Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘Smells brilliant,’ Crack said. He helped himself to a plate and waited for Tara to carve the first of the chickens, steam rising as she offered him a drumstick. ‘Elaine’s cooked me some tucker, but just a little sample won’t hurt.’ He patted his stomach. ‘You are a woman of many talents, Tara, my girl.’ He gave her a friendly smile and a moment of understanding passed between them that all was not forgotten about the other night, but their care and admiration for one another had deepened to another place. To a place of lifelong friendship.

  ‘How’s your back?’

  ‘Just fine, thanks,’ she said as she kept carving.

  ‘Better leave some aside for Loverboy Jake,’ Crack said. ‘He was following in the 4WD and I sent him to check the Stallion Springs waterhole. Michael said it was running dry and we’ll have to move the spares if that’s the case.’ Crack was referring to a second mob of station horses that were having a spell from work. They cycled the horses in teams, and the next lot would be brought back in after Christmas when a full crew was back on board and the nomadic herding practice resumed.

  ‘EJ’s having a bit of time out,’ ribbed Grout as he elbowed her a little. Elsie scowled at him and picked up a plate. Clearly her relationship with Jake on the stock camp was now public. Elsie glanced at Tara and gave her a smile of hello, but there was an edge to it.

  ‘Wing? Leg?’ Tara asked. ‘Or breast?’

  ‘I’ll have the breast,’ Grout said. ‘Jake’s been keeping all of ’em for himself lately.’ He held out his plate and scrunched his face, his freckles folding together. Tara plonked the chicken breast on his plate and rolled her eyes at Elsie.

  When they were all seated, Crack gave his customary brief to the staff before he made his way back to Elaine and his dog Dorris, who would be firmly planted in Gordon’s chair, waiting for her master.

  ‘Vera’s just sent the itinerary in,’ Crack said. He dragged out a piece of paper folded in his jeans pocket and slipped on reading glasses that he kept in the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Hinchie is flying in at ten am. He’s dropping in the last of the Santa supplies for our skeleton crew.’

  ‘Is that Santa as in Santa Claus? Or Santa as in Santa Gertrudis?’

  ‘Very funny bovine joke, Tara. Stick with your cooking. Hinchie’ll then leave at midday back to Isa. Jake and Tyler are on the flight. Huey, Dewey, Louie, you’re shipping out by road, taking the rest of our rusty ringers, OK?’ The boys nodded. ‘Then we’re left with String Bean, Moody Blues, Boss Simmo and myself as station staff until the end of January. Mrs Skye and my Mrs Elaine too,’ he said, glancing behind him, ‘and of course Angus.’ The boy beamed. It was rare his mother brought him to the mess room when all the crew were assembled. He decided he liked being there.

  ‘So we clear?’

  Everyone nodded. Elsie’s heart jolted a little. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Jake leaving so soon.

  Back at the quarters, Elsie barely stopped to pat Marbles as she stomped up the stairs. She was exhausted. Not just from the rush of bringing in more cattle and the thrill of riding Wolfie so fast in and out of the scrub, but because her nights had been consumed by Jake. Or, more likely, she had been consumed by Jake. He certainly has an appetite, she thought, smiling but feeling a little sore, not just from horse riding. She was almost relieved he would be in later with the four-wheel drive. He was pretty intense. Now that he had her, he pestered her constantly for a kiss here, a grope there, when the crew weren’t watching. And once night had fallen he was like a man possessed when it came to touching her, undressing her, sliding inside her. Again and again. She was giddy from it. It’s lovely to be so wanted, Elsie thought dreamily. Never in her life had she felt so wanted. But there was something about the whole camp and behaving like that when working with the other men that left her feeling grubby. She was confused and annoyed and felt like crying. Plus, she noted, there was no letter from Zac waiting for her on the bedside table where Gracie normally left her mail. She was about to drift off to sleep when Tara, who had just cleaned up the kitchen, came in.

  ‘I’m worried about Marbles,’ she said. ‘He’s not himself.’

  ‘Mmm,’ was all Elsie could manage before she drifted away to dream of the horror of the hospital theatre and the doctor cutting and cutting until she had no face left.

  There was a banging on the door.

  The girls sat up. It was Crack. Tyler stood behind him, coats wrapped around them from the chill of the outback night.

  ‘Jake’s not in here?’

