on her arm goose-bumps with the thought the spider might suddenly come to life again and crawl into her hair. She puts the spider shell on the kitchen table and goes to the fridge to swig milk from the jug. Louie has been sleeping in the sun on the windowsill. Louie wakes, she yawns, she looks over at the kitchen table, notices the spider partially covered by the handkerchief and pounces. The table wobbles. Louie swipes at the spider and then looks down, baffled, as it disintegrates between her two front paws. Little Hazel says, ‘Bloody hell, Louie. Thanks a bloody lot.’ The spider was meant for Michael’s bed.
Michael catches two large scorpions in the woodpile. He keeps them overnight in one of Harry’s empty tobacco t
ins with the thought that they might breed, or that he can use them against Hazel. He holds the side of the tin gingerly when he prises off the lid in the morning. It’s the back end you have to worry about – the sting in the tail. But there are no longer two scorpions in the tin. There is just one very fat scorpion and, on the bottom of the tin, an amputated pair of claws, open and at the ready.
On her way to school Little Hazel sees a dark knotted lump dangling from the back of an old ewe in Mues’s top paddock. She climbs through the fence and by offering the ewe a few stems of green grass from the roadside gets close enough to identify the lump as the carcass of a willy wagtail. One of the bird’s legs is wound firmly around and around the wool, broken just at the point where the leg bones branch into the foot – the ankle – if birds have ankles. The tough skin around the bones has kept the bird attached. It must have fought hard to free itself, thrusting with both wings, trying to push off with the other foot, breaking its leg in the struggle. The willy wagtail is basted in wool grease, its feathers are flat and oily. As the sheep turns to walk away it stumbles and the carcass bangs soundlessly against its flank.
That night Little Hazel dreams she is watching Mues take down his underpants. The dream isn’t happening in a shed, but somewhere outside with green grass. She isn’t frightened; she’s a safe enough distance away. Mues holds up his shirt-tails, his trousers are puddled dumbly around his ankles – then she notices something she didn’t notice before: Mues doesn’t push his underpants down like a girl, he hooks his fingers into the elastic and lifts them out and over what’s inside. Mues hooks, he lifts. A white bird flies up and out of the fabric. A white bird as stealthy as a cat has been folded in there. It shoots straight up, stretching its wings out wide to push down on the air. As it lifts, its wings cover Mues’s face so Little Hazel can’t see if he’s shocked by this, or if he expected it. The bird, in those seconds it hovers in front of Mues’s head and chest, reminds her of something. It reminds Little Hazel of the crucifixion. The bird’s head is turned meekly sideways like the suffering Jesus, its wings are stretched out like arms in a wide-cut tunic, its fused tail feathers are the two feet nailed primly, one on top of the other, and covered in dripping blood. Mues and Little Hazel watch as the bird gains speed and air until it is over their heads. She wakes up.
Little Hazel thinks about the dream for several days. She thinks about the dream whenever she sees a boy or a man and she can get a clear look at the shape of his waist. It’s the ‘up-ness’ of the thing that troubles her. She’s seen Michael in the bath; she’s seen pictures from the National Geographic and looked in a nursing textbook on the shelf at Acacia Court. It is always down, hanging down between the legs. When she was in the shed with Mues and he promised her the pony it was down at first, but then it went up. It went up like the bird in the dream. How appalling. She feels sorry for Michael. What horror to have an animal mechanism between your legs. Out of sympathy she tries not to be mean to him, at least while she remembers, at least for a few days.
A possum dies in Betty’s roof. A foul, wet smell comes and goes in drifts, worsening as the day warms up. Flies hatch through the ceiling vents and test their new wings from room to room. The manhole for the ceiling is in Betty’s bedroom above the wardrobe. Betty lays her dresses and blouses and uniforms and her green winter coat with the brown collar on the bed to make it easier for Harry and Michael to move the wardrobe and get the ladder in place. They sprinkle perfume on a scarf and tie it over Harry’s nose and mouth for protection. Little Hazel calls him the ceiling bandit and pats the side of his knee as he climbs past her up the ladder. When the horrible deed is done – the anxious crouched-walk across the beams, the scraping of the mother corpse and her dead newborn, the scraping up of maggots (he won’t tell that to Hazel) – he’s reaching out of the darkness with his boot, feeling for the top rung of the ladder, and he sees their three faces shining up at him like just-washed plates. He’s embarrassed by their gratitude, the cups of tea; a whisky, even, that they are offering him. He hands the stinking chaff bag down to Michael and looks away from them around the room. He wouldn’t normally stare at Betty’s bed, but the mound of clothes draws his eye. It is Betty’s life in fabric. He recognises the work dresses, the good dresses he has seen at Christmas and birthdays, the winter coat. There’s something in peach silk that must be an undergarment and then something white. At the very bottom of the pile – closest to the bed so he can’t get a good look at it – is a white dress with a thick expensive lustre, like icing on a fancy cake. Harry gets a sharp ache in his gut before he even fully understands that it is probably a wedding dress; it is more than likely a wedding dress.
