Amos took in what his brother was saying. ‘But she didn’t like the mole. You know she didn’t. You mean now she looks so perfect externally, you’re not good enough for her.’
Zac’s mouth twisted.
‘I get it now,’ Amos said. ‘You’re scared of not having a future with Elsie, so you bring it back to basics. The “men are supposed to be guided by their dicks” bullshit.’
‘Whereas big imperfect Tara’s good enough for you.’
Amos clenched his jaw. ‘Tara is fat, sure, but so what? She’s incredible. It’s just you’re not brave enough to fall in love and I am.’
‘In love? Look, buddy, we’re sixteen, OK?’ Zac responded, his voice sharp. ‘We don’t know shit about life. We had sex for the first time with girls we’ve known since we were kids. So what? That doesn’t mean we have to spend the rest of our lives with them. Anyway, they’ve gone. We’ve talked, like, a couple of times with them and got a few postcards. There’s a lot of wet dreams to be had between now and when you see Tara again.’
‘If I decide I can deal with that, then I can,’ Amos said, his jaw jutting out defiantly.
They heard their father pull up outside in the tractor.
‘He must be out of gas.’ Amos put down the beaker and both boys went out into the bright summer sunshine.
Zac muttered, ‘I just hope they’re OK.’
Outside, Elvis stepped down from the tractor cab.
‘Not bad,’ he said to the twins. ‘That was a three-hour run. The fuel conversion is improving, but if we can somehow extend it so I can do more runs, that would be ideal. I think if we adjust the pistons a little. Or maybe this batch is not quite there yet?’ He dragged his cap back off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Still, it’s a miracle that it works so well.’
He looked at his two handsome growing sons, his face beaming. For most of his life he had dreamed of coming up with a solution to the global energy crisis. He’d accepted the fact his family farm would go to his older brother and set off to become a mechanical engineer with this aim. He and Gwinnie had planned and saved, and now here he and his boys were on the brink of a major engineering breakthrough.
Elvis knew around the world other experiments were being done converting human waste to natural gas. He and the boys had also been pleased human sewage was now considered a resource in third-world countries and that fermentation tanks had been installed in villages as a fuel source. The potential remained as yet unrealised in the western world, though. And here they were close to a solution on the engine conversions needed. Elvis reckoned Culvert could become a model town for the rest of the world, showcasing how the cheap, renewable resource of natural gas from human waste could revolutionise agriculture and how the carbon emissions could be recycled back into the soil with his farming methods and machinery.
His biggest hurdle would be the authorities. The boys shared his vision, but if it was to be fully realised in the corporate world, he needed them to be grown up. Not long now, he thought. Just a few more years and they would have a prototype and the boys would be ready. It was a shame they’d had to rely on stolen sewage for the project, but every application for research grants and access to waste had been knocked back by every council he and Gwinnie ever approached. Culvert had been the only fast track for him.
‘How’s it cutting?’ Zac asked, moving to inspect the harvest implement on the back of the tractor; it included an air blower that collected the native grass seed.
‘Terrific,’ Elvis said. ‘We’ve nearly filled an entire bin. If we bag it up for sale cleaned and supply it direct, we can get around eighty bucks a kilo for the kangaroo grass and up to two-fifty for the buffel. One fella told me channel millet cleaned is getting seven hundred and fifty dollars a kilo. Better than selling drought-pinched wheat to a bulk dealer at two hundred a tonne! Not to mention we’ll be sowing the seeds of change,’ Elvis said, guffawing at his own joke.
The boys looked out to the paddocks where Elvis had been harvesting the native grasses growing naturally in great swathes in the rested paddocks. Word was spreading about the amazing job the Smiths were doing. So much so, Elvis had to leave the boys to the mechanics workshop frequently while he dealt with more and more native-seed buyers.
Their costs for feed were zero and their animal health record was virtually flawless. Rural journalists were now knocking on their door for a story, such was the difference of the landscape from the surrounding sheep and wheat farms. He and his boys were the ones who had fat lambs when everyone else had sold theirs on as skinny. Their lambing percentages were well above the local average, and never once were they seen out with a grain feeder come the middle of summer. Their crops too reflected the same health, despite poor rainfall.
