by Steve Bisley
It’s 1962 and on Boxing Day I’ll be twelve.
Daryl and me and the other primary kids get off at Kanwal for our school.
The bus pulls away with the high-school kids to take them to Wyong.
I get a flash of my sister, who smiles down at me, and further along Richard squashes his face into the windowpane and leers. ‘Shithead!’
It takes me till lunchtime to get Elvis out of my head but the blonde lingers. She has wet pink lipstick and she dances like crazy.
In the playground, we play handball and drink warm milk. I miss an easy put-away shot and drift away to the boys’ toilets, to be alone. I catch a glimpse of me in the mirrors above the hand basins and, although I don’t know it then, I’m watching the boy in me begin to fade.
In the afternoon we draw numbers out of a hat to see who we will partner at our end-of-year social – our last dance in primary school. The girls already have a number. The boys all want Susan Green. She is number six. I reach into the hat, my hand begins to tremble and my face feels hot and scratchy. My mates are chanting, ‘Number six! Number six!’ I look up, straight into the blue eyes of Susan Green. I open my hand. Bingo!
Later that day we have dance practice in the school hall. I think I love Susan Green because my face gets hot when I look at her and something makes my legs shake. We meet briefly in the Barn Dance when she swirls towards me and clasps my hand in hers. She smells like a promise.
Later I ride home on the school bus. I hear the babble of kids all around me, but all I can think about is her. I am totally, utterly in love.
I get off the bus and walk the half-mile home down Carter’s Road. Mum’s in the kitchen when I arrive and there is another woman there having afternoon tea. Mum says, ‘Mrs Coombs’ daughter needs a partner for the social and I told her that I’m sure you’d be delighted to take her.’
The reason Mrs Coombs’ daughter, Jane, needs a partner for the social is that she is the fattest, ugliest girl in the school – no, make that the universe.
Mum excuses us then leads me into the lounge room out of Mrs Coombs’ earshot. She draws me close to her, which is rare. ‘Now, you know that little Jane lost her father early this year, and I think it would be great if you could take her to the social. Mrs Coombs says that Jane admires you and would love it if you would partner her. What do you say?’
What do I say? I could say I’m already partnering the best-looking girl in the school to the social. I could say that I’m so in love with her that if I don’t take her to the social I might actually die! I could say that if you make me take a baby elephant to the social, I might leave home and never come back.
What do I say? I say sure, I’ll take Jane. Why? Because of the way I’ve been raised. Mum says I am generous of spirit. Mum tells Mrs Coombs the news. Mrs Coombs is overjoyed and envelops me in a fat embrace. She is fat and sweaty, just like Jane, my new date, the girl who admires me.
A week later, on the last day of primary school, we are packing up our belongings and clearing out our desks when it settles on me that this is the end of the first chapter of the book of my life. At lunchtime I take a curling sandwich from my bag and head up the hill behind the cricket pitch for a last look.
Down below, it all looks suddenly small, like I’ve outgrown it. Like a snakeskin that’s been discarded for the new one underneath. There’s the weather shed where we’d run to when it rained; the handball court with the fading lines; the neat classrooms where we grew and learnt so much. I took a marble from my pocket and buried it where I sat so that a piece of me stayed there like a memory.
I told Susan Green what had happened between the mothers. She said she understood, but I knew she didn’t, not really.
I took Jane to the social.
I made sure she had a good time because Mum was right: I was generous of spirit. I watched Susan across the room with her new partner. I felt the loss somewhere deep inside and it really hurt. It hurt so much!
It was sewn into your skin, this first love, like all the other firsts; like breath, like food, like warmth. It stayed.
I had bought Susan some makeup from Coles with my pocket money. Lipstick, eye shadow, mascara and a lot of other mysterious stuff. I got a whole brown paper bag full for ten bob. I’d carried the brown paper bag around for a week, trying to find the right time to give it to her, but finally I was too embarrassed, too scared.