Harry has two baths and scrubs his hands and arms with carbolic. He is unable to eat any tea. He goes to bed early – even for a dairy farmer. He dreams of Sip with a rotting pup half out of her vagina, of his father taking a shit in a paddock of barley and squirting out a huge bubbly spray of crimson blood. In the dream, Harry and his father stand next to the circle of blood-splattered barley looking at the shit at the centre of it – a little chocolatey crescent, nothing to write home about.
The air is fresh when he goes out to milk at dawn and he takes in big gulps of it. He doesn’t look into the cans before he seals them. There’s a cursory glance to check for foreign matter, but this morning he’s not keen to look into the milk. He can’t stop seeing it in his mind though – the silky white gloss of it is fixed behind his eyes.
Four days now over a hundred. The smell of the dairy turns Harry’s stomach. He wets his sheets in the bath before sleeping and wakes steamy and exhausted in the morning. He’d stay in bed, but for the cows and the sound of the tin pinging bleakly on the roof as the day heats up. Mues has asked for help with a killer so after milking Harry and Sip cross the road and meet him under the peppercorn tree where he is preparing the ropes. Mues’s knives are set out neatly on the top of a forty-four-gallon drum – that’s his profession showing, Harry thinks. Mues has been retired for six years now, but he still talks about his work as if it is current. Mues says a slaughterman is as skilled as a surgeon. He tells Harry about a slaughterman who conducted a successful operation on one of his children (saved himself a few bob) and another who went to the southern states of America for a lucrative career executing blacks. Harry doesn’t doubt it.
Mues drags a dirty-coated ewe from the house paddock and pushes her under the tree. She’s severely wool-bound so there’s not much protest. They tie a rope around each of her back legs and hoist her up over a branch. Mues ties the ropes off, avoiding her stiff front legs. The change of angle confuses the old ewe. She stabs her front legs forwards as if she is expecting the ground to tilt back up again and meet her hooves. Mues grasps a handful of wool on the back of her head to stretch out her neck and slices through the jugular. Harry jumps back. The first spill rushes out in a jet; then it falls in with the beat of her heart, spurting in a regular pulse. Harry and Mues watch the blood run away from the tree. It seeks out the low ground in between the roots, flowing in fat streams.
The streams of blood stop at the exact point where the circle of shade from the crown of the tree runs out. Harry walks over and watches the place where the blood runs into the sun. The instant it touches the hot earth it solidifies, forming a bubbly purple jelly, piling up and up, on top of itself, in a frilly scum. Sip sniffs at the pudding blood. She tries licking it and biting it, but it disintegrates in her mouth. She tries a few more times and then slopes back into the shade. Harry stays put, though. It’s hot out here, in the weakening shade at the edge of the tree, but he pretends to be interested in the science of what is happening – how the proteins in the blood react to the heat, causing instant coagulation. He does this because he can see that the ewe is still blinking and he’d prefer not to have to look at this as Mues is peeling the pelt off her.
Harry checks the heifers for oestrus (the effluvium, the colour and thickness of discharge), telephones the stud at Bendigo and orders seven serves of Ros
edale Dreaming Fox. The next day he drives to town and collects the semen off the train. The box travels in a nest of straw on the seat beside him to protect the glassware. Every so often he takes his hand off the steering wheel and reaches across to pat the box. Egg yolk is used to cool and thin the sperm, but it doesn’t keep for long. He’s already yarded the little heifers and they are waiting for him when he gets home. He changes into his overalls and leads the first cow into the bails, showing her the feed of pollard in the trough. He lets her get her head down while he lathers his left arm up to the shoulder in a bucket of water laced with Dettol. When he pushes into her he folds his hand in the shape of a gun so it is as small as possible. His fingers are soft and bald, the nails trimmed especially short. And he grimaces, at the moment his hand enters her. The vagina is an empty glove. He can feel her organs pillowed through the vagina wall. Her bladder bounces up against his hand, he bats it away. He pushes deep inside her. The side of his face is pressed against her flank. He reaches for the cervix, using his free hand to thread the glass pipette so that it is resting on the nostril-rim. The semen flows forwards and then backwards a little over his fingertips. It’s important to withdraw slowly, to fight the panicky feeling that his arm might get stuck inside of her, trapped by the girdles and belts of her flesh.
There are seven heifers to inseminate in one morning. Harry has bred them all and bottle-fed them and sat up through the night with them when they’ve had the staggers. He’s been forceful at times about their heads – drenching them and checking their teeth, inoculating them with rumen. But insemination marks the start of their working lives. Each heifer will be impregnated, calve, lactate and suckle her calf. After a few days Harry will take the calf away and the new mother will join the herd. She’ll learn to follow the long line of cows that walk up to the sheds every morning and evening, to approach the bails, to wait while the cow in front of her is unhooked and backed out, to tolerate the dousing of her udder, the dragging weight of the cups on her teats, the bulge of the hard rubber inflations. The dark shed with its smells of anxious shit and disinfectant and motor oil and sweet, loose milk will frighten her, but Harry will be there, and sometimes another milker – Michael or Mues – and always the thin dog shivering and standing off to one side.
Mateship With Birds Page 5