Of course the big cockies dismissed them as eccentric and ‘small-time hobby farmers’. They muttered that it would never work on a bigger place. Who had time to move stock like that every few days in small paddocks, or who had sons who would want to be out shepherding mobs like they did in biblical times on the rougher unfenced country and along the roads? Yes, the other farmers reasoned, Elvis Smith and his sons were nutters. Nice people, but nutters nonetheless.
Even though Elvis’s desire to spread his message was strong, the last thing he needed was journalists and other farmers poking their noses in and around the place. They were bound to ask questions about the shed. And he wasn’t ready for that. He smiled as he watched Amos screwing a coupling onto a tank in the shed while Zac undid the fuel cap on the tractor and took up the end of the hose. He was so proud of them.
‘Oh,’ Elvis said, ‘I stopped in at the house. While I was there Tara called for you again, Amos. Mum spoke to her.’
Both boys looked up.
‘She and Elsie are about to set off mustering cleanskins. They said to say hi.’
Amos glanced over at his brother, feeling triumphant. Zac, who was known for his teenage poker face, gave little away, but Amos could tell he was smiling on the inside.
The dying light of the day filtered a red hue into the scattering of mottled cloud. Last-minute flies buzzed heavily by. Across the way the lights of the roadhouse flicked on. Elvis knew Gwinnie would be dishing up tucker for the truckies and setting their own dinner aside to share in the private section of the house when he and the boys returned. It’s warm enough tonight to have a beer, he thought. Since his illness he’d not much cared for alcohol, but tonight, with the seed harvest in and the fuel-conversion prototype in the tractor working so perfectly, Elvis thought there was cause for celebration. He was about to haul himself back up into the cab and drive the tractor to the big shed when suddenly a blast shattered the peace of the world. The loud bang sent the cockies screaming from the gum trees, their wings flapping wildly. Then Elvis heard an agonised cry from one of his boys and screams from the other.
‘Dad!’ one son called from within the shed, terror carried in his voice. ‘Dad! Please, no!’
Elvis leaped from the tractor and sprinted towards the doorway from where smoke now billowed.
Twenty-four
Elsie felt a shiver run through her despite the heat. From beneath the brim of her Roughrider, she looked at the blinding sun through her new station-supplied sunglasses. The blaring ball sat low in front of them, shrouded to softness occasionally by dust raised by the cloven hooves of three-thousand-plus head of cattle. They were almost at the yards after a full day in the saddle.
She felt another rush of vertigo and a cold prickle of sweat sweep over her; Wolfie was tall and she didn’t want to faint off her, so she pulled up and leaned down over the mare’s neck to compose herself. Was it heat stroke?
Zac flashed before her mind’s eye, along with a rush and tug of longing and distress. The sense of him momentarily enveloped her and stole her breath, then came a steady flooding of her system of guilt. She knew after that night they were in no way ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’, but there was something otherworldly that held him in her heart and soul. But s
he was too young to fall in love like that. To be tied to one person. Plus she’d been fantasising about Jake all day.
Earlier this morning it had seemed natural for Jake and Elsie to take up position near each other at the rear of the even-paced ambling herd, leaving the other two female ringers, Giselle and Karen, disgruntled.
She couldn’t believe she’d stolen his attention from the other girls. She still thought of herself as the ‘before Elsie’, the one with the mole who didn’t stand a chance in the world of glamour-boys. Had Jake known the ‘before Elsie’, would he be giving her as much of a ‘vibe’ as he had been all day?
As she rode a little behind Jake, she couldn’t help but compare the two boys. Zac’s hands were long and skinny. While Jake’s hands made her practically swoon. To her they were true man’s hands. She imagined them brushing back her hair from her face, cupping her breasts, palms sliding down the back of her jeans, grasping her arse, then those same hands sliding into the front of her jeans. She didn’t think of herself as a ‘boy-mad’ girl, but here she was drooling over a cowboy who wore trouble in his entire demeanour as easily as he wore his dusty work boots and big sweat-stained hat. Zac, spotty, earnest, goofy Zac, had started to feel like a figment from her small-town childhood.
