‘I’ll do a couple, Boss Crack, then play them a lullaby.’ Elsie grinned as she ran the pick down over the strings and played the first few chords to Lee Kernaghan’s ‘Boys from the Bush’.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ Jake said suddenly, standing up and reaching for his back pocket. He held an envelope out towards her. ‘Happy early Christmas and birthday, Elsie,’ he said, thrusting it at her. ‘I heard you playing, told Vera about it, and she organised this for me. Sent it with Hinchie. So I guess Tara wasn’t the only one thinking of you.’ His tone was a bit spewy and one of the bull-catcher boys mimed putting his index finger down his throat.
Tara’s expression shut down as she watched Elsie tear open the envelope. Tara knew Jake was buying his way into Elsie’s pants, and into her psyche. He didn’t care about her. He wanted her as his most golden prize. With his fifth-generation beef-breeder pedigree and big country estate and posh voice, not to mention his model looks, he could have any girl. And the other blokes were mostly won over by his easygoing chumminess and non-threatening ways. But, Tara thought, he was a man who did not come from a soul space. Tyler had already hinted Jake had some desperate society girl on the go in Sydney who hung in there for him, no matter what.
‘Are you serious?’ Elsie squealed as she looked at the paper. Jake stood above her beaming his perfect pin-up-boy smile.
‘They’re calling for auditions in January for their very first comp. This is bigger than Ben Hur. So there you have it. No excuses. A ticket to Brisbane. And I’ve already logged you in on the website and registered you. You’re contestant number 496.’
‘I didn’t know there were that many country-music wannabes,’ Crack said, peering at the music competition ad.
‘You tryin’ to get rid of me?’ Elsie joked to Jake.
He grinned and reached again for his back pocket, this time producing two airline e-tickets. ‘Not at all. Couldn’t have you go by your lonesome, so I bought two tickets, if the boss’ll give me leave for the week. You’ll need me to help you, kinda like your security slash manager slash whatever else you want me to be.’
His tone was laden with meaning.
Elsie blushed.
‘Vera’s already put in for leave for you.’
Elsie looked down to the website print-outs Vera had stapled neatly together and sent with Hinchie from Isa. She looked again at the advertisement. It was calling for Australia’s best new country-music artists. The prize would not only be announced by the famous Lee Kernaghan and the Wolfe Brothers at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, but it came with a record deal and a trip to Nashville to meet country-music legend Colorado Buck and his wife Charity.
‘Colorado and Charity!’ squealed Elsie, jiggling her knees up and down and leaping up to hug Jake with one arm, still holding her new guitar. ‘It’s a sign, Tara! A sign! Colorado and Charity!’
Jake tapped the fine print. ‘It says here there’s even the chance of a US deal with the Bucks’ manager, should the winning contestant succeed in the Nashville section of the competition. I mean, look at Guy Sebastian on Idol. And what’s-his-name who was runner-up. The world could be yours, Elsie!’
‘I told Tara once that one day I was going to be famous. I had no idea how, but maybe this is it.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Tara said. ‘Fame is not an ambition any healthy person consciously feeds. I read it in a book once. Paulo Coelho.’
‘Are you suggesting I’m an unhealthy person?’
Tara looked skywards. ‘Not at all. If you want to give the gift of music to the world through your talent, that’s fine. It’s just fame itself won’t necessarily bring you happiness or love.’
‘Oh, and you would know?’ Elsie’s tone was cross. Tara was spoiling her big moment.
Tara looked down to the toes of her boots. ‘No, Elsie. I would not know.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to bed. I don’t feel so flash.’
Crack glanced at both the girls. ‘Settle, you two.’
They looked guiltily at each other. The rest of the crew had now switched off, turning their attention away from what seemed like a tiff between friends.
‘Don’t you see?’ Elsie asked quietly, more gently, reaching out to touch Tara’s arm, willing her to be excited too. ‘It’s a sign!’ She turned back to Gordon and Jake. ‘Tara’s into signs.’
‘Don’t tell them that,’ muttered Tara. ‘I am happy for you. You got the guitar; Jake organised the competition. It’s all meant to be, but I’m still going to bed.’
