Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  The next day, their life couldn’t have looked more different. Instead of Tara mopping a pristine floor and Elsie arranging wildflowers in Skye’s kitchen, they were on a cleanskin muster, their first proper one, bumping their way over a track, trawling through patches of bull dust and jolting over rocks, Tara wedged on the stock-truck seat, bracing herself with one hand on the roof. Elsie was relishing the fact that every time they hit a bump she was thrown against Jake, who was lodged against the passenger door, thoughts of Zac pushed to the fringes of her mind. Jake was delicious. Plus he kept half turning to her to deliver a crooked cute grin, as if she was the only person present.

  Gordon shifted down a gear as they swayed in the semirigid truck through a dry riverbank. ‘Only eighty kilometres to go!’ he yelled over the roar of the engine. They had already been travelling two hours, first on good roads recently built by mining companies and now on what seemed like a goat track. Outside, the landscape sizzled.

  ‘The country sure could do with a drop,’ said Jake, gazing out to the haze of heat and the red dirt where plants seemed to barely survive as a brittle yellow or a pale listless green.

  Luckily for them, the forecast showed there was no rain on the horizon. Rain would mean getting stuck out on the run over Christmas. The roads with as little as half an inch became so slippery in patches they were no place for a stock truck laden with wild cleanskins. With a good forecast, the team had decided to risk going out for the muster. It would be good to get the job stitched up before the new year.

  Elsie knew Jake would be flying out with Hinchie on his second and final run for the week. She wished he wasn’t. She pictured herself in her boardies and bikini top, bobbing in the middle of the deep billabong, with Jake swimming out towards her. The shimmering water on his muscled, tanned shoulders. His bare chest. His eyes locked on hers. Sitting this close to him, she could sense every fibre of her body wanted more . . .

  Tara looked out the dusty window and frowned. The way Jake hooked Elsie in like a Barramundi on fresh bait made her sick. Of course, he’d been to the right schools; days ago Jake and Elsie had reeled off a few grazier-family names from their mutual circle. Tara had sat next to them in Mrs B’s kitchen, feeling once more like the girl from the abattoir house. She had turned her attention to Gordon, and slowly she felt a girlish crush growing. She had recently begun to shut out romantic thoughts of Amos. He was too good for her. He was well educated. She was not. He was thin and good-looking. She was fat and flubber-faced. And she knew how men thought. She’d seen enough of Dwaine’s girlie magazines lying about to know what they really wanted in a woman. One that looked like Elsie. Who’d want a dumb fat girl?

  Crack broke into her thoughts. ‘If it did rain, there’ll be no beer and no bong swimming. We’ll be stranded for Christmas with a collection of foul moods.’

  ‘And not even Elsie’s guitar to pass the time.’ Jake pouted.

  ‘What would be the point of Elsie’s guitar?’ Tara bit at Jake. ‘There’s no power out there for the amp, numbnuts.’ He was going to ruin the surprise she had planned.

  ‘I was just saying,’ Jake snapped back. ‘Wishful thinking.’

  ‘Keep your wishful thinking to yourself.’

  ‘Oi. Settle it,’ Crack said, sensing the tension in the cab. He clutched the steering wheel and looked out to the long red stretch of track ahead of him. At least, he thought, the wild cattle tomorrow would replace some of the kids’ rampaging sexual hormones with some pure adrenaline. That oughta shake them up a bit. He dropped back a gear and heard them all squeal when he gunned it up a creek crossing.

  Thirty-one

  ‘There’s a letter,’ Gwinnie called out as she came through the roadhouse door in a blue floral dress and cowgirl boots. She found Zac in the family’s lounge, adjacent to the kitchen. There was no summer sunshine in here. Even with his bright beautiful mother standing before him, Zac remained in a cloud of gloom.

  ‘The Ashes should be on telly by now,’ Gwinnie said, glancing at the clock. She cringed. Ashes. ‘The Test Cricket?’ she added, pointing to the television.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Want one of Dad’s or my books?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Internet? There could be something new on that mechanical engineering blog you and Amos are always on about.’