  ‘No,’ said Elsie groggily.

  ‘Shit,’ he said and they turned and left. Next thing, Elsie and Tara heard the diesel engine of a four-wheel drive fire, and saw the lights cast a low sinister beam across the buildings as Gordon Fairweather drove away into the night.

  Thirty-eight

  On the verandah of the staff quarters, Elsie and Tara sat on the bench seat under the gleam of a single bulb that was copping beatings from the hard-cased wings of flying bomber beetles. They tinked as they battered against the light. Joining them were flying ants and moths in a frenzy, while geckos, frogs and spiders on the walls ate their fill. From the window of the communal ringers’ lounge the girls could listen for the two-way, though so far it had remained silent. On his bed at their feet, Marbles snored an uneasy rhythm. Side by side, waiting, they looked out into the night where stars swathed across the sky.

  ‘He probably got a flat,’ Elsie said, drawing her NP Co coat about her. She chewed her lip.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ But Tara sensed otherwise. She hoped her intuition was wrong, but reckoned that Elsie’s world was about to tilt sideways and tip her onto another plane of living. This was what the inner feeling had been, the one haunting her for a couple of days.

  ‘Or he pulled over for a rest and fell asleep. We were pretty tired.’

  ‘Yeah, probably,’ Tara said. ‘Too much bonking.’

  Suddenly Elsie was up on her feet, glaring at Tara. ‘Will you just give me something? Anything? Some kind of reassurance? This is my boyfriend who’s missing.’

  Tara, shocked at the outburst, stared back at Elsie. In her head her mind flashed with anger at the word ‘boyfriend’. Jake was not the boyfriend type. He was a ride-one, lead-one kind of guy and Tara knew Elsie was only as good for him for as long as he was actually with her. She knew from Tyler that when Jake went back to his big family farm and social circle of dynasty players over Christmas, he’d keep Elsie on ice but trawl the Sydney society girls. He needed a rich wife so his Mudgee family could keep on farming.

  Tara knew the grazing sector was full of charmers like him, and for every one of him, there were a thousand city girls lined up for the prestige of property and the right to wear pearls every day, no matter how their husbands treated them or how little they had in common. Tara had seen Jake’s values were founded on misogynistic, outdated views of how a woman should behave. She could see Elsie was blind to it.

  Plus if Jake was Elsie’s boyfriend, who was Zac to her? Tara recalled the flirty-girl voice she’d used on the phone with Zac before his accident, and the teary messages she had since left for him with Gwinnie, seeing as he didn’t seem to want to speak to her any more. Tara began to bubble with anger. Who knew what he was going through post-accident? Amos had said he was a bit of a wreck, not just physically. Didn’t Elsie understand it wasn’t all about her? Poor Zac. Elsie was riding one, leading one too! She was being such a drama queen.

  Tara thought of the now-folklore image of Elsie up there in the spotlight at the Culvert Show. Her inner cowgirl unleashed. Her energy flailing against the confines of her own sexist farming upbringing. If she stuck with Jake, she was selling herself out. Again. She would be sentenced to a life similar to, if not worse than, the one at Grassmore. Not only that, but Elsie was acting selfishly. To be leading Zac on like this while he was injured was wrong. Elsie’s ego was getting way out of hand, Tara concluded.

  But still, Tara felt compassion for her friend. She breathed into
her belly and let out a slow breath. ‘Everything will be fine. There’s good reason he’s late,’ she said, but her inner core contorted within her as she did.

  She slumped an arm around Elsie’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elsie said.

  Tara didn’t reply. She knew what she was apologising for.

  As they moved apart, the radio came alive. ‘Goldsborough Base, you copy?’ came Crack’s urgent voice.

  ‘Copy,’ said Michael from the homestead. He’d been sitting by the radio paralysed with worry.

  ‘We’ve found him.’ There was a pause as the radio crackled.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ said Elsie as a smile broke out upon her face. She opened her mouth and was about to sigh with relief and hug Tara when Crack’s voice came over the two-way again.

  ‘It’s not good, boss.’

  There was a long silence.

  Eventually Crack’s voice again: ‘You’ll need to call the RFDS. I’m very sorry, but we’ve got a body to fly out. Over.’