She felt ill again.
Instinctively she looked for Tara, who was clumping along on Gazza a way off on the flank position of the herd. Despite Jake’s attention, Elsie was a little jealous she’d been on the outer with the other girls, whereas Tara had been welcomed in like a bosom buddy. She breathed through her sickness and steadied herself, lifting the reins and making kissing sounds to move Wolfie on before anyone noticed her discomfort. It had been a long day of new experiences in this strange vast country. Gordon, with his crackling dry voice and gentle ways, smoothly commanded both the crew and the herd. The slow calm flow of human, beast and dog moved through an even more peaceful and vibrant living landscape. At Grassmore stock work was chaotic and stressful. Over the course of the day Elsie had come to see Gordon as the best of the best. Earlier, they’d learned from their fellow ringer Tyler that he’d waited three years to get a position under Gordon, such was his reputation in regenerative agriculture, stock handling and the grazing game. Tara’s angels must have been working overtime on the girls’ journey north to land them here.
When a beast made a cantankerous rush for freedom from the long walk of the herd, Gordon showed the crew how to guide it back, rather than hoon and chase. His big rangy Queensland-bred Border Collies were just as wise as their master and soon convinced the wayward beasts to walk quietly back with the herd. Crack managed the crew the same way, as often there were younguns who were no different to the breakaway beast.
Earlier he’d delivered a little horseback lecture on the cattle’s pruning of plants, manuring of soil and the way their hooves processed the leaf litter. ‘The animals are managed so that they improve the land, not destroy the land. It puts a health and vitality into the soils, so that when dry times come, the land is resilient. A lot of folk on the other big cattle places mocked us at first. Said our stocking numbers and old-fashioned shepherding methods of moving big mobs across a landscape died out with the ark or was for African nomads. And yet when the dry hits, their stock health drops, and their feed bills go up, and they blame the drought and still don’t change their ways.
‘Me,’ he continued, ‘I’m one lucky bugger. The board of directors gives me scope for change. Those men who flew out the day you flew in — Dr Fred Provenza and Dr David Tongway — are both scientists, one in rangeland science and the other in restoration of landscape. David also does a lot of mine-site rehab. The company allows me to access men like that, and suddenly Goldsborough becomes a giant trial site for regenerative grazing work. And you young-uns are still blank enough in your habits and beliefs to be shaped into understanding the holistic nature of this game. I want to alter you into animal empathisers and readers of landscape. Lots of kids have gone out to new jobs, or back to their own places, and are making good changes there too. It’s a ripple effect. And I’m a lucky, lucky bugger to be able to cast a tiny pebble in a pond.
‘NP Co now know they can afford to use our staff to run the cattle the way we do. We’ve learned that the land can’t support the big business the modern cattle world demands. If we let it go at the pace Mother Nature sets, over time the profits come. The shareholders are happy and the kids and the cattle turn out better in the finish.’
The new girls were listening well, but they worried him. They were no different from many who came through, but he got the sense their young roads had been harder than others. Sometimes parents just let you down, he thought. But he knew, from experience, that a person’s hardship in childhood often became his or her greatest strength.
‘I remember my first stint as a jackaroo in southwest Queensland,’ he said, shifting a little in his stock saddle. ‘We spent more time dragging the carcasses of beasts to a burial pit than we did selling the animals for meat. The boss just complained it was a lack of rain. More like a lack of brain. Always ask yourself what have you been taught to believe in that isn’t true.’
‘Like Santa Claus,’ said Tara with a grin.
‘He’s not so bad to believe in,’ Gordon said. ‘At least Santa offers the hope of magic to folks. But what about the belief that you must stick by your family out of duty at Christmas even if they crucify you? When you follow your true path, you find your true family, your real tribe. Isn’t that why you’re here?’
