Racing the Moon

by Michelle Morgan

  Lance handed the shovels to our team. ‘There are charcoal pits under all that dirt. We hafta dig out all the charcoal before we can make a new pit. Yer gunna love this, Joe!’

  While Lance stood there barking orders, Charlie, Pete and I shovelled dirt from the top of our mound until we hit something made of metal.

  ‘We need to do the rest by hand,’ Lance said. ‘That tin’s razor sharp.’ Getting down on our hands and knees, we removed all of the dirt from the overlapping sheets of tin. ‘Be real careful liftin’ ’em off or ya’ll slice ya hands open.’

  Under the tin was a large pit filled with lumps of charcoal.

  ‘Joe, go get a dozen hessian bags from Sister Ambrose to pack this lot into,’ Lance said, grinning.

  What he didn’t tell me until I got back was that Pete and I would be digging up the charcoal and filling the bags while he and Charlie started collecting dead wood for the new pit. This was payback and I wasn’t about to argue the toss. It was hard, filthy work and by the time Pete and I’d finished shovelling all of the charcoal into bags, we were black from head to toe.

  ‘What’s all this charcoal for anyway?’ I asked Pete.

  ‘Fuel for Henry’s truck, mostly,’ he replied. ‘The Three Sisters also need some for their hot-water heater an’ the copper in the laundry. Charcoal burns hotter than wood, ya know.’

  I’d never heard of trucks that ran on charcoal before and couldn’t see them taking off in Sydney.

  We wandered down to the creek to have a drink and cool off. The creek was in the shadow of the mountain at that time of the afternoon. It was cold in the shade and the water was icy – refreshing to drink but too cold for a swim. Pete and I sat on the creek bank, listening to the frogs croaking. They were so loud and annoying that I started to get a headache.

  ‘Let’s go to the orchard an’ pick some fruit,’ Pete said, jumping to his feet.

  We ran around the orchard, picking as many oranges and grapefruit as we could carry back for afternoon tea. Sister Ambrose used a razor-sharp pocket knife that hangs off her rosary beads to cut the fruit in half. By the time I’d polished off two oranges and a grapefruit, I had juice running down my arms and chin. Pete and I volunteered to take all the skins to the compost heap next to the veggie garden. Nothing is ever wasted at the Farm. There are no garbage bins – what can’t be re-used in some way gets burned in the incinerator.

  It was time to make a new charcoal pit – the last thing I felt like doing. Charlie and Lance passed dead branches and small logs down to Pete and me, and our job was to make layers with them inside the pit. At least it was easier than shovelling charcoal into bags. When there were enough layers, we grabbed handfuls of twigs and dry leaves to fill up the spaces. The ground around our pit was totally cleared. There wasn’t a leaf or blade of grass left in sight – smooth as a cricket pitch.

  We all lent a hand to light the fire in our pit. Sister Ambrose gave us some matches but it wasn’t easy getting the wood and leaves alight. There was a lot of smoke but not much flame. When it was finally burning hot, we covered the pit with the sheets of tin then shovelled the dirt back on top.

  The pit work isn’t over until the bags of charcoal are loaded onto Henry’s cart, and more dead wood and branches collected to dry out for the next charcoal duty in a few weeks’ time. With everyone pitching in, the charcoal was loaded onto the cart in no time.

  ‘I’ll meet you boys back at the barn in half an hour,’ Sister Ambrose called out, taking off in the horse-drawn cart.

  ‘The best wood is down by the creek. I’ll race ya,’ Pete said, taking off and already a few yards in front. He was fast but I soon caught up and could’ve overtaken him but didn’t.

  ‘Over here,’ he said, climbing up a river gum that was overhanging the creek bank.

  We sat quietly on one of the branches, and watched as Lance and Charlie ran to the water’s edge, looking all around. They were almost directly below us.

  ‘Where are they?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I don’t trust ’em,’ said Lance.

  I signalled one, two, three, then we jumped. I landed on Lance’s back, while Pete jumped on Charlie, the four of us wrestling on the creek bank.

  ‘Ya little bastard!’ Lance shouted. He rolled me over and then grabbed my feet in his large man hands, dragging me face down into the creek. I tried to throw my body around to break free but couldn’t. ‘Time to teach ya a lesson!’ he said, as I thrashed about, swallowing water.