Elsie saw Gordon Fairweather smiling at her, but there was something beneath it. Like pity. Or sadness.
‘I hope you enjoy it all,’ Tara said. ‘Good night.’
For the first time ever she did not enjoy her friend’s singing and music as she played to the rest of the crew. She lay in her swag and pulled the pillow over her ears, searching for the true night sounds of this remote place. She could see a swathe of stars beyond the corro roof and she decided to focus on those. She wished on a thousand of them that Elsie Jones would be OK, but inside herself, she knew for now she had lost her friend on another pathway that could never be hers.
Thirty-three
When Tara rolled over in the morning gloom, she could just make out Elsie and Jake holding hands across the span of the stretcher beds. In the night they had nudged the beds closer, and moved away from the others. They were whispering, fingers gently entwining and letting go, entwining again, letting go, like snakes in a courting dance.
Tara rolled over and sat up with her back to them, swinging her legs out of bed. In her man’s boxer shorts and a T-shirt, she reached for her jeans, underwear and station shirt on the foot of the bed and headed for the gum-tree shower just to get away for a moment. There was enough sunrise skimming over the horizon for her to see her way. In the shower she looked up to the gum and the blaze of light just peeking above the horizon. She inhaled deeply and let the almost-too-cold water wash her sadness about Elsie away. She wasn’t going to let Elsie’s decisions about Jake muck her day up. She breathed the perfume of the outback morning and told herself life was good.
By the time she was back, refreshed and ready to go, the bull-catcher boys were helping themselves to cereal, tinned fruit and UHT milk from a box in the Esky. Others in the crew were dragging on clothes, reviving the fire and lighting a gas stove for the billy.
‘That’s cheating,’ Grout said, looking at Crack bending over the hissing blue flame.
Crack grinned. ‘Caffeine needed fast,’ he grunted, his hair still brushed vertical by the pillow.
Over breakfast Tara avoided watching Jake and Elsie carry on. She wondered if they’d slept together, somehow sneaking off when everyone else was asleep. Elsie sure did have a glow about her this morning. But in truth Tara really didn’t want to know. She thought of Zac, who would still be enduring the most awful pain and trauma. To help herself feel less alone, she kept close to Crack, helping out as best she could as a newbie on her first station camp. As she dragged all the saddles out from the boxes under the truck and fetched the saddle blankets, Crack poked her in the ribs.
‘I’m gonna have to rename you String Bean if you get any skinnier. You’re becoming a fit young woman. I’m proud of ya.’
Tara felt a glow rise within her. It was as big as the outback sunrise that was now draping everything in gold. Praise from anyone, particularly a kind fatherly man, was so unfamiliar she felt as if she could cry. Her girlish crush on Gordon Fairweather deepened. She was sure he was just being a good mentor, but she wished it was something more. She wished he didn’t have a gorgeous wife in Elaine, who lived back at the manager’s quarters and who ran the cattle turn-off logistics with the other NP Co stations and helped Gracie out in the office during the end of the financial year or the quarterly GST return. She knew it was a classic teacher-crush and she wasn’t planning on getting ahead of herself. But she was beginning to feel a longing for Gordon, and guilt for betraying Elaine.
A chopper
came thumping in from the south. The moment of dreaming about Gordon was gone. Dunk was touching down with a roar, a whir and a stir of dust. He set down near some av-gas drums and, after filling in his paperwork, checking a few dials, dived beneath the rotors and came towards them with a beaming buck-toothed smile.
‘Gonna bag us some cleanies today, boys and girls?’ he asked.
Gordon shook his hand. ‘Welcome to North Camp, Dunk.’
‘Got the billy on? Any bikkies? Surely there’s time for a cuppa before we set sail.’
Outback chopper pilots were renowned for their daredevil natures and extreme personalities. Dunk was a motor mouth. That was when he wasn’t cramming it full and polishing off all the Arnott’s Assorted Creams.
‘Once I’ve done my run today, Simmo says I have to take your young girl home with me to the homestead.’
Crack frowned. ‘Which one?’
‘The one that does the cleaning.’
Tara’s ears pricked up.
‘The cleaning?’ asked Crack.
