Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘My aim here is to get away from this useless, limited, introduced pasture species,’ Elvis continued, slinging his arm out to indicate the ground. ‘It’s time to get the red grass back, to let the wallaby and kangaroo grass take hold. Get both summer- and winter-growing perennials back. Feed the soil with what it wants, which is decomposing leaf litter and natural manure. Then, once we’ve modified the old seed drill, the annual plants can be sown right in. Then whammo! Soon the soils will start to function. A bit of fencing. A bit of water piped here and there. Some grazing to mimic the African plains and our little property will be an oasis in this farming desert. What do you think, boys?’

  ‘Genius,’ said Amos.

  ‘We’re with you, Dad,’ said Zac.

  As Elvis spoke, Elsie thought of the barren dusty expanse of Grassmore, of the roadsides on which she had ridden this morning, and she thought of her father. He would never use the word ‘whammo’. Nor ask her for her opinion.

  Zac and Amos looked to their father with equal admiration.

  ‘That’s the last of it,’ Elvis said, wiping his hands after dragging the double door of the shed closed and locking it with a giant chain. ‘Let’s crank a bit of Hank for the drive home.’ He climbed into the ute and pressed fast forward on the tape deck set in the dusty dash. ‘Miss Beechcroft will be back for her Beetle any moment now. We’d best get her down off the hoist.’

  At the mention of Miss Beechcroft’s name, Elsie felt dread settle in her stomach. Guitar lessons were due to start on Wednesday. Surely after Miss Beechcroft’d finished teaching music at Culvert Primary she wouldn’t want to go home and teach more music. By the way she yelled at students and stormed out of the room to hunt down the principal, Mrs Guthridge, with complaints, Myrna Beechcroft clearly didn’t enjoy children. Suddenly Jasper gave a snort and reminded Elsie that she was on his back and she saw that for the moment she didn’t have to worry about guitar lessons. Right now, she was on her pony, with her very best friends, and that was all that mattered. As Mr Smith started the ute, Tara, with Trev in her arms, dangled her legs off the back of the tray, while the boys climbed into the cab to ride beside their father.

  Elsie urged Jasper on and began following.

  ‘Look!’ said Tara excitedly to Elsie as they bumped over the paddock. She pointed in the direction from where they’d come. ‘Amazing! Seven galahs, seven trees and seven poo ponds. Seven, seven, seven,’ she said, smiling. ‘It’s an angel-number sequence.’

  ‘Huh?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘It’s a sign. That there’s going to be a miracle here.’

  ‘At the poo ponds?’

  Tara shrugged. ‘That’s what they reckon.’

  ‘Funny place for a miracle.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Tara said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘but I’m going with it! The great Poo Pond Prophecy! Bring it on!’

  Six

  ‘“Greensleeves”! She started you on “Greensleeves”?’ Elvis Smith’s dark eyebrows knitted together as he lay on the couch in the roadhouse, a coloured crocheted rug draped over his long legs and a steaming cup of Gwinnie’s homemade nettle tea on the table beside him.

  Elsie Jones matched his frown and nodded, holding onto the long narrow neck of the acoustic guitar, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it to him. Tears pricked behind her eyes. The guitar upset her. Or was it Miss Beechcroft? She could see the beauty in the instrument, the way the warm tones of wood curved together, like a beautiful woman’s waist. She liked the way the guitar sat snuggly on her lap, with her arm draped over it, as if the guitar wanted to be held like an old-fashioned movie star, but, after three months of lessons with Miss Beechcroft, the instrument remained an enemy. A frustrating mystery, like a pirate’s treasure chest, found but locked. Elsie had no clue where to find its key.

  Also locked away from Elsie was any kind of common ground with Miss Beechcroft. The music teacher remained unyielding and savage. During lessons she stood over her in a brown A-line skirt, thick tights and flat shoes, with her short chewed hair. She would look through her glasses with narrow eyes at Elsie’s fragility as a musician, her disappointment jutting her square jaw out.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said Elvis, just as the other one crooned ‘Love Me Tender’ from the roadhouse stereo, ‘“Greensleeves” is a terrific piece of music, but to engage a child like you with a musical instrument by teaching that first? She’s got it wrong.’