  He shot her an annoyed glance, then immediately felt guilty. She was only trying to help. He’d been home two days from the big city hospital and the whole world felt weird. Like it was moving in a slow, wonky vortex, spinning a little. He wondered if he had agoraphobia, such was his hesitancy to go outside into the sunlight, let alone to the farm shed again to see the extent of the damage there. The skin on his face pulled taut as it healed, and if it wasn’t stinging, or burning with pain, it was itching and driving him mad. He’d been so surly at the hospital they had discharged him early, on the provision he went daily to the Culvert doctor’s surgery for wound-dressing changes.

  Zac glanced down at the letter addressed in Tara’s unmistakeable hand. ‘It’s for Amos,’ he said flatly.

  Gwinnie frowned. She couldn’t help but feel cross with the girls for skipping town on her boys. Then she remembered what it was like to be a teenage girl. She’d made some crazy choices in her time. She realised what had unfolded privately between her sons and the girls was none of her business, but looking at the state of her son now, she knew it would soon become her business. He was fast sliding into an unreachable place of depression. She knew the burns weren’t the only pain Zac was enduring, and everyone was copping it. It just wasn’t in his nature to be like this.

  ‘Maybe there’s a letter from Elsie folded inside too?’

  Zac flashed her a dark look.

  She set the letter up on the mantelpiece for when Amos came in later with Elvis, then spun back around to Zac with a smile on her face. ‘Can I get you anything? Glass of water?’

  It was hard to look at him. In hospital she had been able to focus on him healing and getting him home. Now that they were home, the difference not only in his appearance but also his demeanour shocked her. This would be for life. This dreadful scarring that ran up under his neck, along his jawline, past his ear and to his temple was forever. The twist of smooth skin on his forearm that was starting to heal to white would always be there, along with his hands, his palm lines erased as if his future was now uncertain. He had barely got through the awkward ugly-duckling stage of adolescence and hadn’t had the chance to be a glorious young man in a perfect body.

  And then there was Amos, growing more handsome by the day, though haunted by the fact his brother had changed, not only externally, but internally too. She firmly told herself to steer away from the negatives. Zac was alive.

  As she walked away from him, she brightly called out, ‘Sing out if you do need something.’

  She could tell he was trying not to get irritated by her. It was unlike him to be anything other than relaxed and kind, but there was a bitter, angry tension that ran through him now and Gwinnie, being sensitive to all other people’s energies, couldn’t help but be thrown by it.

  In the kitchen, she began to rinse some snow peas she had picked from her garden. She used to love preparing food for the family. Now their dinners together were weighted with worry. Elvis faced a full-blown enquiry with the council, the police and even the environmental protections board. His trial was three months away, but his lawyer said the best-case scenario would be three months’ imprisonment, the worst, ten years. The future prison sentence, however long, sat like a vampire in their home, sucking away hope and plans.

  Even though she was still furious with Elvis for putting her boys at such risk, she knew that all of them were utterly passionate about their work. She knew that what they created was something humanity desperately needed. But with the vampire it seemed there was no way to get the scheme back off the ground. Gwinnie Smith was not one to give up, but today, she sure as hell felt like it.

  At the Smiths’ shit-
ponds shed, Councillor-Mayor Jones and Constable Gilbert watched smugly with their arms folded across their chests as young Amos Smith rolled the giant door of the shed closed and then Elvis Smith stepped forwards, lifted the chain and secured a heavy bolt and lock with a loud click. They turned and with a grim face Elvis dropped the keys into the outstretched palm of Councillor-Mayor Jones.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Smith,’ said the councillor-mayor, looking to Amos like a blubbery bumless red-and-white alien from Doctor Who. ‘You have been very foolish and left this town and our local council with egg on our faces.’

  ‘More like shit,’ chuckled Constable Gilbert as he dived under the police tape that designated the area as a crime scene.

  ‘Thank you, Constable,’ Kelvin said coolly. ‘That’s more than enough commentary from you.’ He turned back to Elvis. ‘See what I mean? We’re a laughing stock. Culvert was all set to become a sister city to the French rural village of Cullverte, but they have now withdrawn their commitment.’ Kelvin thought longingly of the images he’d seen on the internet of the tiny French cottage he’d been offered free of charge to stay in once the document was signed.