Dunk nodded rapidly as he scanned the kitchen area, reached for the packet of Nice and began ripping it open. ‘It’s smoko time somewhere.’ With a mouthful of bikkies and a gulp of tea he mumbled, ‘Mrs Cloudhead was so stoked by what the cleaning girl did to her house, she wants her back there to help redecorate.’
‘Redecorate? She wants to pull one of my crew out of my cleanskin camp to redecorate? Oh, be fair!’ Gordon looked to the distance where the evening star was just hanging in there, shining brightly against an indigo morning sky.
Dunk shrugged. ‘Boss Man Simmo said.’
Tara stepped forwards. ‘It’s OK, Boss Crack. I’ll take one for the team. I’ll still get one day in mustering and if they need me, they need me. Let’s just cut her some slack. She’s losing her baby to boarding school next year. A little lovin’ from Tars is the ticket. I’m your girl.’
Crack shook his head. ‘Honestly, String Bean, you are gold. Pure gold.’
Elsie, who was just rolling up her swag for the day (the bull-catching boys had told her stories about snakes who liked to slither their way inside the bedding), wished she had the capacity to impress Crack like that. And to be so generous. So cheerful. Tara, she decided, made her look utterly vain and selfish. It was good she was going. Here she was nicknamed Moody Blues. No wonder she was moody. Tara had been so negative about Jake and had been trying to sabotage the whole thing. After last night, Elsie knew he was a really, really nice guy. She stomped off to help Jake pack the saddlebags, trying to silence the voice deep within her that warned her not all was well.
Thirty-four
The first time the girls glimpsed the cattle crashing through the bush they felt adrenaline pump in their veins. Their horses felt it too. Gazza and Wolfie lifted their heads and pranced on the spot so the girls had to hold them steady. The two-ways strapped around their chests were alive with excited voices: Dunk shouting directions over the rev of the chopper; and Dewey sitting beside him in the cockpit with a shotgun, watching like a hawk in case his crew members got into a dangerous and deadly tangle on the ground with a big angry daddy bull. Somewhere off in the scrub the girls could hear the rev of the four-wheel bike manned by Huey. Also out of sight was the middle brother, Louie. He was driving the modified Landy with tyres strapped to its front for the purpose of nudging breakaways over to be lassoed, leg tied and later snigged onto Crack’s truck.
On horses, Jake and Grout rode near Louie, ropes at the ready.
Suddenly through the bush there was a cry from Crack and they glimpsed him flying along on Bear beyond the steaming backs of tonguing, crazed wild cattle.
‘EJ, ride left, left, left! String Bean, go right!’ He was cantering through scrub beyond the hessian with his big rangy Border Collies and gold-coated hangin’ dog casting out in an arc, tossing an invisible net on the flank of the fast-flowing herd.
‘Keep ’em blocked on that wing!’ He was gesturing as he rode one-handed.
It all happened so fast. There must’ve been about thirty head. Cleanskins. Full of life. Full of fear. Full of fury at being trumped by humans. A further twenty head were contained at the water points and they too were bellowing their disgust. At the heart of the herd was a cluster of big-framed bulls, pimpled on their hides from insect bites, scarred from battles, their horns turning upwards in great wavering spears. They moved like lightning. For a moment Elsie and Tara thought they would run right past them. The horses, though, were locked onto them, their blood up, their instincts keen, leaping scrub, skimming through trees, pressuring, pressuring the invisible bubble of the mob. Will it be enough? Tara thought as she saw the rolled eye of one beast. She could see the old cow had made her mind up to break from the herd, taking her calf with her.
But Gordon and his dogs were onto them. A nip on the nose, a flurry of barking. The old girl turned. Bolting for the safety of the herd. The cattle cast their heads low at the hessian panels and for a moment baulked. But Gordon gave a roar and a well-timed stock-whip crack and the cattle galloped on. Huey, almost on two wheels, was making for the gate, also disguised in hessian, and rolled it shut on their tails.
Then everything settled to quiet save for the hefty in-out breath of the herd. The chopper choppered away back to camp and no doubt the biscuit tin. The bike and the Landy’s engines cut to silence. The boys climbed the rail to get a count. It was the best muster in years. They’d have to send Gordon back with a load in the stock truck overnight to the homestead yards, because if they got any more big rogue bulls like the ones that were now in the yard, there would be no room on the truck.