  Elsie wondered what he meant by ‘a child like you’. She felt shame ripple through her. Did he think her as hopeless as her mother did? Did he too see how ugly she was with the mole? She knew it was the first thing anyone noticed about her. At school this week she’d discovered a new word. Disfigured. It had tumbled around in her head ever since. She was disfigured by the mole. She brushed her hair forwards.

  ‘Show me what you’ve learned. Tars, will you turn the music down, love?’

  Tara, who was quietly setting tables in the café to delay any mention of her going home to her mum and Dwaine, did.

  Once the room was silent, Elvis wafted his hand at Elsie like a kindly king commanding a court musician to play.

  Elsie twisted her lips nervously. ‘I’m not very good,’ she mumbled.

  Mr Smith waved again as if to erase her concerns from the air. ‘But, my darling kid, you have to start somewhere. Now play, my girl, play!’

  Hesitantly Elsie sat on a chair, angling her body so the side of her face with the mole was turned away from Mr Smith. She drew the guitar to herself, bent her head intently and watched herself position her fingers over the strings at the correct fret, the way Miss Beechcroft had shown her. With trembling hands, she began to pluck the guitar so it twanged shakily, as if it was complaining to be played by someone like her. But before she had got even a few notes in, Elvis Smith was propping himself up and swinging his legs to the floor.

  ‘Stop! Stop! Why classical? Why is she teaching you classical? You’re not the classical type. Can’t she sense that about you, Elsie? Here! Give that thing to me! Can’t she see the grit and guts inside you? You’re not some flaky grazier’s girl, Elsie. You are a full-blown cowgirl. And you need to learn to play like one! Like a buckjumper out the gate!’

  Red-faced, Elsie stood and carried the guitar over to Mr Smith. He grabbed it, along with the pick. It became tiny in his hands as he swung it onto his leg and held it firmly, as if he was commanding a wilful dog to obey. Then, as if to settle it, he gently plucked a few strings and tuned it. He tapped the body of the guitar, counting a wooden lead-in beat, and launched into a powerful blues version of Creedence Clearwater’s ‘Proud Mary’. His voice carried deep and commandingly through the café, spilling out to the kitchen where Gwinnie was making tomorrow’s soup of the day. The sound silenced the blasts of her blender and she joined in with a beautiful harmony, her singing drifting into the dining area, entwining perfectly into the arms of Mr Smith’s melody.

  Elsie’s mouth dropped open. Tara, spellbound, stopped arranging the flowers on the tables and froze, holding a paper daisy aloft. Mr Smith was extracting a noise from the guitar like they’d never heard before. And his voice was a magic charm saturating the air, holding them all there in that moment.

  ‘I wanna do that,’ whispered Elsie. ‘I wanna do that.’ Her little feet thrummed excitedly on the floor.

  Mr Smith continued rollin’ through the song. He bent his head in a deep trance. The last of his hair, tenacious despite the chemo, flopped over his brow like the real Elvis’s as he strummed and rocked his way to the end of the song. When he was done, a whoop emanated from the kitchen and Tara and Elsie began to clap with bright smiles on their faces.

  ‘That’s the kinda music she oughta start you off on. Easy chords and a beat you can relate to! You can’t teach a person anything if they aren’t turned on, lit up and in love with the idea of learning!’

  Elvis patted the couch and Elsie moved over, self-consciousness burning on her cheeks. ‘Look.’ He positioned his fingers on the fret bo
ard of the guitar as he spoke. ‘C, A, C, A, G, F, F, F.’ He strummed slowly, exaggerating each chord and eliciting a rich sound from the instrument. After showing her a few more times, he passed Elsie the guitar, then swivelled around to place her fingers in position. Elsie felt the hard ridges of the strings indent her skin as Mr Smith pressed firmly on her nails.

  ‘Guide the strings like you would Jasper’s mind, via your energy and body position. You are a commanding rider. Treat the guitar like a horse. Now strum.’ He drew her hand and the pick up and down over the nylon and metal strings. Elsie nodded nervously. He’d said she was a good rider! She had never heard a man praise her before. It felt terrifying and divine.

  ‘It’s not just about hearing the sound: it’s about feeling it. Music is about vibration. Everything is about vibration. It’s channelled through your very own soul. Didn’t Miss Beechcroft teach you that?’