  ‘The Tidy Towns Committee has also been in contact and withdrawn its award for this year. And not only that, the funds for the wastewater-treatment plant have been diverted to Rington. Our outdated system is now to stay as it is for a further ten years thanks to your folly. You and your boys have brought disgrace to Culvert.’

  ‘Yep, another ten years of us all smelling our own excrement,’ Constable Gilbert added.

  Elvis looked at the man standing before him. Kelvin Jones was not only obese in stature; he’d been pigging out on power too. Elvis felt a spark within him flare, but it could go nowhere. He could already hear the clickety-clack in his head of Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ running on loop. Not only his family, but the world would pay for his failure.

  Gwinnie watched as the councillor-mayor’s car pulled out of the farm gate and past the roadhouse, followed by Constable Gilbert’s. She saw their smug faces as they drove away. She knew both men would be happy to put her husband in gaol, and when they did, they would be equally happy to saunter in to demand big servings of chips, potato cakes and chicken wingdings . . . on the house . . . due to the circumstances . . . and then the constable eyeballing her like she would be the prize now that Elvis was out of the way and Councillor-Mayor No-Buttocks feeling satisfied he was paying them back over Elsie.

  She turned away from the departing cars and waited for Amos and Elvis to return. But when they did, then what? There was no more sitting around the table excitedly brainstorming pathways forwards for the fuel technology and supply chains they had hoped to create. Instead she knew Amos would go to his room to read his letter from Tara, Zac would read nothing but the clouds gathering outside the window and Elvis would excuse himself, going to the bedroom for a ‘lie down’, as if he was some kind of nana, not even taking over the household chores like he used to. ‘You’ve worked all day and just as hard as me,’ he’d say once he got his all-clear. ‘Go and have a bath, darlin’, and the boys will cook while I get the washing.’ Those days were long gone, Gwinnie thought sadly.

  Later at the table she made some attempt to bring them back to some kind of normality. ‘Well? How are the girls?’ Gwinnie asked. She was in no mood any more to shield Zac from the subject of Elsie and not hearing from her since the accident. He’d just have to deal with it. A bright smile lit Amos’s face.

  ‘It sounds so cool. They’re on a one-point-two-million-hectare property that is part of the Newlands Pastoral Company cluster of seven stations dotted from Queensland to the Territory and even into the Kimberley. They do all kinds of training and extra courses like whip making, farrier training and even grazing studies. Tara said they’re about to go muster unbranded cattle out of the scrub before Christmas. Cleanskins. It sounds awesome.’

  ‘And Elsie?’

  Amos glanced over at Zac, who was shovelling mashed potato into his mouth, his eyes downcast, thinking of the song lyrics she’d sent him about letting her go.

  ‘She barely mentions her. Just says she’s good. Still strumming a guitar.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ Gwinnie asked.

  Amos shook his head. With a sudden push of his plate, Zac, steely-faced, stood abruptly and stormed from the room.

  ‘Ouch,’ Amos said.

  ‘When will you leave it alone?’ Elvis asked Gwinnie crossly, and he too stood and strode from the room.

  Gwinnie sat, feeling the misery rise in her. She folded her hands in her lap.

  ‘Nice try, Mum,’ Amos said gently, and he patted her on the shoulder and went out into the darkness.

  She pushed aside her dinner, folded her arms and let her head fall upon them. Her beautiful family, it seemed, had been utterly blown apart.

  Thirty-two

  It was the kind of surprise that overwhelmed. The campfire light illuminated Elsie’s tears of gratitude. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you!’ she said over and over again to the crew, looking particularly at Tara, who she knew was at the centre of the plan.

  No one had ever done anything as special for her. Being born on Christmas Day had meant a lifetime of birthdays buried under all the Jones family fuss, but this year, it was as if her childhood cloud had shifted. The brand-new acoustic guitar looked as rich as gold bullion in the firelight, its blond timber hues smooth and perfect. It was so exquisite, with its gentle curves and scrolled circular artwork around the sound hole, she couldn’t stop gazing at it, and for the first time in days her focus was stolen from Jake.

