Living As a Moon

by Owen Marshall

  Mr Ancaster discharged himself after just the month of July. He said nothing to me of his intention and made no farewell. Dr Bigg told me it was against his advice. I knew there’d been secret tippling. Nothing at the Mather Centre, certainly not my company, was able to withstand the siren call of mother’s ruin.

  I made his defection one more reason for sticking to my own resolve. He was the doppelgänger of my future self if I couldn’t beat the drink. Some difficult nights in rehab I dreamt of him. He’d be holed up in some wretched room with an unpainted chipboard wardrobe and a metal fire escape, I told myself. From the window he would watch a pin-striped starling on the rusted rotary clothesline, and chickweed frothing over old tyres heaped behind the garage. The only greetings he would receive would be from checkout girls and Sally Army volunteers. He’d put pencil rings around menial job vacancies in a folded newspaper, and his hand about the neck of the bottle would shake. At night he would lie awake, listen to the mice in the ceiling, cough just to hear something human and familiar.

  The burnish of his ox-blood brogues, the perfect crease of his duplicate trousers, profusions of hothouse flowers, the pre-lunch fragrant consummations in the Aro Valley boarding house — all memories of some high peak of his life from which he was inexorably descending, hand in hand with gin.

  BRIAN AND BAZ

  ‘He’s late again,’ said Brian.

  ‘You know Baz,’ said Jenny.

  ‘He needs a bloody bomb under him.’

  ‘He’s always the same,’ said Jenny. ‘You know our Baz.’

  Brian had the ex-army Bedford parked outside, with the long, double-axle trailer behind that held the sawbench. He sat at the kitchen table with a view of the street. In the lunchbox in front of him were some extra sandwiches and carrot cake for Baz. It was the same every working day, as if Jenny felt sorry for him; as if she wanted to show Baz, as a single guy, a glimpse of the substantial advantages of being married. It was a typical generosity, and Brian admired his wife for that. What got to him was Baz’s disordered life; so laid back he was almost horizontal. After a year working together it was never a surprise, and never any easier for Brian to accommodate.

  He watched Baz arrive in the even older Commer truck with high netting sides to hold in loads of firewood. Baz swung out of the cab and came up the drive in long strides, the steel-tipped boots cast like weights to stretch his step. His legs were lean and brown, he wore a blue tartan Swannie, his hair was black and unruly at the crown. His teeth were good except for a gap in the top left side. Jenny said he had a certain unreformed charm to him.

  ‘Morning,’ he said to them both.

  ‘Hi, Baz,’ said Jenny. ‘Good weekend?’

  ‘Living quietly,’ said Baz with a grin.

  ‘Hi,’ said Brian. He took the lunchbox and parka. ‘See you then,’ he said to his wife.

  ‘See you, Jenny,’ said Baz.

  As Brian and Baz walked out to the trucks, Brian asked if he’d filled up on the way over, and Baz said that he’d been running a bit late and would have to stop at the petrol station at the junction. ‘Jesus, Baz. It’s a good half-hour drive to McFedron’s, you know. We need to get stuck into that windbreak today.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll start getting set up out there. Might pay to fill up the chainsaw can at the junction.’

  ‘Okay. See you then,’ said Baz. As he pulled away he saw Brian checking the sawbench trailer, tugging at each of the adjuster straps. Nothing left to chance with our Brian.

  He was methodically setting up when Baz arrived at McFedron’s. He wore his yellow, hard hat and the collar of the grey work shirt was turned up to protect his neck from the sun. Brian never tanned: just reddened and peeled over each summer. His arms were thick and his shoulders and chest filled out the shirt seams, though he wasn’t a tall man.

  As Baz began to help, he noticed that the big blade and the chainsaws had been sharpened. ‘I went up to the yard for a while on Sunday and did it then,’ said Brian. He wouldn’t have mentioned it had he not been asked. He looked back down the track towards the farm buildings. A ute was jogging its way towards them. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, and cocked his thumb towards it.