  ‘Nope.’ With Miss Beechcroft it was all about timing and precision and discipline and practice and perfection. Mr Smith shook his head. She could sense his nearness, but she didn’t dare look at him. Beneath the illness that was ravaging his body, he was a strong and handsome man. Elsie thought about Zac and Amos at Mr Smith’s age. She was struck by how nice the boys would be as men. Not like her own father, or sullen Simon, and certainly not like Dwaine Morton. Elvis Smith had a way about him that was giving and gentle. She was glad to be in his presence, getting all of his attention. The right kind of attention.

  Not like Miss Beechcroft at guitar lessons. Whenever she made a mistake, Miss Beechcroft would smack Elsie’s hands away from the guitar and huff. Then her cheeks would turn beetroot in sheer frustration, and the last straw would be her cat yowling to get out of the room away from the tension that tutor and pupil had generated in giant swirls of stubbornness.

  ‘Do you want to learn? Or not?’ Miss Beechcroft had asked several times over as the metronome ticked back and forth on the lace-trimmed mantelpiece. Elsie had sat in Miss Beechcroft’s plum-toned lounge room and opened her mouth, speechless, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Well? Answer me. Are you simple?’ Miss Beechcroft asked, enunciating her words slowly in a BBC voice.

  Elsie felt rage simmer. If she could smash the guitar on the fine-legged coffee table and even on Miss Beechcroft’s head and the neurotic cat, she would. But instead she smothered her anger, became withdrawn, sitting in her own pool of misery, waiting for the hour and a half to go by so she could head home and focus on how nice it would be seeing Jasper in the morning before school.

  But now as Mr Smith gently coached her to draw a warm honey sound from the guitar, she felt peacefulness settle upon her. Next he encouraged her to whip the guitar up into a gallop, draw it back to a canter with the timing of her strumming, then coach it to amble, like an old cowpoke pony who had done a hundred lazy miles. As the guitar answered her with rich deep sounds, Elsie felt the tension dissolve from her body, the way it did when she sat on Jasper. She felt excitement lift in her like birds on the plains thermals. She looked up to see Tara stepping from foot to foot, moving to the music, a smile igniting joy in her eyes. She was making Tara dance! She felt like kissing the high curve of the guitar’s side as she drew the pick down and extracted the next full note and then made a chord change.

  ‘Good! Good! Music is about feeling,’ Mr Smith said, smiling and nodding, ‘and using your energy and your pain and your passion to bring the instrument alive. You are a natural. You are a kick-arse cowgirl!’

  Suddenly Mr Smith was up and disappearing out through the roadhouse kitchen swing doors and beyond to the family’s living quarters. Elsie stopped strumming. Tara blinked and shrugged.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ she whispered.

  Elsie shrugged back, but euphoria encompassed her. She was a kick-arse cowgirl! Mr Smith had said it! At last she had a place on the map of her world. She and her pony and her guitar. She went on strumming the chords he had shown her, the words of ‘Proud Mary’ beginning to play within her mind. When Mr Smith came back, he was carrying a pile of tattered books. He moved the salt and pepper shakers and a sugar bowl out of the way on one of the coffee tables.

  ‘Here. My boys are on other paths in life, so they don’t want my old books. You can have them!’ he said as he flung each book onto the surface of the table. ‘A book of chords. The best of Johnny Cash. A Dolly songbook. And a mix of others — lyric writing, more sheet music, learn to play blues guitar, The Beatles complete, Rock Guitar Songs for Dummies, not that I’m saying you’re a dummy. More like that bloody music teacher of yours is.’

  ‘Two dollars!’ said Gwinnie Smith as she entered through the swing doors of the kitchen, a blue gingham tea towel cast over her shoulder, her blonde hair loosely scrunched into a ponytail so the rest fell prettily around her face. She reached over to an old-style dresser decorated beautifully with assorted colourful china and picked up what the girls had come to know as ‘the swear jar’. She removed the lid and waved the blue china canister in front of him. Coins within rattled.

  ‘So far we have one hundred and seventy-eight dollars of Elvis’s cussings.’ Gwinnie grinned, looking at the girls. ‘He’s going to take me to Sydney to see Garth Brooks next time he tours. Right, honey?’

