The boys, Vegas and South, were throwing baseballs with gusto at the thick royal-blue curtains shielding the northern side of the ranch house from the harsh Texan sun, calling out, ‘Steeeerrike!’
Colorado waited for Charity to shut off the blender. ‘Any harder and you’ll break a pane, boys,’ he said slowly and calmly, dumping his hat onto the counter. ‘Best quit it.’
He leaned over, kissed his wife and patted her on a backside highlighted nicely by the clingy soft fabric of the five-hundred-dollar sundress UPS had dropped off that morning.
‘Hello, darlin’,’ he said in his delicious Texan drawl.
He knew Charity missed the shops and her friends when they were out on the ranch. She in turn knew her husband had to settle down and focus on writing a new album, otherwise they would be in financial strife. Between Charity and the kids, the Texan ranch, the Las Vegas flat and the Nashville homestead, the bills just kept coming. Because of a whole world of changes to the music industry, mostly due to the internet, Colorado was feeling pressured to move with the times or fade into music-history oblivion, and a significantly reduced income.
Even his record company of fifteen years was starting to make him feel like a has-been, with reduced advances and fewer scheduled concerts in smaller cities. Colorado’s jaw twinged. The pressure was on. He really must get to the studio, but something kept him lingering near his wife. He inhaled the smell of her skin: the scent of pool water, Texan sunshine and Chanel. Wrapping his arms about her, he kissed Charity from behind on the nape of her neck, where her shoulder-length blonde hair met her honey-brown skin. His hand slid lower, cupping one cheek of her buttock. He hadn’t quite got used to her new arse. It had cost him about twenty-five grand, not to mention new clothes to fit it, so he thought he might as well make the most of it. Charity seemed to like it. She smiled her cat-like smile and turned her large hazel eyes on him suggestively. He felt his body responding in his Ellen underpants.
‘Dada!’ roared Sunlight, as the three-year-old intercepted their intimacy. She always threw tantrums when Mama and Dada ‘got kissie’. Even in the dark of night and in their marital bed, the little girl was like an Exocet missile, seeking out and destroying any kind of sexual activity between Colorado and Charity. There would be no new baby in the family on her watch.
‘Hey, sweetheart,’ Colorado said, putting his hand on the crown of Sunlight’s head and releasing her mother from his grasp. ‘Dada’s just goin’ to his studio.’
Sunlight lifted the celery stick and whacked her father on his leg. He caught her gently by the wrist and glanced with a slight look of annoyance at Charity. She may have a new arse to die for, but she really needed to focus more on controlling the kids. He’d been using the excuse that she was ten years his junior, so ‘she was young and needed to learn about the world’. But that was ten years back and now he’d begun to see her continued immaturity as a kind of manipulation. His daughter did it too. It disturbed him. Charity seemed to sense his judgement and stooped to soothe the little girl, looking up crossly at him.
‘Hey, bubba. Dada’s here to work,’ she said, scooping her up. ‘Work, work, work. Y’know it’s all Dada ever thinks about. C’mon, you wanna ride your pony? Sunlight wanna ride her pony?’ She tickled the child on her belly. ‘C’mon, boys, we’re goin’ horseback ridin’,’ she called out.
The boys groaned.
Colorado entered his soundproof recording studio feeling utterly grateful to be away from his family in a bubble of silence. He’d had the studio custom built when they’d first bought the ranch house with money from his first album, ‘Building Fences’. The same-titled single from that album had bought the Nashville pad and the rest of the album royalties had got him his custom-built ‘Ranshion’, a property and homestead like he’d always dreamed about, ever since he was an oily, snotty-nosed kid growing up out the back of his daddy’s Perryton mechanics shop.
The silence was soon shattered by his own doubtful thoughts. He looked at the mixing desk, intimidated by the creative mountain he had to climb. Colorado hadn’t had a hit since ‘Lead Me Round, Tie Me Down’ and his band and team leaders were getting twitchy. He looked at the lifeless guitar beside the silent piano and sighed. He’d never had such blocks before in his musical career. He rubbed his tired eyes and did a few chin-ups on the gym equipment set up in one corner. Picking up a set of kettlebell weights, he turned the computer on and flicked to Jacinta Tylermore’s number on his cell.
