Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘Howdy,’ said Elsie, suddenly realising just how drunk she still was.

  ‘Good afternoon, fellow Poo Crew members.’ Tara gave a comical curtsey.

  ‘Howdy,’ said the boys in unison.

  ‘That crap-mobile sounds like it could use a tune-up,’ Zac said.

  Amos was already rolling the big double door of the shed back. ‘You’d better bring her in and we’ll give her a going-over.’

  ‘Yeah? You sure? Have you got time?’ In Elsie’s world, it was rude to impose on people.

  Zac tilted his head and grinned at her. ‘Got nothin’ to do and all day to do it. I could be saving the world, but,’ he paused, looking over to the shit ponds before he waved as if swatting away a fly, ‘meh . . . I’ll get round to it.’

  Elsie laughed.

  ‘Besides, it’ll be faster than having you break down on the way home and us having to tow you.’

  ‘OK.’ Elsie looked properly at Zac for the first time. He was cute, despite his teenage goofiness. Girl-boy-crush kind of cute, she thought. Although he looked like Amos, he was different. A little more distant somehow. A little cooler in his disposition. He reminded her a little of herself. She liked that he was like her.

  ‘We’re not planning on going anywhere for a while.’ She hiccupped, then felt a wave of grog-induced nausea. She retched, spun about and vomited suddenly, surprising herself more than the others.

  ‘Woah!’ Zac said. ‘You OK?’

  Elsie nodded, swiping the back of her hand over her mouth. She knew it wasn’t just the alcohol her body was rejecting.

  Amos was soon by her side with a bottle of water. He passed it to her.

  ‘Aren’t you going to measure that?’ she asked, grinning up at him.

  ‘Still reckon you don’t chew enough,’ he said.

  Soon, like pups in a tumble of play, the friends were skylarking in the rich paddocks of the farm, Tara with the boys in a headlock swinging them around, laughter rising up from them all, as Elsie leap-frogged onto their backs.

  A while later Zac was leaning banana-like under the bonnet of the Grassmore paddock basher, tinkering with the engine.

  ‘It’s kind of obvious you girls have left us behind on the sexual development front. Amos and I just keep growing like bean plants upwards. But you, well . . . Look at you both!’

  From where they sat on the workbench, Elsie and Tara glanced at each other. Marbles at their feet let out a sigh as if exasperated too.

  ‘Are you always this frank talking to women?’ Tara asked.

  Zac grinned. ‘Women? Is that what you are now? Or are you girls in women’s bodies? Me and Amos, we’re just boys in what are becoming men’s bodies, but we’re still boys. It’s such a weird time of life, isn’t it? I can see you are nearly fully formed women physically, but I can also see you are still the kids we knocked about with. Surreal.’

  ‘Do you always have to overthink and analyse everything? Even puberty?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Zac said, laying down a shifter on the side of the ute. ‘You know our parents. They’re upfront and out there when it comes to educating us on all things — especially sex! You should have seen our curriculum!’

  ‘Or more likely, you shouldn’t have seen it,’ Amos chipped in as he cleaned the air-filter. ‘It included sexual philosophies and theories most humans don’t even need to know of. The books they’ve put under our noses are enough to curl your pubic hair! Mum even gave us projects on pornography and the social truth of the havoc it creates. Especially with boys and girls our age. Or boys and women as the case may be.’

  Tara began to chuckle. She had forgotten how intense and interesting the twins were . . . not to mention funny. She had missed this. All the boys at Culvert High were base and gross compared to Zac and Amos. She wondered, not for the first time, why she hadn’t allowed herself to hang out with the twins and particularly Gwinnie and Elvis during the past few years. But deep down she knew. She had no self-worth. All her lost and lonely years of high school sat inside her like boulders of sadness. She was so ashamed of that predator lurking in her bedroom. The memory sat in her belly and festered. Dwaine and his stiff little penis and gigantic blobbing belly.

  To survive, Tara just couldn’t be around the happiness the Smith family exuded. She had known their life wasn’t perfect, but the children in that home were sacred, protected, given freedom to be themselves, and above all celebrated. It was too hard to be near it but not a part of it.

  ‘I just wish I’d stop growing,’ Tara said. ‘I’m like a jumping castle that keeps inflating.’