On that very last day of primary school, as the buses lined up to take us home, I fought my way through a wall of kids onto her bus to find her. I thrust the now soiled bag at her and blurted out the words ‘I like you’. I stumbled off the bus, my face flushed red from the ordeal, and lost myself in the crowd. She went to a different high school from me. I hoped she liked the present. I hoped she liked me.
Summer
I could always just hold out for summer and the Christmas school holidays. This was my last holiday before high school. I didn’t know if I was ready for big school; I didn’t know what it would be like. It worried me, the unknown bit.
But I had six weeks of the summer break before then, with Christmas and my birthday to look forward to. Most days we headed to the creek. It ran from the bottom of the paddocks and snaked its way past the stands of paper barks and river gums to the reedy northern borders of the farm, to finally tip into the southern end of Lake Macquarie. My father had dammed the section below the paddocks and pumped the salty water out till, over time, it filled with fresh water for irrigation.
We would head to the salty side below the dam wall to fish and swim. We made rude canoes out of corrugated iron and filled the open ends with pitch. We bombed off a rope fixed to the overhanging branch of a river gum. We bombed till our guts ached. We caught leatherjackets and roasted their sweet flesh over a fire. We made damper out of flour and water, squeezed it around green sticks to cook over the coals. Once done, we’d pull the sticks out and pour golden syrup into the steaming holes.
Some days we’d row our loony canoes all the way to the lake, bailing water like crazy to keep afloat. We only came home when it grew dark, and only because we had to.
On other days we’d go further. We’d take our bikes and lay skid marks on all the gravel tracks to other lakes.
Some evenings, if the moon was high, we’d go prawning, the whole family. We’d drive to the lake at dusk and set up our lamps on the beach and light a fire under a large drum of salted water. We’d get the big dragnet out of the car and unfurl it on the beach. It had a long pole at either end with the net strung between them. We’d drag the net into the water with its long pocket trailing behind and trawl up and down a few times. Then we’d drag the net up the beach till the pocket was on the sand. There were always heaps of prawns and we’d throw them straight into the boiling water and eat them between thick buttered slices of white bread. All along the beach there were families prawning like us. Catching dinner on a school night!
Sometimes in early summer, when the big westerly winds drove the inland desert heat before them, when the air was so hot, it was hard to take a breath of it.
When the earth cracked and opened and the big gums sagged in the heat, a spark would strike and flare way back through the walls of bush, beyond the farmlands, deep in the backblocks.
Country people had the sense of it before they ever saw the smoke and long before the flames. It was the hint of a smell that sat on top of the breeze, rode it and made farmers lift from their work and stare.
There was nothing in our lives more threatening than a bushfire.
Nothing even came close.
The blue haze came first, and when it deepened the sun grew dim and red. We started the big diesel pump at the creek and wet the whole house down. We cleared the leaves from the gutters and filled the bath.
We waited.
When it came, the noise was deafening. It had its own internal wind that pushed it forward like a breath. The radiant heat was so intense the heads of the giant gums exploded, their burnt leaves showering down to ignite everyt
hing they touched.
Birds streaked across the sky, maddened by the heat. Wild things raced from the bush, burnt and blinded. Vast columns of acrid white smoke billowed a mile high, rising in heat-fuelled thermals to drift in the jet stream.
We stood blasted in a paddock of green and watched the demons dance before us. Great tongues of fire drove us back and back till all we could do was to cower and hope. We thrashed the edges of it with wet hessian bags for small victories. Finally, after it had left us, we trod through the X-rayed remnants of the bush, our footfall deadened by a layer of ash, the sour taste of smouldering charcoal on our tongues, to douse the spot fires that flared for days.
Death
There were other fires in other years. People died in them.
One family, new to the district, were overcome and incinerated in their new house. They were found all in one room in a charred huddle. The mother and baby had melted together to be forever as one. The father, at the top of the pyre, had tried to protect them all with a wide embrace that would last for eternity. We all went to look, to learn what sadness meant.