The phone rang out and he hung up before he had to listen to her revving voice on the message service. He clicked the computer mouse and there was an email from her. He opened it.
Hi C,
Attached footage of the Australian winner, EJ. She’s a knockout. Let me know what you think. Flying her out next week.
Seeya, J x
Colorado sighed. This strategy of bringing in a younger energy to mentor was Jacinta’s idea. A way to stop the decline of his and Charity’s career. With cynicism he clicked on the footage.
On the large computer screen came the Australian logo of Country Music Television backdropped against a spotlit stage.
There, the little blonde Tamworth and now Nashville winner of the American-CMT-sponsored award stood, her legs slightly apart, wearing a short-as-short skirt and a black bustier with some cowgirl boots that looked like they had seen the real deal in life. Normally when Colorado Buck saw such clips, he groaned internally. It would be yet another wannabe clamouring for the bright lights, fawning all over him and Charity in a quest for fame and stardom. Another cardboard-cut-out pretty girl mimicking all the musical styles others had tried before them. Colorado knew he had to watch the clip. This young miss would be his and Charity’s protégée for the next twelve months, goddammit.
Then he heard her voice. He looked at the screen more closely. He turned the volume up. She was altogether something else. Behind her starlet face was some sort of depth and pain. She controlled the song like a veteran. She came with an edge. Colorado could see it. Charity, being a Montana girl, had had it, and now this lass, ten years Charity’s junior, had it.
He hit a few buttons on the panel and her voice came over the sound system. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He even felt an erection stirring in the undershorts Ellen had presented to him last time he was on her show. Within a few bars he was singing along.
‘I got nothin’ to do . . . all day to do it.’
Suddenly he became excited about next week’s trip to Nashville to coach the girl on the new CMT reality-TV show, Country Proud, Country Loud. He adjusted the stallion bulge in his pants, turned the sound down on her really quite impressive song and, with her image playing on loop on the screen he parked his gym-toned Wrangler-butt on a stool with his guitar, began to pen his first new song in months.
Part Three
Forty-four
Ten years later
It didn’t feel real to Tara, seeing Elsie on the TV like that. Styled to perfection with several thousand fans chanting, ‘EJ, EJ, EJ!’ under the lights of an LA stadium. Tara had been moving a cluster of remotes from a bedside table at a client’s Sydney harbourside penthouse when she’d accidentally flicked the big screen on, revealing Elsie in such a random way. Tara knew the universe was an intelligent force, of course, and EJ appearing before her like that was not random at all. Something was about to shift. The past had been buried for too long and would now bubble to the surface in some way.
At first she’d fumbled with the remotes, trying to shut the thing off, swearing as she did. She couldn’t stand television, especially the news or entertainment gossip. She’d told her clients that if they truly wanted peaceful energies to flow in their lives, they needed fewer electronic devices in their living space, particularly in their bedrooms. No one could gain centredness when they were addicted to news, entertainment gossip and electronic doohickeys.
Despite spending hundreds on Tara’s feng shui consultation, the Sydney corporate couple who had hired her still had
a remote for the blinds, a remote for the lights, a remote for the giant TV that took up one whole wall at the foot of the king-sized bed, a remote for the stereo and a remote for the alarm clock. The world had gone mad, and now, seeing Elsie up on the big screen, looking so styled and almost plastic, she knew it was worse than she’d thought. There was something about Elsie that told Tara all was not well with her, despite her polish.
Tara realised even though she worked daily on her business and herself, she too was like Elsie. Today, she resolved, was the day to step towards facing her unresolved past. She was just about through with city living and city people. She’d given it her best shot. She had tried so hard to bring a wider awareness to clients through her business, but in the end it was exhausting and she hankered for rural land again, and wide open spaces.