  It had been Tara who had done the whip-round among the crew in the lead-up to Christmas, sneaking into Gracie’s office to use the internet to buy it. Hinchie had flown the guitar in from Mt Isa along with Mrs Cloudhead and her son, Angus, this morning, back from their Brisbane boarding-house tour. After the team had heard Elsie sing at the quarters, they’d all conspired to give her the present early so they could enjoy her talents around the northern boundary campfire.

  Their campsite was surprisingly civilised, as the girls found out when they had rolled up in the stock truck just before lunch with Jake and Crack.

  The ‘kitchen’ was a large bare red-earth patch, with a fire pit ringed with stones. In the middle of the as-yet-unlit fire was a swivel tripod with large hooks to hang giant steel stewing pots. The fire site flanked ‘the quarters’, which was a square concreted area under a steel frame slung with a corrugated-iron roof. There were metal stretcher beds in rows on which to cast a swag up off the ground away from ants and snakes, and a big brand-spanking-new composting dunny — Crack’s pride and joy. He had been quick to point it out. Near it, a gum tree shielded by a few upright sheets of tin on another concrete slab served as ‘the shower block’ once a canvas bag of water with a hose and nozzle was slung there in the perfectly angled lower limbs of the tree. The shower bag, Crack explained, could be filled from the bore nearby and offered blissfully cool showers at the end of hot, dusty days. If you wanted a warm shower, you simply left the bag in full sun for the day, but, Crack warned, it’d scald you red.

  As the sun now dipped below the scrubby horizon, horses, hobbled, munched on hay, while others tied to a night line strung between two trees dozed. Now the guitar was out, Grout threw a few more logs on the fire, illuminating the eager faces of the crew.

  The giant barbecue plate that served as the stove to cook steaks on was now pushed aside and the crew were lounging back, waiting for Elsie to sing. Life could not get any better, she thought. Except for one thing: that hunger. The hunger for love. She decided tonight, even though most of the original songs she’d penned were for Zac, she’d sing them to Jake. He looked otherworldly in the firelight. He was just so good-looking. And he was keen on her! She pulled the guitar to her chest and began to tune it by ear.

  It only took a few strums to tell her Tara had chosen perfectly. She gave her friend a grateful look across the tops of the flickering flames
of the stone-ringed fire. Tara was amazing. Just when you thought she was off and away with the fairies or in one of her quiet insular states, she would gazump Elsie with a big gesture like this, or a problem-solving idea out of left field. Elsie felt a rush of guilt for her recent prickliness towards her friend. She wanted to think Tara had been jealous, but she knew that her mate was right to hear alarm bells. Jake was not to be indulged let alone trusted with a girl’s heart. Elsie might have known that, but there was some gaping void within herself that kept her falling towards him, as if by being with him she would somehow fill up that missing part of herself. Every time she looked at him, she just couldn’t help it.

  ‘Well,’ said Jake, holding out his hands to her, ‘will you play us a tune?’

  ‘Maybe just a couple,’ Crack said. ‘Early start, big day today, big day tomorrow.’ The crew booed him but knew he was right. This afternoon they’d worked hard to set up the spear-trap fencing around water points in the area in the hope of corralling a few of the cattle over the next three days. Then there were the logistics of getting whatever wildish rogue animals to the loading yards and up into the truck. Elsie had noticed electric jiggers for the task. Even though Gordon Fairweather only used Low Stress Stockhandling methods, these unhandled cleanskins, particularly the cows with calves and the bulls, could be dangerous. With all hands on deck, ten staff in all, they’d also set up heavy steel porta-panels to create a yard, and a funnel of fencing lined with hessian so they could gather the animals and run them into the enclosure.

  There were four-wheel bikes, and lasso ropes that belonged to the three guns-for-hire expert bull catchers, brothers, brought in from the Kimberley. All rodeo men, all clinging to their youth, all sporting old injuries, from bent knuckles to busted knees and broken ribs as a result of their constant craving for adrenaline rushes and adventures. Gordon knew the brothers well. It was not the first time they had run cleanskins in this part of the station. He called them Huey, Dewey and Louie, and all three were currently fixated on Elsie, and Elsie was glowing as a result. Tomorrow Dunk, the chopper pilot, named so because he always dunked his biscuits in his tea, one after the other, would be arriving not long after dawn to give them an idea of where the cleanskins were.