  Elsie gave one quick cry of pain and she slumped forwards off the seat onto her knees. Head in her hands, she crouched on the verandah floorboards. Images of Jake’s hands on her body, the flash of his face in her mind’s eye. The way he’d winked at her from his horse. And now he was dead. Dead? It couldn’t be possible.

  ‘Elsie,’ came Tara’s voice from way off in the stratosphere. She felt Tara’s hands on her shoulder. She shook them off angrily, made a determined growling noise through gritted teeth, got up and walked down the row of doors to Jake’s room. She went in and slammed the door.

  Tara hovered, then tapped lightly on the door with her cold knuckles. ‘Elsie?’

  ‘Go away!’

  The next morning two planes were headed to Goldsborough. Hinchie’s brand-new craft and the RFDS plane, its mission to take the body of a young man home to his family right before Christmas. His corpse was laid out in the cool room where they butchered the station rations, covered with a sheet. From what Gordon and Tyler could make out, Jake had hit a roo and lost it in bull dust.

  ‘He would’ve been right had he been wearing a seatbelt,’ Crack had reported on the two-way. The injuries to his body were minimal, but his head had hit the casing of the vehicle hard. Hard enough to kill him instantly. And, as Crack pointed out, like many young men his age, he had been going too fast.

  Tara could hear the far-off drone of the planes, so she knocked on the door of Jake’s room. ‘Elsie. They’ll be taking him soon. Did you want to see him? To say goodbye?’ she asked gently.

  Elsie was lying in Jake’s bed, hugging one of his shirts. The plate of breakfast Tara had left for her earlier was untouched. ‘No. Go away.’

  Tara couldn’t bring herself to also deliver the news that she’d found Marbles dead that morning. He’d gone in his sleep. Tara had hugged him and cried. Dear old Marbles, Tara thought fondly. Animals were angels. Gordon had already dug Marbles a grave and they had lowered him in. Tara had said a few words for the beautiful dog who had bolstered them during their drive from Culvert, who had been so glad to be loved. Then they had shovelled the red dirt quickly onto his limp blond body. It was too hot for corpses.

  Tara stood on a sun-baked, rust-coloured airstrip and watched the planes approach. Despair hit her for Jake’s parents whose whole world had been shattered. Maybe she had judged Jake too harshly? After all, he wasn’t trust-funding it around the Gold Coast like some guys his age were and he’d been genuinely keen on learning how to look after the land and cattle out here on the station. Tara sent his parents a prayer. As she did, she felt more gut-wrenching grief over Jake’s early death and then Marbles. She choked down a lump in her throat and thought of Marbles’s deep foggy brown eyes. Animals had such pure souls, she thought. Not like many humans, who buried them under inflated egos or within greedy hearts. Perhaps her ugly but understandable hatred of men who preyed on women gave her the cold, detached feeling she’d had towards Jake. She tried to shake it away. Squinting into the blue, she watched as Hinchie lined up the runway.

  She looked down to her dusty boots and reefed a tear away with the heel of her hand before the flies bothered her senseless. Under other circumstances it would have been a treat to see Hinchie landing in his brand-spanking-new NP Co Airvan OFI, and stepping out of the door under the wing with a big grin on his face and his trademark Santa hat — she knew he would be laden with seasonal parcels, tucker and mail — but all sense of festivity was gone. Nearby the ute was ready and waiting, Tara having done a run up and down the strip to clear it of any scrub turkeys that may have been dawdling about and could’ve been tangled in the wheels or splattered in the props. Puffs of dust rose as the back wheels touched down in a perfect landing, the nose wheel seconds later doing the same. The plane roared as it slowed and then taxied towards them, the propeller only visible as a shining blur. When Hinchie had cut the engine and climbed out of the plane, he waited until the Mt Isa police officer had safely made it down the steps. The policeman nodded at Tara.

  She knew the cop had come to inspect the accident site, view the body and sign off for the coroner. After her mum dying, Tara knew death came with a lot of paperwork, but in Jake’s case, it would be extreme. Hinchie nodded a greeting too. Normally she would’ve gushed in admiration of his new plane before helping him unload supplies for her first station Christmas, but the weight of Jake’s sudden death was heavy in the atmosphere. Tara was about to head into the rear of the plane to help Hinchie when she saw two boots standing at the top of the steps.

  Her eyes travelled up long legs and a sculpted lean torso to the face of a handsome young man with curling black hair that flopped over one eye.