  ‘Let him go, he’ll drown!’ Pete shouted. As soon as Lance let go of my feet, I rolled over and saw Pete on Lance’s back – but not for long. Lance swung around and threw him off into the water.

  ‘That’ll teach both o’ yer who’s boss ’round here!’ Lance stormed off back to the pits.

  ‘He’s a nut case,’ said Pete. I was busy coughing water out of my lungs, but couldn’t have agreed more.

  ‘Ya should see him on a bad day,’ Charlie said, offering me his hand to get up out of the water. Walking along the creek bank, we picked up as many dead branches and small logs as we could carry to the pits. When we got back, Lance wasn’t there; nobody was.

  I was tired and hungry – we all were, and still had milking duty to do. On the way to the barn, I looked at the sheep in the paddock and the chooks in the pen in a new light. They were no longer woolly lambs and clucking chooks, but mouth-watering Sunday roast dinners.

  With the milking and separating done and the cows herded back into the paddock, it was all hands on deck to get the showers ready. There were two cold-water drums and a hot one outside the shower shed. One team was on pump duty with the cold drums, while another kept the fire going under the hot drum and pumped warm water into the shed.

  The rest of us took it in turns to strip off and shower. There are only three shower heads in the shed and no taps. Although cold water is always being pumped, it only comes out in fits and bursts. Every ten seconds, warm water is pumped through as well, but only enough to make it bearable. There’s just enough water to work up a lather with the one bar of soap we have to share, but at least the showers aren’t freezing cold like at St Bart’s. I had to scrub my skin with a brush to get all the black soot and dirt off, and was red raw by the time I’d finished. I looked like a skinned rabbit.

  Henry brought jars of sticky sap that had been squeezed from a cactus plant for us to rub onto our skin to soothe and calm it down. It worked a treat.

  MATES

  CHAPTER 25

  It didn’t take long for me to settle into the daily routines of the Farm. Although every part of my body was aching, I was starting to enjoy the hard, physical work. I’d also made some friends.

  Pete and Charlie are my new best mates. Forget about the Three Bears – that’s kid’s stuff. The rules have changed and I was playing with the big boys now. There are bullies like Lance and outsiders like Charlie and Pete – the boys that no-one ever wants to play with in the playground. It’s different at the Farm, you can’t be too picky about who your friends are.

  Charlie’s my second-best mate. He’s big for his age, a bit slow but not stupid. He hadn’t said more than two words to me until the incident at the creek. Once he started talking, though, it was hard to stop him: ‘Lived with me grandparents since I was five. Mum an’ Dad just up an’ left one day to go fruit pickin’ an’ never came home. “Better off without ’em,” is what Gran an’ Grandad said.

  ‘After a few years, I started gettin’ into trouble, breakin’ into people’s homes; stole money an’ liquor mostly. I got caught one too many times. Me grandparents, bein’ the good Catholics they are, turned to the parish priest rather than the police. That priest had it in for me from the very first time I broke into his presbytery. I only stole a few coins – he had a whole jarful anyway. I never cleaned anyone out, always left somethin’ behind. Times are hard – it’s the Depression, ya know.

  ‘If I got thirsty on the job, I’d take a few swigs o’ whatever was lyin’ aroun’ – rum, brandy, sher
ry, beer – I tried ’em all. It wasn’t long before I got a taste for liquor, so I started stealin’ that too. Not sure if it was the money or the liquor that bastard priest was more worried about. I was too drunk to understand what he was tryin’ to tell me.’

  Apart from beer, the only liquor I’d had in my life was a few sips of altar wine that Harry gave me when Father Dennis wasn’t watching. It looked like blood and tasted like vinegar – I nearly choked on it. Not my thing at all.

  Pete’s been my best mate since my first day at the Farm. He looks just like my little brother, Kit, except he has straight brown hair. They have the same blue eyes and crooked smile, and climb trees like monkeys – they could be a trapeze act in a circus. If Pete wasn’t two years older, they could pass for twins.

  Unlike Charlie, Pete isn’t the one with the drinking problem in his family – it’s his stepdad. Pete hates his stepdad and, by the sound of things, the feeling is mutual. Pete has two half-sisters who are much younger than him.