  Elvis nodded, fishing in his pocket for some coins (which he kept on him for the express purpose of amusing his wife with the swear-jar concept).

  ‘Bloody is hardly a swear word these days,’ he pretended to grumble. ‘Most kids your age drop the F-bomb daily! Wouldn’t you say, girls?’ Tara and Elsie giggled and shook their heads, knowing full well it was Nathanial Rogerson who was the world’s worst, saying the F-word every five minutes when adults weren’t in earshot.

  ‘That’s another two dollars. And I heard you say arse before,’ Gwinnie said, ‘so that’s extra.’

  ‘I did not!

  ‘Did so!’

  ‘You just said it yourself then.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘You did! You just said arse! Didn’t she?’ Mr Smith put on a comical face and pointed an accusing finger at his wife.

  The girls giggled some more. Tara and Elsie could tell Gwinnie and Elvis were performing for them. They watched the pantomime with gratitude. The girls knew that the Smiths knew that they were an inconvenience to the adults at their own homes.

  Elvis dropped a series of coins into the jar, then touched his wife on her hand. Suddenly his grin turned to a grimace. He cried out in pain and doubled over before slumping back on the couch, his knee jerking violently up and down with involuntary spasms of agony. Gwinnie was on her knees next to him, holding his hand, talking urgently but quietly to him.

  ‘Darling? What can I get you? Shall I call Dr Patak?’

  Elsie stood watching, fear heating her face.

  It was Tara who was already scuttling away to the kitchen and quickly returning with a glass of water and the cluster of tablets that were kept beside the sink for Mr Smith. She passed them to Gwinnie.

  Gwinnie popped a tablet and helped it to Mr Smith’s mouth and offered him water. After he had downed the tablet and settled back down, Tara kneeled beside him.

  ‘Too much rock and roll, right, Mr Smith?’ she said gently. When Elvis managed a smile at Tara, relief swept over them all.

  Through shortened breath, Elvis muttered, ‘You can never have too much rock and roll, eh, girls?’ Even in his pain he was being cheerful for their sake. He masked the depth of the sickness for all of them.

  Elsie felt so much love and admiration for Mr Smith. A lovely, loving man, trying to give so much to his family and to the land. A man who might not live. Worse, she could see the panic on Gwinnie’s face at the sight of her husband, now deathly pale and with his thumb and index finger pressed to his eyes.

  Elsie stood frozen, feeling it was her fault he’d collapsed. How come Tara knew what to do? She was now, with her small pudgy hand, gently stroking his arm, making soothing sounds and laying her other hand on his arm, and closing her eyes as if she was t
alking to her angel friends. Elsie watched Mr Smith’s wiry body begin to ease a little and calm. A teary Gwinnie looked at Tara with such gratitude that for a moment Elsie felt a bolt of jealousy like a knife slicing her from her chest to her belly. Tara was like that. She seemed to have magic about her. And in that space Elsie felt useless.

  Just then the service-station alarm bell dinged. A white Commodore drew up next to the bowsers, looking unusually clean and bright for a Culvert car, so much so it still managed to gleam beneath a dull autumn afternoon sun. Elsie groaned internally. It was her father. The little white petrol door on the side of the car popped open and Kelvin Jones started to get out.

  Gwinnie glanced from her husband to the car, then reached for the two-way that was resting beside the couch. ‘Zac? Amos? Do you copy? Customer. I’m with your dad.’ The radio fuzzed and crackled.

  ‘Got it, Mum,’ came the reply, and from their mother’s tone the boys understood their father had taken another turn. Through the big roadhouse window, Elsie saw one of the boys jogging from the machinery workshop to the bowser.

  ‘Tara, sit with Elvis, please, darling. I’m just going to call the doctor,’ Gwinnie said.

  Mr Smith began to shake his head. ‘No, no! It’s just the chemo . . . a pain in my stomach. It’s nothing. You know the doctor only believes in illness, not wellness. I’m going to make a miraculous recovery. I know it, but Dr Patak doesn’t, so I don’t want him here convincing me otherwise. Please.’

  Tears welled in Elvis’s eyes, the desperation of a man sentenced to death by the medical world. Gwinnie covered her face with her hands and drew in a jagged breath. Then she reached for the blanket that had fallen to the floor, lay down on the couch with her husband and put her arms around him.