  ‘Amos?’ she said incredulously.

  He smiled at her. ‘Surprise!’

  Thirty-nine

  In the kitchen, Amos dumped his bag at the door as Tara got some cordial out of the fridge, her cheeks still pink from the shock and excitement of seeing him. She was flustered and spilled the cordial before she’d even set it on the bench.

  ‘I guess it wasn’t fair to surprise you,’ he said. ‘I’d imagined you being more excited.’

  Tara shrugged apologetically. ‘I would be, but . . .’ She frowned and felt tears pulled upwards like the tide, so her eyes moistened.

  Amos finished the sentence for her. ‘But one of your boys has just been killed.’

  Hinchie and Vera had briefed Amos in Mt Isa and he’d almost turned back home again. But his desire to see Tara was so strong that he’d just kept coming. Now he wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision.

  ‘He wasn’t one of my boys,’ Tara said warningly, ‘more like Elsie’s.’

  Amos glanced to his bag, which contained a gift Zac had sent for Elsie. He knew that wrapped in the pretty rice paper was a box of really cool guitar picks Zac’d found online. And there was a card.

  Tara shut her eyes. ‘It’s a mess. She’s a mess. Plus Marbles died this morning. And I haven’t told her yet.’ Her voice choked.

  ‘Really? Oh, Tars, I’m sorry. He was a legend, that ol’ dog. I still remember his face plant at the shed that day . . .’

  Amos moved over to her. Even in the brief time since she had seen him, he had filled out. His skin was clearer now, his jaw starting to square and tinge with dark stubble. His arms and hands, shoulders and chest were more solid, and tapered to a trim waist. Tara sucked in a breath just looking at him. He was on his way to becoming gorgeous. And he seemed to be surveying all the changes in her in the same way.

  He opened up his arms. ‘Need a hug?’

  Tara nodded as emotion folded her face into misery and relief at having him so suddenly here with her. He was here! She stepped towards him.

  ‘Is this a hug as a friend? Or as a . . . ?’

  ‘As a what?’

  She looked up at him, desire firing, the mere presence of him making her feel all at once safe and happy, but also nervous and shy.

  ‘You know . . .’

  ‘You mean
as a boyfriend?’

  Tara nodded.

  Amos looked gently at her. ‘That’s entirely up to you. You can think of me anyway you like. If you want me as your friend, then that’s that: I’ll just have to cop it. But I think you know how I feel, so no matter what, I’m always going to be your friend and if you want, your boy.’

  ‘More man than boy now. More like a man. You look good,’ she said.

  ‘So certainly do you! You look so fit and well. Station life suits you.’

  They smiled at each other for a moment. Then she hit him lightly on the arm. ‘What were you thinking, you big dag? Coming all this way to spend Christmas with me?’

  He chuckled and pulled her into an embrace that felt like a familiar, safe homecoming. ‘Why not come see my buddy? Zac’s being a shithead and Mum and Dad said for me to get away.’

  She smiled as she laid her head on his chest. She could feel the gentle beat of his heart against her cheek. She shut her eyes. She wanted to feel happy, but there was grief and confusion over Elsie, and poor Zac, left behind in Culvert with his long recovery still unfolding, and yes, poor Jake, gone so suddenly and so young. And Marbles. She felt the miles, the days, the drift of life pulling them in all directions. A fly batted itself against a window and outside in the home paddock one of the horses whinnied. Still Amos held her.

  ‘I know I should’ve warned you, but I just couldn’t stay at that bloody roadhouse any longer. Plus if I asked you, I was afraid you’d say —’ He stopped.

  ‘No?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ve got to stop finishing each other’s sentences.’

  ‘Yes, otherwise we will know we are connected by something greater than mere teenage infatuation. And that would be —’

  ‘Serious,’ Amos said, laughing.

  ‘Yes, serious.’ She laughed back. She liked the sound of his laughter. It was deeper and rich, and she could feel the infectious vibration of it through his broad chest. She had forgotten how much he made her laugh. She lifted her head and Amos was about to bend and kiss her when they heard someone coming, banging the screen door. Instinctively Tara took a step back, hoisted herself onto the bench and began to sip her cordial, trying to look as if she hadn’t just been embracing her version of the most beautiful boy in the world.