  ‘If I go anywhere near Elsie an’ Dot, I get a beltin’ even if I’m just playin’ games with ’em. I cop the blame for everythin’,’ he said. There are still yellow and green bruises on Pete’s small, skinny body from the last belting his stepdad gave him.

  ‘What does your mum do when your dad belts you?’ I asked. I can relate to beltings, having had a few myself.

  ‘He’s not me dad – me real dad’s dead. Mum’s got a photo of Dad in his army uniform. Half Chinese he was. His father came out here from China lookin’ for gold, an’ then he met me gran an’ married her. I wish me Dad was still alive – he’d stick up for me. When me stepdad belts me, Mum just keeps doin’ whatever she’s doin’ an’ minds her own business, otherwise he lays into her. Sometimes she even takes his side. Makes me sick. She never sticks up for me, says I’m just like me father. I’m glad I’m not like me stepdad – I hate him.’ Pete gets really angry every time he talks about his stepdad.

  ‘Why were you sent here?’ I asked. It didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Tried to top meself. The doctor said I was a danger to meself an’ me family. He’s the one sent me here – pays me board as well.’

  It had never occurred to me that you’d have to pay money to stay at the Farm. Times were much tougher than I’d thought.

  Listening to Pete’s story, I felt like a wimp. I had nothing to complain about – well maybe not nothing, just nowhere near as much as Pete. I was paying for my crime, which is more than I could say for Brother Felix. If I hadn’t punched him in the face, he would’ve got off scot-free. But Pete didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not fair! Mum says, ‘There’s always somebody worse off than yourself.’ Pete’s worse off than most.

  Lance isn’t a mate, but since he’s the foreman of our work team, I’ve got to know him pretty well, and I don’t like him. Sometimes, he gets this evil look in his eyes – it sends shivers down my spine. He was bragging about how he got into a fight in the city once, and a boy pulled a knife on him. When he tried to defend himself, Lance reckoned he stabbed the boy in the chest with his own knife. I have my doubts. Lance tells more lies than I do. I try my best to give him a wide berth but he brings out the worst in me.

  The work’s hard and the days are long but I’ve never been so fit and strong. I’m learning heaps of things: how to chop and split wood, dig holes with a stick, milk cows and separate the cream, make charcoal pits, collect honey from beehives, plough fields and grow veggies; and how to work so hard that I forget about St Bart’s, my best friend Harry, the neighbours back home, Father Dennis and sometimes even my family.

  LESSONS

  CHAPTER 26

  It’s hard getting up before the sun does on cold winter mornings. I prefer to do the milking rather than the separating. A cow’s warm udder and teats full of milk take the chill out of my hands on a cold morning. Before my first bucket is full, I’m warm all over.

  Whether we feel like it or not, we have to milk the cows and do the separating every morning and afternoon – rain, hail or shine.

  I’d been at the Farm for over two weeks before it rained enough to have a lesson in the classroom. All our lessons, except Science, take place when it’s too wet or windy to work outside. Sister Agnes says it all evens out in the end, and she should know, she’s the Arithmetic teacher.

  My first lesson in the classroom was Arithmetic with Sister Agnes, who also teaches Religion, Music and Latin. I’ve learnt about more weights and measures than I ever knew existed. I’d thought the smallest weight possible was an ounce, but it’s not. There are 256 drachms in an ounce and 7000 grains in a drachm. I can’t even imagine how light that must be – much lighter than a grain of sand.

  Sister Agnes makes us repeat over and over again, all the lengths from inches to miles, all the nautical distances from fathoms to leagues, all the areas from perches to acres, all the fluids up to gallons and all the weights up to tons, until we can recite them perfectly. She says we need to learn the practical measures that we use on the farm before we can move on to other Arithmetic.

  She gets pretty worked up during our weights’ and measures’ drills, walking in between the rows of desks, hitting them one by one with her cane. ‘Getting into a rhythm helps your memory,’ she says. It really helps mine. I haven’t had the cane once from Sister Agnes, except when she walks past hitting my desk.

  I can’t say the same for Sister Ambrose and Sister Cornelius. I don’t think either of them likes teaching indoors, where they both turn into monsters and so do we.