  ‘A jumping castle is better than one of those hot-air clowns they put outside vacuum-cleaner shops,’ Amos said. ‘You know the ones full of pressurised air that flick their long skinny arms about.’ He parodied the movement. ‘Zac and I are like that in a high wind.’

  They all laughed.

  Elsie rolled her eyes and dragged her hair back behind her ears. ‘Growing up has done my head in too. I’ve gone from being a baby doll with a mole to a Barbie in the space of a year,’ Elsie said, looking down. ‘It sucks. Once I got these,’ she said, cupping her breasts, ‘and lost that,’ she added, pointing to her scar, ‘the high-school boys in Sydney started giving me hell. They drive me insane. They are so gross.’

  ‘Yeah, it must be hell to look like you, Elsie,’ Tara said flatly.

  Elsie looked a little wounded as she glanced at Tara. In their younger days it was unlike Tara to host any kind of envy.

  ‘Elsie will have to work harder than all of us to have her inner intelligence seen by others. She’s going to have a line-up of the wrong type of men wanting her for all the wrong reasons. Aren’t you, Elsie?’ said Zac.

  Elsie looked at him incredulously. He got it. He actually understood. When Zac noticed how she was looking at him, he inclined his head.

  ‘Mum. She explained that to us about you once we heard you’d had an operation. As you know, she was a stunner too when she was younger. Little blonde thing like you, as the truckers who come by our place would say. She had all the men after her, but it was daggy old Dad who won her. He is such a nerd, he didn’t really take much notice of the exterior of her. All he could see was her inner energy. He became her best friend first. Our gran warned Mum youth and beauty fade and a superficial man wanting her for her looks would dump her for a younger woman later. Gran told Mum that Dad could already see her, aged and wise, but still beautiful, years on. And the rest is history.’

  ‘Gawd,’ Tara said, still bitter. ‘That sounds like a fairytale.’

  The three others sat in silence, looking at Tara while her hurt roamed the shed.

  ‘Well,’ Elsie piped up, ‘I’m just not interested in boys, or marriage anyway. I just wanna play music.’

  ‘But boys can’t help but be interested, particularly in someone like you,’ Amos said as he poured oil carefully into the ute engine. ‘The hormones are overpowering. It’s quite fascinating to watch it from outside one’s self. For example, I can’t stop having erections lately. They just won’t stop coming. If you know what I mean.’

  Tara grabbed a rag and threw it at Amos, hitting him in the side of the head. ‘Oh, please! Too much information,’ she said. Great. So Elsie’s looks turned him on. Tara felt deflated.

  Amos picked up the rag and shrugged. ‘It’s just how it is. What’s wrong with talking about it? Mum said if women don’t learn to self-orgasm at your stage of development, they can miss out on a whole world of pleasure further down the track. There’s nothing to be ashamed or guilty about, if you are healthy in your thoughts about it.’

  Elsie’s cheeks flamed. No way was she going to talk about masturbation, even with these guys. ‘Amos!’

  ‘He’s right. I read a book about it once,’ said Tara.

  ‘Time for conversation subject change!’ called Zac. ‘Honestly, Amos, Mum may have been working on our social and emotional intelligence for years now, but you, my boy, are falling way behind!’ He gave his brot
her a friendly whack on the back of the head.

  ‘Thanks, Zac,’ Tara said. ‘You can start by telling me what on earth you are doing in here.’ She gazed about the shed. On one side was a line-up of three tractors. They looked like the three bears: big, bigger, biggest. All had been painted meticulously in bright green and blue by the boys and even with Tara’s limited machinery knowledge she could see they had been modified: they had space-age tubing and cylindrical drums mounted to them. There was a seed drill parked next to them, painted the same colours. At the other end of the shed were workbenches, and tools hanging perfectly ordered on shadow boards. There were large pipes from the wall with red and green stop valves jutting from them and beside that were red PVC tanks in the same three-bears row.

  ‘Top secret,’ Zac said.

  ‘Do tell?’ Tara urged, lifting one eyebrow.

  Amos and Zac glanced at each other.

  ‘Moonshine.’

  ‘What? Big tanks like that? Bullshit.’