  Colin McFedron walked over and greeted them. Most cockies are interested in purpose-built machinery, consider themselves capable of putting together something that will do a job okay. Colin walked around the iron bench, noted the big front rollers that were detachable, the small tractor engine adapted for belt drive, the heavy safety guard of the blade. ‘Well, she’s pretty compact all right,’ he said. He grabbed the metal guard to see how it was triggered. ‘Everybody’s so much more safety conscious now, aren’t they? Jesus, some of those old get-ups, eh? And the number of guys hacking bits off themselves even with just chainsaws.’

  ‘Makes you wonder,’ said Baz. He and Brian kept getting the sawbench securely anchored with waratahs deep in the ground. If you stopped working every time a cocky passed the time of day you’d get nothing done.

  Colin looked up at the straggle of trees on the slope. ‘You’ll have a couple of loads of slabs for me, I suppose?’ he said. Baz smiled to himself. There was always a little try on, and Brian always held the line.

  ‘Four hundred bucks for a piled load in the big truck: cheaper than usual because it’s you, and we can dump it by the shed in passing.’

  ‘I thought you might toss it in with the contract.’

  ‘There’s bugger all margin as is,’ said Brian. ‘The windbreak’s never been thinned. Most of it’s just firewood — bugger all sawn timber.’

  ‘There’s some old man macrocarpa in there as well as pine.’ said Colin.

  ‘Shits of things to bring down, aren’t they, Baz?’

  ‘Bastards of things actually,’ said Baz.

  ‘Does burn well, though,’ said Colin. Brian was squatting at eye level, checking the bench was even.

  ‘We can make sure your load has plenty,’ he said.

  Colin McFedron was happy with that. You didn’t get anything for nothing from Brian Annit: what you did get was exactly what was promised. A fair deal and good measure. No one ever said he’d tried to put one across them.

  When Colin had gone they went up to the trees and had a talk about how they’d fell them. It wasn’t a big stand — twenty-nine mature, uncared for trees. Brian had counted and assessed them before giving his quote. He’d said he wasn’t interested in the creek willows. They were hard to get at, never any decent timber in them, and the firewood sparked.

  Baz and Brian raddled the trunks of those trees they needed to top, and began the job. As they’d only been setting up during the first part of the morning they didn’t bother with a morning tea break. Although taller than Brian, Baz was good in the trees. He was supple and strong, climbing surely into the branches with the chainsaw on a leather strap across his shoulders. He had an economy of effort and endurance that Brian envied at times. The two of them worked high up and well apart in separate pines, picked out by the whine of their chainsaws, the flashes of safety harness, helmets and bright red ear muffs.

  Brian came down first and sat in the shade of the Bedford to have his lunch. Then the noise of Baz’s saw stopped and he came through the windbreak, his boots noiseless in the dry mulch of pine needles. Everything seemed quiet after the tempest of the chainsaws. Gradually the sounds natural to that landscape were able to assemble again, to provide the context of relaxation. The subdued noise of the breeze in the trees and the grasses, the calls of returning birds, the lazy barking of one of McFedron’s dogs. Baz got a school backpack that held his lunch from the cab of his truck and sat down by his partner, his back against a wheel. Sweat put a sheen on his brown skin and darkened his hair further. ‘Ah well, Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s a start,’ said Brian. ‘What do you think we should knock over first?’

  ‘Let’s do that dirty big macrocarpa bastard at the bottom.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I reckon there�
�s some good timber in that,’ said Baz. He was a good judge of timber was Baz, even though he hadn’t worked with it as long as Brian.

  ‘We might be in luck there,’ said Brian. He pushed his lunchbox a bit closer to his partner, and with the flat of his hand indicated the amount of good food his wife had packed. Every day they worked together he made that unspoken invitation, and every one of those days Baz took nothing from him until the invitation came. Baz had been dragged up, but had innate courtesy.

  ‘How come?’ he said.

  ‘Some guy rang up from this woodturners’ and carvers’ club. Said they were looking for close-grained macrocarpa blocks, especially with irregular grain. Good money too.’

  ‘Good one,’ said Baz. ‘Can we deliver in one hit?’

  ‘Wants us to keep it under cover until it dries out. He said there’s other special wood they’d pay for too. Walnut and stuff.’

  ‘Sounds a bloody useful contact,’ said Baz.