I had seen death before.
Once, on the school bus on our way home, we had slowed to a crawl to finally come upon the twisted crush of an accident on the highway.
The police and ambulance were there, and as we edged by we saw four bodies laid out on the grass verge under some yellow plastic. A light rain was falling on a pair of empty school shoes. A man wept in the arms of a policeman.
Death rode the highway. There were no seatbelts and no breath tests. You could drink till you were barely able to walk, but if you could make it to the car and actually get the thing started, you were free to go. Free, clear and deadly.
Aunty Vi, our other neighbour, had lost her husband three years before. There had been urgent voices at our door in the middle of the night. My father had gone with a lantern and sat with the stricken man while the life left him. Dad came home early the next morning, ashen-faced, and was quiet for a week. We saw the blackened polished car arrive that day and watched neat men carry Mr Tillock away forever.
A local farmer died when the tractor he was driving rolled over. I knew his son, Michael. His dad had ploughed all morning, and around midday had stopped for lunch. He had kicked off his muddy boots, gone into the house, sat down with his wife for a cuppa and a sandwich and probably a chat. An hour later he was back on the tractor when he hit a stump. He got off and tied the stout length of chain that he always carried with him around the stump, got back on, depressed the clutch with his left foot, engaged first gear and hit the gas. He started to release the clutch slowly to take up the strain, the stout chain snaking through the grass as the tractor inched forward. His foot slipped off the clutch because of the mud on his boots. The tractor shot forward, the chain whipped taut, the tractor reared, and the man saw an expanse of blue, blue sky before the machine crushed him and drove him deep.
Animals were different, they excused you from grief. There was always a valid reason for their deaths.
They made it easy for us to kill them.
I shot a blue wren with my slug gun, to see what would happen. I saw the exact moment when the life left it. But I was just a kid and it was just a bird.
It didn’t pay to get attached to most of the animals at our place; you knew they weren’t going to be around for long. The horses were safe but most everything else had a use-by date. The chooks were fairly temporary, which was a shame. I had names for all of them. There was Margaret, a big fat black chook. I named her after a big fat black chick I’d seen on TV. There was Carol, who was quiet and small and reminded me of a girl in my class.
Sometimes I’d put a washing-up glove on my head with all the finger bits sticking up. I’m pretty sure it made me look like a chicken. It mucked with the rooster’s brain. He would watch me with a baleful eye, unsure of my intentions, his broad comb erect and the spurs on his legs trembling and ready.
Margaret was my favourite. I’d go down to collect the eggs and spend hours in the coop sitting in the straw. She would circle me slowly, chortling and clucking and raking through the hay for seeds and grit.
We killed our chooks and ate them. Sometimes at dinner, when Mum had put the roast chicken on the table, someone would say, ‘Is this Margaret?’
I’d watch my father kill the chooks. We’d go into the chook pen and fight through the blur of feathers as they scattered, grab the chosen one by the legs and then carry it upside down to the chopping block and take its tiny head off with the axe. Sometimes they’d run around headless till their tiny hearts stopped and they lay still. We’d pluck the feathers and pull their guts out and they were ready to be eaten.
One time a local man brought a pig to our place. It stood in a sort of large pen on the back of this bloke’s truck. He asked my father if he could kill and butcher it at our place, because he didn’t have a shed of his own to hang it in. The old man agreed, for a share of the meat. I went to have a look at the pig. It was a whopper. Its little trotters seemed too small for it and its huge ears hung forward and covered most of its face. It seemed happy enough in its pen.
I drifted over to where my father and the other bloke were discussing how best to dispatch the pig. It soon became clear that neither of them had the faintest idea as to how to go about it. There was mention of ‘stunning’ and the need to ‘bleed’ the meat, but the details were sketchy at best. After more discussion and head scratching it was decided by the quorum of two that they would lead the pig down to the paddock and, while one of them held the pig steady with a length of rope, the other would shoot it between the eyes. They would then transport it to the shed on the carryall that was attached to the tractor. There they would haul it up to the rafters and butcher the carcass. All good.