Tara and Elsie dismounted and went to look at the cattle milling about, mouths open tonguing, steam rising from their backs, bunting one another in frustration.
‘Wow,’ Tara said. ‘They’re pumped.’
‘I’m pumped,’ Elsie said. ‘Did you ever imagine us . . . ?’
Tara beamed. ‘It’s the coolest.’
‘I wish you could stay for more,’ Elsie said, turning to her, brushing a fly from her sweating face. For a moment Tara felt a glimmer of hope, but behind Elsie Jake was striding over with a big grin on his face, his eyes, his energy, his intent locked on Elsie.
Tara’s face fell. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said, looking her in the eye. ‘Three’s a crowd.’
‘Tars . . .’ Elsie said, but Tara was already turning away, and Jake was already beside Elsie, flicking the brim of her hat.
‘Howdy, cowgirl,’ he said. ‘Nice riding. You sure know how to swing a leg over.’
Naked, Elsie turned the nozzle of the shower and felt the bliss of cold water run over her sore, sunburned, dust-covered body. She began to wash quickly, knowing the water wouldn’t last long. She turned her face up to the mottled leaves of the dozing afternoon gum and let the water splash over her face, absorbing just how wonderful this place was. A small squeal escaped her when she felt a hand reach around to cup her breast. Jake’s burning hot naked body pressed against her as he scooped her in his arms and from behind began to kiss and bite her neck, his insistent erection nudging her hard between her soapy buttocks.
‘Oh God, I’ve wanted you all day,’ he said breathlessly into her ear. ‘Last night . . . last night was amazing, but it’s not enough, EJ, not enough.’
She was shocked to find him here and instantly her mind ran to panic — where were the others? Wouldn’t they know? But her endorphins ran awash in her system. Her body softened and yielded to Jake’s incredible touch. His hard hotness, the way he ran his hands up and over her soap-lathered skin. He was wet now too and inserting his finger into her from behind. His warm breath played on her neck as he spooned his taut body over her back. He reached for her hips, tilted his pelvis and with a suddenness that made her cry out again pushed into her. She sucked in a breath. It hurt. Fleetingly she thought she should insist on a condom, but after the pain eased it began to feel so good, and she just couldn’t stop. She reached forwards for the solid trunk of the gum and closed
her eyes as he thrust hard into her. She met him back, mouth falling open with pleasure and surprise.
The water fell on her back and she felt her nipples tingling with excitement. She could feel every cell of her body searing with electricity as Jake pumped faster and faster. His strong hands on her slim hips, his perfect legs and feet behind her. Somewhere a little distance away, the chopper was whirring to take-off speeds. As the engine roared faster, Jake pumped harder. He was about to come, but he was as smart as a fox and so withdrew at the right moment, turning Elsie around, grabbing her hand and shoving her palm around the shaft of his perfect pornstar penis. Elsie watched him watch as he guided her hand in a pump to orgasm. He shut his eyes, his chest wet and glistening. Elsie was breathless. The shower suddenly ran down to a single drizzle.
He gave her a white-toothed perfect grin, kissed her once on the lips, grabbed up his pile of clothes from the bush and made a runner into the scrub to dress himself, circle the camp and come in the other way as if he’d just gone to take a leak. Elsie, stunned, took a moment to compose herself. Her hands were shaking. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. She wanted to think that it was. In her heart she knew it was no good. He hadn’t even tried to give her an orgasm. That mattered, didn’t it? Some attempt, at least? Still she forced herself to smile. A man wanted her. A real-life, good-looking god like Jake actually wanted her. She turned her eyes to the sky. It was a miracle.
Tara sat beside Dunk in a bit of an emotional lather. She wanted to stay, but at the same time was excited by the prospect of a chopper ride home. Something had settled in her like a lead weight. Elsie worried her. As they lifted up, earphones blocking out the roar of the rotors, Tara glanced down. There behind the tin she saw two naked bodies. Jake driving himself from behind into her friend. She glanced at Dunk, but his focus was on steering the chopper up and south away from the treeline.
Cleanskin Cowgirls Page 22