  He lay down with his hands under his head, and yarned a bit about a whitebait possie his brother had on the Coast. His brother was keen for them to team up. Brian remembered the guy he’d employed before Baz, who’d always had a iPod going so that he might as well have been in another world, and had to be tapped on the arm or shoulder to get attention. Could be bloody dangerous too if a quick reaction was needed. There was an ease about Baz, even when working, a disinclination to worry. Sometimes it irritated Brian, sometimes it was a restful counter to his own need to plan ahead. It might never happen, something will turn up, she’ll be jake, no sweat, we can handle it, sweet as, Baz would say.

  Brian kept his hat on even in the shade of the truck, but he undid his shirt so that he could feel the slight breeze on the reddish hair of his chest speckled with sawdust. He said he’d been seriously thinking of ditching the Commer and buying a Mack with only 87,000 on the clock that Menzie’s Transport wanted to flick. Magpies were mobbing a harrier hawk above the windbreak, a single white cloud formed childish shapes in its movement, the newly sharpened edge of the big saw blade caught flashes of the sun. ‘The old girl can’t go on for ever,’ said Baz.

  Brian’s cellphone went from inside the cab, and he answered it, took an order for a trailer load of dry pine and wrote the details down in an out-of-date diary with a vinyl cover. ‘Before eight o’clock day after tomorrow, okay?’ he said. He could drop it before picking up Baz. The order reminded him of another he’d promised before the middle of the week. ‘There’s that load to the Indian woman in Fountain Street too, isn’t there.’ He was talking as much to himself as Baz, but Baz replied.

  ‘Did it yesterday afternoon,’ said Baz. ‘I filled the small trailer and took it round on my car.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ Brian felt a bit guilty then about chipping him for being late that morning. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  They rested in the truck’s shade. The easterly got up and sang in the pines and the sharpened teeth of the big circular saw. Baz saw Brian check the pocket watch he kept in a leather pouch at his waist. A wristwatch got knocked about in their work. He knew Brian would get up exactly an hour after he’d knocked off. It was his finicky way, and even got to Baz sometimes so that he’d deliberately take a minute or two longer.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Brian. He stretched his thick arms up and arched back slowly to relieve the muscles. He lifted his yellow hat and replaced it after fluffing his hair. ‘Let’s drop that big bugger,’ he said, and took up his chainsaw. ‘Don’t forget your goggles,’ he told Baz, who often did.

  The macrocarpa came down like the end of the world: a massive noise and flurry of smashing limbs, dust and foliage. The great stump was left with a mohawk cut of splinters where the scarf met the back cut. Baz and Brian cleared the trunk first, each aware without the need to talk, glancing to see the other’s progress, perhaps holding a hand up to signal that a big branch was almost through that might jar the trunk and so be a danger to his mate.

  They didn’t notice Amy McFedron until she was almost beside them. She stood in front of Baz and held up a supermarket bag in which she had four scones on a disposable plastic tray. Baz and Brian cut the motors, and Baz took the offering. ‘Thanks for that,’ he said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ added Brian, but in a tone of appreciation.

  New faces on the farm were an interest for Amy. The scones were her way of checking the guys out. She was a tall, full-breasted woman in her mid-forties, and confident with men. She told Baz she was glad to see the windbreak going, and that she’d persuaded Colin to replant English trees closer to the farmhouse. She’d had a trip to Britain and said there the farmland had a lot more trees and greater variety. The stock benefits too, she said. Neither Brian nor Baz had been outside New Zealand. ‘We need to become a lot more conscious of replanting in this country,’ Amy said. Both men nodded: their job was cutting down trees, but they were quite happy for other people to plant them.

  Baz and Brian watched her walk back to the ute. She gave a wave as she drove away. ‘There’s still plenty of mileage left there,’ said Baz. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Yeah, if you want to get your head blown off,’ said Brian. ‘I hear Colin gets pretty toey about her.’

  ‘Still got it,’ said Baz. Brian thought so to, but as a married guy considered the opinion best kept to himself.

  ‘Might as well have our break now,’ he said.