For the past ten years she’d built her business up from humble beginnings. During the time she worked as governess for Angus Simpson on Goldsborough station, she would moonlight after work on her fledgling business with the help of Skye and Gracie and encouragement from her Mt Isa counsellor. Once Tara had built a website through their friends and NP Co connections, she had set the foundations of her new career despite living in the outback. As more people heard word of Tara’s talents, clients had started emailing photos of their nightmare rooms and clutter. Tara would then email advice and computer-generated diagrams, all for a small fee. As time passed, she devised a questionnaire for clients to fill out. With a follow-up phone call she would ask more questions; then she would assess each living space, use the birthdates of the inhabitants and Chinese feng shui energy wheels to work out their directions on the earth’s magnetic compass and then give advice on colour, furniture position and individual symbols to enhance people’s lives.
Marie Diamond was still her idol, the woman who had shown her the way via that oily folder found on the Culvert tip all those years back. Tara was grateful to her every day. Cleanslate Consulting was booming. Her testimonials had grown. Clients wrote to her of finding new lovers, of sick children recovering, of bankrupt businesses restored to good fortune, of people emerging from depression, all after Tara had advised them. She was never surprised. Only grateful. She knew her work was all about the physics of vibrational energy and there were no tricks or gimmicks to it.
Most of her clients thought it was about positioning pot plants and moving beds to make themselves feel better. She knew most of her clients weren’t aware that astronomers had found the planet was moving to a lighter vibrational frequency and that the magnetics of the earth were shifting, thereby affecting everyone. As unaware as most of them were, she could see that people were now seeking ways to be more open-minded and live more in harmony with the natural world. It meant that there were more people knocking on her door than she could handle.
When Angus Simpson had finished his School of the Air lessons in Grade Ten and applied for an NP Co apprenticeship, guided by the effervescent Tara, Skye had encouraged Tara to expand Cleanslate Consulting and set up shop in the city. Tearfully the crew had farewelled her from Goldsborough, Gordon being the saddest to see her go.
At first Tara had gone to Brisbane, but her inner guides had told her to move to Sydney. She followed her intuition and, with her savings, had put a deposit on a skinny terrace house in an up-and-coming suburb. She proceeded to do it up, as well as build clientele. Not long after, she found herself training six other young ‘intuitives’ from three major capital cities to be associates in her web-based business. She also began to attract money in the bank, though abundant finances were merely a by-product that came from living her true calling. She was funnelling her money to charities, and helping an organisation that looked after pets that had belonged to elderly people who had passed or had to go into homes. She was happy and settled, if not a bit of a recluse.
The five-storey home had stairs running from the front hall, zig-zagging up from landing to landing to the attic. It was artfully filled with books and beautiful things. Each day at sunrise, Tara practised gratitude, affirmation and meditations and jogged the stairs to keep herself fit. Her thick beautiful red-brown hair cascaded around her heart-shaped face, settling in gentle curls on her softly rounded pale shoulders. Her large green eyes were alive with life and humour.
She was more beautiful, inside and out. Every day she calculated her colour charts and dressed accordingly in floaty, pretty clothes that celebrated her curves. She ran a successful business and was lovely to be around. Her conversations were founded on lively wit and ageless wisdom. But her bed was empty. When it came to men, Tara’s heart was closed up and as unyielding as a rusted rabbit trap. She had tried therapy and reading, Nick Ortner’s The Tapping Solution, praying and wishing, but nothing reprogrammed her cognitive patterning enough to help her on the issue of the opposite sex.
Even though people saw the sunshine in her, she knew there was a dark cloud still within. Her aloofness with men all tracked back to her past, back down the gurgling, ugly Dwaine Pipe. Back to Culvert in remote New South Wales. And to a boy she had once loved, who had turned away from her on a billabong bank by an outback river. A river that had dried up soon afterwards, like the friendships she’d had in her childhood.