  Sister Ambrose teaches History and Geography, usually at the same time. She has a small collection of maps and charts that she pulls down in front of the blackboard. We slip easily from learning about the rivers of Africa to the kings and queens of England. It all depends on the order of the charts and maps. It can get a bit confusing at times.

  Sister Ambrose also lisps but doesn’t seem to know that she does. When we repeat the names of the Stuart kings with a lisp, she hits the chart over and over again with her cane. ‘No, no, no!’ she says. ‘Why can’t you say “James” and “Charles” properly? Hold out your hands!’ She then walks between each row, giving us all two cuts of the cane on each hand. We’re not really making fun of her, just repeating what she says.

  She also takes us for Sport: athletics and rugby in winter, and in the warmer months, cricket and swimming (if there’s enough water in the creek). ‘If I didn’t become a nun, I would’ve been a champion swimmer,’ she told us one morning at milking duty. I’d thought her broad shoulders and strong arms must’ve been from milking cows. She’s also the farmer among the nuns and happily oversees all the milking and farm duties.

  Sister Cornelius teaches us English and Science, and is so small that she needs a stepladder to write at the top of the blackboard. She also supervises all the work in the veggie garden and orchard, and knows the Latin names of everything that grows there.

  In the classroom, she keeps her cane on the desk, ready for action. She calmly starts each English lesson by reading a poem. Some poems are so long, like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that we start playing up or nodding off. That’s when she gets mad, grabbing the cane and hitting anyone who’s not paying attention. She looks really funny when she gets mad – more like an angry leprechaun than a nun. That’s when we start laughing and she starts shouting and throwing things – books, chalk, dusters, boxes – anything she can lay her hands on. Whatever starts out at the front of the classroom, ends up down the back after English. It takes ages to clean up after Sister Cornelius.

  Fortunately, she teaches Science outside – in the orchard, in the paddocks, the veggie garden, down by the creek and, when it’s raining, in the barn. She loves doing experiments and observing or dissecting anything that moves and lots that don’t. She’s obsessed with the weather, so every day we take it in turns to record rainfall, temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and direction, using a variety of instruments that she bought, made or borrowed from Henry, the caretaker.
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  Although Sunday Mass isn’t technically a lesson, Sister Agnes turns it into one. She picks out different Latin phrases from the mass every week for us to learn, as well as a new hymn to sing. She writes the numbers of the hymns on the blackboard so that we can find the right ones in our hymn books and practise beforehand if we have time. The hymns must’ve all been written using the same music because they all sound the same.

  Father Brian arrives early on Sundays to hear our confessions, one by one, as we line up on the verandah ready for Mass. There’s no privacy but we’re used to that. To keep it short, we’re only allowed to confess one sin each per week. Not a bad system. It’s easy enough to come up with one sin to confess, I have so many to choose from. And penance is only ever a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Hardly a challenge.

  Father Brian speaks Latin so fast that Mass is over in half an hour. He breezes through the epistle, gospel and sermon, and before we know it, he’s popping the body of Christ into our mouths at Communion. After he gives his final blessing, he bows to the Three Sisters, puts on his hat, and then climbs up into his sulky for the trip back to town.

  Sister Agnes is always smiling as she waves goodbye to Father Brian. I’m not sure if that’s because she likes him or she’s glad to see the back of him. She seems to be just as happy after he’s gone.

  KIT’S LETTER

  CHAPTER 27

  I started to lose track of the days, and hadn’t had many classroom lessons because it had been a cold, dry winter. You don’t need to be Thomas Edison to see there was too much work to be done on the farm to be reading poetry, reciting the kings and queens of England, doing sums and writing stories. As Sister Agnes explained: ‘It’s all a matter of priorities – we need to eat, drink, wash and keep warm, and we can’t do that if we don’t milk cows, cart water, slaughter sheep and chickens, grow our own fruit and vegetables, collect eggs, chop and split wood, and make charcoal. It’s ten miles to the nearest village, and even if we had the money, we’d have to drive to a much bigger town to buy enough food to feed all of us.’ So, we have to work outside much more than inside doing schoolwork. But I wasn’t complaining; I was enjoying the hard, physical work of the Farm.