  They took the scones back to the sawbench and the trucks, got the thermos out. Brian had a policy of no beer until the end of the day. Baz thought it one of his nanny ideas, but there you are. Amy’s scones, farm size and well buttered, were soon eaten. Baz was thinking about Emily Sanderson, who stayed over with him sometimes at his flat. Emily worked in the office of Nation Concrete, and liked a good pub rave in the weekends. He could do a hell of lot worse, couldn’t he, and he wasn’t the only one interested, he knew that. She was a bright cookie too. Baz didn’t have much of an education, but he was shrewd enough, and liked quickness in others. Sex was hot with Emily when she decided to give it, but she was fun to be with at other times as well. And Baz didn’t like a woman to be too possessive. He’d had experience of that, including a girl in Ashburton who threatened to commit suicide when he stopped going with her. Baz didn’t want any of that sort of thing. Even thinking about it made him feel uneasy. He could do a lot worse than Emily Sanderson.

  ‘What do you think of Emily?’ he asked Brian.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You met her when you came round to the flat with that meat a couple of weeks ago.’ Brian remembered the meat: a half-hogget that Kel Weston gave him because he was pleased with the sawn timber for the new woolshed. Brian had kept the forequarter and taken the rest to Baz. Fifty–fifty for any perks was what Brian always said, a fair deal, and what he said he stuck to. He remembered the woman too when reminded. The name was forgotten, but he recalled a fair-haired girl with thin legs and a good figure. She’d talked sense in a loud voice. Brian didn’t particularly like a piercing voice on a woman, but talking sense was more important.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘Seemed a good sort to me. Nice-looking girl.’

  ‘I thought of getting serious,’ said Baz.

  Brian didn’t say anything for a while. It was important, what Baz had said. Baz didn’t bring up personal things very often, and Brian wanted to do the matter justice, even though it was about time to get back to the macrocarpa log. ‘Well, I don’t really know her, of course,’ he said, ‘but she seemed a good sort to me. You’ve been seeing her a while now, haven’t you?

  ‘A fair while, yeah,’ said Baz.

  ‘Is she even-tempered?’ Brian’s brother was married to a woman of tempestuous moods, and Brian thought it a bloody tragedy. His brother said sometimes he felt like hitting her when she flew off the handle.

  ‘She’s pretty good,’ said Baz. ‘Throws a shitty from time to time, but usually I deserve it. But then we’re not living together, so you’re not sure are you?’

  ‘Keep aw
ay from a moody woman, that’s all I’d say,’ said Brian. ‘That’s bloody important, I reckon.’

  ‘You’d be right,’ said Baz. He was thinking of the Ashburton girl.

  Brian wasn’t going to risk further advice on such a tricky and personal concern. He felt lucky in his own marriage, but never attempted to analyse it. He checked his pocket watch, and got to his feet. ‘Ah, well,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Baz, and they picked up their goggles, hard hats and ear muffs and walked back up the slope to the fallen tree. Without any comment they stood for moment enjoying the view and the quiet before starting the chainsaws. The downs were patched with crops of different, subdued colours, and willows marked the snaking path of the creek. Some of the grass was shut up for hay, and the wind made soft, sweeping undulations in it. The late afternoon sun was close to the skyline made by the foothills, and already some groups of gulls were flying back towards the coast. Neither man had anything to say about the rightness they felt in working there.

  They had the trunk lying free, and many of the branches reduced to firewood, before they knocked off for the day. Even though they were accustomed to the work, their arms were getting twitchy with fatigue, and that wasn’t good when working with chainsaws. Brian lacked the natural balance that Baz possessed in physical work, and he was older, but he compensated with effort and strength. ‘I’m about buggered,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be easier tomorrow on the sawbench,’ Baz said. Brian had to push himself, didn’t he: had to prove day after day that he could hack it. Why couldn’t the silly bastard just ease up a bit? But Baz admired the tenacity of it, even so. Brian could work the arse off most guys.

  They both put their gear into the Bedford. Brian took off his steel-capped boots and put on sneakers worn down at the heel. ‘Fancy a beer on the way in?’ he said. He took his cellphone from the glove compartment and clumsily rang Jenny. His voice was self-conscious. ‘We’re on our way,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop for a beer at the Oaks. Shouldn’t be long though.’ A hundred wives might think differently, but Jenny knew one beer would be it, and so did Baz. Sometimes on these occasions he stayed on to drink and Brian went on home.