The old man goes to get his rifle, as he is the designated shooter. I wait with the other bloke as he coaxes the pig from the cage with the promise of an apple. The pig follows the bloke with the apple and with the help of a stout plank is soon off the back of the truck and, for the moment, safely on the ground. The old man returns with the loaded rifle and the pig obediently follows our solemn party down to the waiting paddock.
The pig gets another apple and the bloke with the rope turns the pig towards where my father is standing a few paces away. The bloke with the rope settles the pig. It’s occupied with the last of the apple and seems happy enough. I retreat behind my father and look through the fingers of my hand in an attempt to lessen the horror of what I’m about to see. My father braces himself and lifts the rifle to his shoulder. The bloke with the rope retreats. The pig munches on the apple. Silence.
The rifle bucks. A puff of fine dust drifts from the pig’s forehead. The pig munches on the apple. We wait …
The pig munches on.
The cows in the other paddock eat themselves forward.
A small plume of smoke curls from the hole in the forehead of the pig and mingles with the earlier dust to rise into the deathly quiet of the sky. No one moves. The rope lies slack in the pig bloke’s hands. My father lowers the smoking gun. We wait, I watch, still squinting through the web of my fingers. The pig wonders why its ears are ringing, remembers the warmth of its mother and the taste of a sweet green apple and pitches forward on to the soft, tender grass.
They slit its throat then. The blood fairly gushes from the wound and empties the pig in a heartbeat. They string it up in the shed and shave the bristles short with the cut-throat razor, wash it down with boiling water, then set about it with the bright knives.
Another time Aunty Vi has a cow that has given birth. The calf is healthy, but the cow is showing signs of distress so the vet is called. My father goes to see if he can help, and I tag along.
We find the vet in the paddock with one arm up to the shoulder inside the cow. He says there’s another calf inside, dead. This is too much for Dad, who flees the scene, both hands clutching his mouth.
I stay with the vet. He drops a metal ball deep into the cow. There is a
fine wire attached to the end of the ball. He passes the ball around the body of the swelling calf and hauls the end of it from the rear of the cow. He holds the two ends of fine wire and starts to move them in a sawing motion. The idea is to cut the calf into pieces within the cow and remove the swollen body bit by bit. Now I understand why my father fled. The vet removes a leg sawn through the hip. He drops the steel ball back into the cow, retrieves the ends of fine wire and starts the sawing process again.
After fifteen long minutes, there is a jigsaw of body parts stacked in a bloody heap beside us, but the puzzle isn’t yet halfway complete. The vet needs something from his van, so I take over. I feel the vibrations through the wire and the cut going deeper into the flesh and bone of the dead calf. Finally the wire comes free as the vet arrives back and he plunges his arm deep inside the cow and retrieves the calf’s head. The addition of the head starts to give the puzzle some meaning, but there’s more to do.
We take a break to catch our breath. The living calf nuzzles its mother’s udder and begins to feed. In the break the vet takes some blood from the cow and says that it has a massive infection and won’t survive. He takes a lethal dose of barbiturate from his bag. I hold the cow’s head and twist it to one side to expose a large vein in the neck. He plunges the needle into the vein and the cow dies on its feet and sags gently to the ground. The vet thanks me and goes to talk to Aunty Vi. I sit with the cow for a while till the warmth leaves her. I sit with the bits of a dead calf. I just sit.
Maybe it was a country thing, but we did see a lot of death.
I’m used to it, I can sit with it. I’ve seen the moment, the last thing.
We killed things; some for food, some, we thought, to protect us from being killed ourselves.
Like snakes!
We killed them all!
We had so many snakes around the farm that you’d hardly go a day without seeing one.
We had all the bad ones: red-bellied black, king brown – killers!