  Zac made a clicking noise with his tongue. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been sprung, bro,’ he said, setting down his tools and slamming the bonnet. ‘Start her up, Amos. See how she runs now. And after that, we’d better treat the girls to a sample.’

  ‘A sample?’ Tara asked.

  Amos grinned, turned the old diesel over and glowed the starter before revving it to life.

  ‘Beautiful!’ he said at the sound of the engine. ‘You girls! You’re in for a treat! Cleanskins, here we come!’

  Sixteen

  Van Morrison’s ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ blared from the speakers of an old paint-smattered stereo as Tara and Amos danced, arms slung about each other, plastic picnic tumblers held aloft, home-brew of hundred-proof rye swirling within, the colour of honey and the consistency of rocket fuel. The music, the smooth moonshine and the mood within the shed were intoxicating, as was the wildness of the weather outside. The big double door was wide open to the vista where the full moon and a strong gusty breeze were spinning some kind of magic: the grasses and tussocks shivvied wildly in a crazy hula dance. The sheen of the moonlight reflected like spinning coins on the rumpled surface of the treatment ponds next door.

  ‘That is so romantic!’ Tara breathed, pausing momentarily to take in the view of the sewage works. ‘Dancing by the light of the moon on the poo ponds.’

  She bent over double in a cackle, Amos sniggering with her until the music swept them up again and they turned to each other’s warm bodies. Zac and Elsie danced too, encased in the same magic bubble. A mesh-covered lamp that was mostly used to explore the undercarriages and inner workings of farm machinery had been strung from a hook and chain pulley. The light cast a beacon onto the party of four and created deep shadows in the corners and rafters of the giant shed. A sagging Marbles had long ago retreated to the bench seat of the Grassmore ute to doze in old-dog dreams while the music blared and the teenagers roared with laughter at the improbability of the night.

  ‘I don’t for a second believe those big tanks are filled with moonshine,’ Tara said, waggling her finger at Amos. ‘You’re telling me porkies!’

  He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Shush. Just dance with me, Tars.’

  ‘You and your Smith secrets. Come on! Come clean!’ Tara said. ‘What’s really going on in here, you mad professors?’

  ‘I swear,’ Amos said, placing both hands on her shoulders and shouting above the music, ‘we’re bootleggers. We haul the cleanskins out via the rigs that pull into the roadhouse. They glide into the other shed by the bowsers for a bit of a service and we load ’em up. We have clientele all the way to the west. How else did you think we paid for Dad’s extra alternative treatments and all these new machinery toys and this state-of-the-art lab?’ He looked at her. ‘Could we do it from pumping gas and tonging hot chips into waxed cardboard cups?’

  Elsie dropped her arms from around Zac’s waist and reached to turn the stereo down. ‘Boys,’ she said firmly. ‘The truth.’

  The twins appeared to be having some kind of telepathic debate.

  ‘Shall we tell them?’ Amos asked.

  Zac shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

  Amos sighed. ‘OK. Yes. The moonshine is a herring front.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Tara said. ‘So what’s in the tanks?’

  Amos grimaced. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Whaaaat?’ Tara replied.

  ‘For real?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘Well, it explains the freshly dug pipeline,’ Tara said. ‘So what do you want tanks of shit for?’

  Zac rolled his eyes at his brother. Amos looked down to his boots and rubbed the back of his head.

  ‘Where do we start on explaining this?’ He let out a big breath. ‘One thing is, if we tell you, you simply can’t tell a soul. Especially anyone from council. We’re harvesting the sewage illegally and experimenting with it as a fuel source in modified engines.’

  ‘Harvesting?’ Tara said. ‘You’re stealing shit.’ She laughed.

  ‘You’re stealing Culvert shit?’ Elsie echoed.

  Zac turned on his brother. ‘And don’t tell anyone from council, you say? You’ve just told the mayor’s daughter! Dad is going to kill us!’

  ‘Councillor-mayor,’ corrected Amos.

  ‘Don’t bring that dick slash mayor slash councillor head into it. I have nothing to do with my father,’ said Elsie. ‘Bugger Councillor-Mayor Jones. Tara and I are your friends, Zac. For life. Your secret is safe with us. Right, Tara? So come on. Spill the beans.’