Tara looked again at Elsie Jones on the giant screen, larger than life, looking devoid of any kind of flaws, the scars of her past hidden within. Tara’s mind crowded with memories of Amos and her system churned with longing and hurt. Sordid flashes of the couple down by the outback river; sordid flashes of Dwaine in the toxic tangle of her abattoir-house sheets, which had pink flowers scattered on them like tiny sores. She felt it all hit her in her base chakras. As she looked out to the gleam of the harbour water and the white shapes of boats, she also felt a bunch of angel guides knocking on the door of her heart right now. Letting out a breath of defeat, she gazed up at Elsie again on the screen and knew it was time to unlock her heart. Time to truly surrender and let go.
But how? She didn’t want to face the darkness of the abattoir house, the pain of Elsie and Amos’s betrayal, her own life that some nights, with no one to hold, felt like a lie. She gritted her teeth and tried again to turn the television off, but the big screen kept blaring Elsie’s music.
‘She’s still learnin’. She’s still yearnin’ to love the skin she’s livin’ in,’ sang Elsie.
At last, Tara gave in. She knew the angels needed her to hear what the TV segment had to say. She stood before it, head tilted back, arms by her side, eyes wide as if she was mesmerised by an alien visitation via the big screen.
‘In the States,’ began the female reporter in a clipped cloned tone, ‘she’s a household name, the queen of country rock who’s crossed the American country-music canyon to mainstream pop charts.’ Footage of Elsie smiling flashed on the screen as the reporter spoke. She looked every bit the star, posing in photo shoots, in a gold dress at a red-carpet event, lighting up a stage with her silver guitar and powerful voice. ‘Her career was boosted to stellar heights after she was caught in a love triangle with country-singing veterans Colorado and Charity Buck. Born as Eleanor Jones, she was as obscure as the tiny western New South Wales town of Culvert from where she came. A town briefly famous a decade ago for, of all things, a sewage theft scandal; a town that since then, thankfully for the locals, has found a sweeter claim to fame.’ Tara watched footage, dug out from some old computer file, of the Smiths’ shed taped off after the explosion, the sewage-treatment plant and Culvert’s woefully designed council offices.
‘The singer has not been back to Australia since leaving for Nashville ten years ago,’ the reporter said, ‘but now, fourteen number-one hit singles and six platinum albums later, it seems America is ready to lend EJ to the world, with a planned tour to twenty-five countries, culminating in her old home, Sydney, Australia. Country-music fans will be pleased to know that Elsie Jones is, after all this time, returning home.’
Tara at last flicked the television off with the first button she tried. Home, she thought. She felt energy
shimmer through her. Home? Was that the nudge the angels were trying to give her? Surprised, she checked her feelings again and began to hear the word ‘home’ repeating over and over in her head. Culvert was home. Her mind rushed as she realised that’s what was missing from her life. Belonging. She had felt it on the station, but not here in the city. She realised she could conduct her business from anywhere and anywhere could just as well be Culvert. If there was any place that could benefit from her healing talents and if there was ever a place able to shift her own deep healing within, Culvert was it. Goosebumps lit up her skin like party lights. She turned to one of the many computers her clients had lined up in their bedroom and nudged one to life with a bump of the space bar. With a curious smile on her face, Tara watched the flashing cursor in the Google search panel as she typed culvert nsw real estate.
Forty-five
A little drunk already, Elsie looked at her tired face in the mirror. Maybe it was time, she thought. Time to visit home.
Fifty concerts across however many states, staying no more than two nights in however many hotels. Airports and media and sound checks and marketing meetings and photographs and fans. The UK and Europe next, then east towards Japan, then south . . .
She groaned. She needed a break. Sure, her latest album was enjoying hit after hit and the cheques Jacinta was writing her were beyond comprehension, but she wasn’t sure she could take it any more. Nor stand this ache inside. She still missed Colorado, and, if she was honest, she even missed Charity, the bitch, and those brat-pack kids. Touring and performing as a solo artist was so much pressure. Making music was her love, but they could keep the other crap that came with it. She looked at the lines of cocaine she’d carefully chopped out on the hotel table beside the in-room service menu. Clutching her robe around her, she stooped over the powder, hating herself as she did. As she inhaled abruptly, violently, bitterly, she wondered how on earth had she got here? But where was here? In which city? Which hotel?
Cleanskin Cowgirls Page 28