For a moment he thought jealously of Zac, who had upped and left. Amos thought about how he could’ve left too, but who would’ve taken care of Gwinnie, the farm and the business while his father was in gaol? He supposed he ought to be happy and grateful — few boys had the opportunity to run a farm the way they wanted — but the void in him felt like an entire black hole. His father followed his gaze to the ponds.
‘You’ve just got to let it go,’ Elvis said.
Amos shook his head and turned to the shed. He thought of the last time he’d been in there with Zac. They had severed the heavy chain with giant bolt cutters and stepped into the gloom. It was the same day Zac had packed up and gone for good.
Once inside, the boys had stood looking at the biodigester tank, the now-severed gas pipelines to the overflow tank, which was still ragged from the blast. Amos shivered.
‘It was a stupid idea,’ Zac had said.
‘C’mon, man, it was not.’
‘Yes, it was. Take a look at what others are coming up with . . . an engine powered by magnetics. You can’t get cleaner energy. You know it’s a better concept than ours.’ He flung his arms out, indicating the large tractors in the shed. ‘This technology is superseded already. Dead in the water. Shitty water at that.’
‘I disagree. Every household has food and human waste. In India, all those sacred cows wandering about are producing up to ten kilos of dung a day each. All that garbage tipped in the streets that could be converted to gas too. The disease that could be reduced. The deforestation reduced. Water contamination reduced. Poverty alleviated. Cropping land lost to ethanol production could be reclaimed for food production. We all have to think big and yet create small energy centres locally. This is the future.’ Amos angrily jabbed his pointed finger to the tanks. ‘And you know it.’
‘What I do know is it’s not going to happen for us.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘It’s not as saleable as magnetics. It’s not sexy. Selling people’s shit back to them is impossible in the developed world, and even if it wasn’t, some big company would come along and bury the technology. The oil magnates and top dogs control everything. As if the shitty Smith family in shitville Culvert can take them on.’
‘I disagree. Power comes from within. Tara once told me —’
Zac made a scoffing noise. ‘Tara, Tara . . . Tara? You idiot. She’s long gone. She had another fella when you went up there, didn’t she? Like Elsie had. Both of them were lying to us.’
Amos clenched his jaw. The guilt over Tara finding him with Elsie at the billabong swamped him. ‘No, she didn’t have anyone else. Tara would never lie. She’s an amazing person.’
Zac narrowed his eyes. ‘Then why aren’t you two keeping in touch? She was rooting someone else up there — like Elsie.’
The explosion hit Zac from the side. Months of pent-up anger flew from Amos as he leaped up and tackled his twin. Zac sprawled hard on the concrete floor and, when he came to from the shock, began to struggle in the furious white-knuckled grip of his brother.
‘What is it with you?’ Zac spat as Amos straddled him.
‘What is it with you?’ Amos had scruffed Zac by the shirt collar and rammed his back into the concrete. ‘I can’t stand your negativity any more. You’re a bitter bastard. Blaming everyone else for your misery. Mum and Dad raised you to be a better man than this.’
‘Man? What do you know of manhood? We’re both still living with Mum and our dad’s in gaol. Our lives are fucked.’
The base ugliness of Zac’s words had fuelled more rage in Amos. He raised his fist and swung a punch. It collected with Zac’s jaw. Teeth, sinew, skin took the impact of hard-boned knuckles. Blood emerged from Zac’s mouth where his molars grazed the inside of his cheek. Zac spat blood and bitterness and looked at his brother with a fire in his eyes.
‘What? Not game to hit the other side?’ He turned the raw scar on his face towards his brother. ‘Go on then, Mr Perfect. Finish me off.’
Amos looked down to his brother. ‘Mr Perfect? Oh, I’m not Mr Perfect. You know why Tara doesn’t speak to me? Huh?’
Amos waited for the moment to deliver the blow. He watched the questions run in his brother’s eyes. ‘It’s because she caught Elsie with Mr Perfect up there on the station. That’s why.’
Zac looked up at his brother in disbelief. Hurt engulfed him, followed by rage.
‘You . . .’ He wrestled with Amos, both boys grunting with exertion. ‘Bastard! So she wanted the good-looking brother, did she?’ His voice was choked. ‘The one without the scars. Fat Tara not good enough for you any more? Wanted the bombshell?’
With renewed fury Amos launched again at Zac. Then Zac swung, his knuckles collecting with Amos’s cheek. Amos reeled back, then scrambled backwards away from Zac and stood.
‘It was you who insisted we were too young to settle for the one girl. Besides, it’s not the scar on your face or Elsie that’s the issue, mate,’ Amos said in disgust. ‘It’s the ugly scar in that heart of yours. ‘Bout time you got over yourself or got out all together. Mum and I don’t want you or need you here.’ Amos tugged down his shirt, turned his back to his brother and walked away out of the shed and into a wind that cut cold through his clothes.
Now through the wet patch of dam water Arnie had left on Amos’s shirt, he felt the cold Culvert wind cut through him again. It brought with it the powerful stench of sewage. He looked again to the shed.