He cast his blue eyes on them, and both Elsie and Tara felt he was reading them like books. Elsie thought of the choking presence of her parents and their old-world constraints, the coldness of her brother. Tara thought of her own dedication to her mother — a mother who hadn’t cared enough to stop a monster consuming her own baby night after night.
Gordon swung his weight in the saddle and Bear swerved away into the dust, loping around the other side of the giant mob of peaceful steady walking heifers.
‘He’s magic, that man,’ Tara said breathlessly, after he’d ridden away.
‘Don’t tell me you’re getting older-man fantasies,’ Elsie said.
‘At least I’m not getting pin-up poster-boy obsessions,’ Tara said, glancing over at Jake.
‘What do you mean?’ Elsie asked.
‘That guy is up himself. He knows he’s a stunner. And he uses it. Have you seen how Mrs B always gives him an extra serve of chips?’
Elsie smiled. ‘He can’t help how he looks.’
‘He flirts with all the women.’
‘There’s no crime in that.’
‘He’s trouble and you know it.’
Elsie kept on riding, trying to ignore what Tara had said. She noticed one heifer looking slightly lame. She’d have to point it out to Gordon. Probably just a stone bruise, but she wanted to do a good job for him. And, part of her ego told her, she wanted to impress Jake.
The homecoming of the heifers and the crew was celebrated in Mrs B’s kitchen with a big roast-beef dinner washed down with lemon cordial, followed by rum and beer. Marbles sat beneath the table, his nose twitching on the hunt for scraps. Tara rested her socked feet on the old dog and tried to ignore what was unfolding between Jake and Elsie.
Jake was passing Elsie every condiment that sat on the tabletop in a silly flirty game. Salt, pepper, tomato sauce, hot mustard, barbecue sauce, seeded mustard. Elsie played along, batting her eyelids and snickering, her head tilted a little. Tara felt herself prickle with irritation and she could tell the whole crew felt the same way. It was as if her clever, steady friend had momentarily lost her mind.
The staff phone rang in the games room, and reluctantly Tyler set down his fork and ambled, saddle sore, to the next room to pick it up. He returned and said to Elsie, ‘It’s for you.’
She sighed and reluctantly tore herself away from Jake’s delicious side, which now smelled of fresh deodorant and shampoo. It’d be her mother. Tara watched her go, feeling something
deep within her shift. She felt a rush of coldness, then got up and followed Elsie, unease swamping her. Elsie’s face grew pale as she listened. Tara went to her side. Her friend’s eyes were wide with shock.
She said, ‘Goodbye, Mum,’ in a whisper, then hung up.
‘Elsie?’ Tara asked gently.
‘There’s been a terrible accident. It’s Zac.’
Twenty-five
The hospital corridors were lit by cold fluorescent tubes. Elvis reached for Gwinnie’s hand and steeled himself. The family had become used to hospitals during Elvis’s treatments, but this was different.
The Smith family followed their nurse escort to the ICU as if being towed behind her by an invisible thread of disbelief. They were not sure what they would find. Amos tried to block the feeling of fear that was drowning him. He saw hospitals as places that centralised the coming and going of human souls to and from the planet, from tiny babies entering the world, to old, sick or injured people shuffling out. He knew about his own energetic connection to the universal life so the intense energy of the place was unsettling.
He tried to quieten his mind now so he could feel the connection rise from the soles of his long skinny feet to the top of his shaggy head and out to the universal plane of everythingness. The experience of his father’s cancer had taught him that faith and connection was the best path to choose when travelling through storms and outrageous joy. But right now, with his twin caught in a storm he couldn’t have ever imagined, Amos struggled to find a place to tether his faith.
Was he the only boy in the world who thought as deeply about life? Apart from Zac. What if he lost him? If he had to go on twinless in the world?
He shuddered, thinking of the hot ignition of the blast just metres from where he’d been standing. The blinding flare of light. The roar of noise as metal warped and gas flamed. Zac screaming in the centre of an inferno. The stench of burning flesh and hair. The smell of his own brother burning. For a moment he’d thought he would vomit. Amos roped in his thoughts and consciously released the tension from his white-knuckled hands. He wished Tara was here.
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