  Later, at the far end of the shed where the light crept low, Zac unrolled a swag out beside the giant dark shape of a tractor.

  ‘Won’t your mum and dad be waiting up for you?’ Elsie asked.

  Zac shook his head. ‘We always camp over here on a Friday night when we’re working on something. Mum keeps the fridge stocked in here for us and it gives her a night alone with Dad. She still hasn’t given up on a last-minute baby sister for us. So we leave them to it. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elsie said. She took both his hands and with her blue eyes looked into his dark ones. ‘But not for food.’

  She slowly stepped backwards to the swag and pulled him down. Instantly Elsie loved the weight of him. The leanness of him. She inhaled his wilderness-country-boy scent: the smell of living grassroots and earth, not like the synthetic scent of the fancy-pants city boys who had crushed near her in the pubs after her gigs. Elsie felt Zac’s hardness beneath the fabric of his jeans and the press of his erection so near her inner thigh that her blood pulsed through her body. Desire fluttered like a moth against glass in the deep place between her legs.

  ‘Zac,’ she breathed.

  ‘Elsie,’ he answered, his breath hot on her neck, the fuel of the whisky warming across their skin. Their lips met with a steady tenderness; they slipped out of their clothes. There was no need for words. They were being guided by the ages. When Elsie felt the tip of Zac’s penis nudging close to her, he drew back.

  ‘Condom,’ he said, his voice husky. He was gone and she watched as he rummaged in a first-aid kit. What was he doing? Going to use disposable gloves for a condom? He tossed something shiny and small at Amos.

  ‘That hit me in the head, bro,’ Elsie heard Amos say, then a giggle from Tara.

  Next Zac was back.

  ‘So you just happened to have that stashed in your shed?’ Her voice had a touch of accusation within it and she felt her heart sink a little. What else did the twins get up to out here on Friday nights with their cleanskin grog and with whom?

  Zac laughed. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but it’s my first time too. Mum. She . . . well, you know what she’s like. She stashes them everywhere in case. Her safe-sex lessons are intense.’

  Elsie smiled. ‘Your mother’s amazing.’

  ‘I don’t really intend to think about her right now if that’s OK.’ Zac began to kiss her gently again, tenderly, laying her back down.

  Her hands shook from the swamping of hormones through her system. She
wanted him on her, in her, all over her. Zac tore at the condom packet with his teeth. The wrapper glinted. A Bruce Springsteen song blasted. Sax moaning. Zac passed the rubber sheath to her.

  ‘Me?’ She fumbled. ‘I don’t . . .’ He helped her. Next he was lying on top of her. Then it happened. She felt the tear within. The tiny rip of pain. Zac’s eyes never left her face, his large hands continuously stroking her hair. When he saw desire return again to her eyes after the pinch of pain, he began to move in slow delicious movements.

  ‘Elsie.’ He said her name as if he had dreamed of her for aeons.

  On the other side of the tractor, Tara was in fits of giggles in Amos’s swag.

  ‘I hope Zac hasn’t put pinpricks in this so he can become an early uncle,’ Amos joked. He looked into Tara’s eyes. ‘Tell me. Did you and Elsie have it all planned? Get drunk. Accost two naive boys. Are Zac and I your experiment in journeying to womanhood?’

  ‘Ha! As if,’ Tara said. ‘This is all your idea.’

  ‘Is it now?’

  Tara looked at him doubtfully from where she lay under the rumpled sheets of his swag. Her body seemed huge to her, even lying down. ‘As if I’ve ever been interested in sex,’ she said. ‘I’m offering myself to you in the name of science. To further your theories on human behaviours.’

  ‘Oh, that’s flattering!’

  ‘The science aspect would turn you on more than I ever could,’ Tara said.

  Amos looked sympathetically at her. ‘Shush. I want you, not the science. And anyway, how can I have a theory right now?’ He pointed at the bulge in his pants. ‘It’s been biologically proven that there’s not enough blood in the human system to sustain an erection and optimal brain function in males at the same time. You’re either going to have to settle for Einstein or Casanova.’

  ‘Great! I thought I was getting my special brainiac boy, but instead I’m just getting an ordinary hormone bomb deflowering me by the shit ponds.’ She began to giggle again so that her bare breasts shook.