‘I can’t, Dad. I can’t let it go. This is too important to let go. I’m going to call Zac. I’m going to ask him to come home.’
Forty-seven
In the roadhouse Gwinnie Smith rummaged her fingers through her messy blonde hair and took off her computer glasses. She could hear Elvis and Amos coming on the four-wheeler. Her ears were tuned to the sound of engines these days. Without looking she could tell if it was the stock-carter’s truck as he pulled in for diesel or Miss Beechcroft’s ancient backfiring Beetle or the rumble of the Nicholson son’s new Jeep. Then there were the dreaded purrs of the council and community-service fleet cars that could bring Councillor-Mayor Jones or one of his cronies to her bowser.
After all this time at the roadhouse Gwinnie Smith saw how very slowly things changed in Culvert, if at all. She wished she was somewhere else, back on the coast where she grew up, her ears tuned to waves again. If it was pumping from the south, offering up good left-handers, she’d be up and out of bed with the board under her arm before school. Or she could tell if it was offshore, causing the waves to lap gently at the sand, so she could lie in bed a little longer. She longed for waves these days. And no engines. Maybe, she thought, I’ve just got old.
Gwinnie watched sadly as Elvis and Amos parked the bike outside the workshop. She looked at the two men. They were so different these days. Life had become mundane for them. For her too. She glanced at the clock. They were cutting it fine with the car service. They hadn’t even been in for lunch yet. She’d have to take them a sandwich or something, but the thought of going back into that kitchen made her feel depressed. Gwinnie wanted to do a meditation. In the past she’d used her meditations to gain more energy for living, or for a closer connection to her husband hundreds of miles away when he had been in gaol, but now, it seemed, she used meditation to escape from life.
As she submitted another bill payment online, Gwinnie wondered what had happened to her gorgeous little family. All the positive thinking and spirituality in the world hadn’t managed to stop the erosion that had set in since Zac’s accident and the family’s exposure to the authorities. She pushed herself up from the table with the palms of her hands and ambled into the kitchen. There on the fridge was a postcard from the Caribbean. Zac had been gone seven years now. Seven years. She remembered the day he had suddenly left.
He’d come in through the back door from the farm shed on foot. There was blood on his shirt and his nose was still dripping. He grabbed up a tea towel, tore open the freezer door and angrily rummaged for a packet of frozen peas.
>
‘What happened?’
‘A whole lot more than you think,’ he said angrily.
‘Where’s Amos?’
‘Who cares where he is?’ he replied before stomping to the lounge and gingerly pressing the peas to his already swelling cheek and nose.
Gwinnie followed him and opened her mouth to speak.
‘Save it, Mum. I’m leaving.’
‘But —’
‘But what? Dad’s in gaol? So I have to stay here?’
‘No?’
He turned to her. There were tears in his eyes, blood crusting on his top lip. The scars on the other side of his face made it worse. He looked so pitiful and tortured that Gwinnie began to cry.
‘I’m leaving, Mum. I have to. I can’t be around him any more.’
She had nodded mutely and let the tears roll silently down her cheeks. Just when it had seemed as bad as it could possibly be, Zac had reached for the newspaper, and before she could stop him he saw the giant front-page article and photograph of Elsie and Colorado Buck, caught by the paparazzi on an island somewhere, Elsie topless, Colorado lying beside her. COUNTRY CHEATS, the headline blazed. He’d simply absorbed the image and headline in silence, then gone to his bedroom and packed his bags. After giving his mother a rough emotional hug without looking her in the eye, he had walked to the train station.
At first there’d been no word from Zac. Gwinnie had checked his savings account. All the money was gone. She had demanded the whole story from Amos, then fretted, then calmed herself, telling herself Zac was a grown man and she had to let her sons go at some point, then she fretted again. After weeks they had a call. He was in London. Next a postcard from Spain. Following that he’d Skyped from Korea. He’d looked well and happy as his cheeky backpacker mates dove in and out of view, saying hi to ‘Mum in Culvert’. Then she and Amos didn’t hear from him in months. She kept emailing a weekly letter, but her notes got shorter and shorter. There was never any news. Not here in Culvert. Not now Elvis was in gaol. She had started to get frantic at night, waking in a sweat. Wondering if she ought to call the authorities to find Zac. But she had soothed herself and sure enough a letter had at last arrived. Hastily she had ripped it open and read it. That letter had filled Gwinnie’s heart with pride. It had given her the strength and hope that they could, as a family, carry on.
Dear Mum,
You were right. The Universe is a clever, clever thing. I finally found a place where my life’s work can be fully appreciated. Our life’s work. I’ve got myself a job with the charity arm of a corporation working to help restore Port-au-Prince in Haiti after the earthquake. No time for self-pity over loss of poster-boy looks here, Mum! It’s a troubled, poor and sometimes dangerous place, and there’s only about four per cent of forest left on the place as the people need wood for fuel, but guess what I’m doing?
Zac had left the rest of the page blank with a PTO at the base. In block letters on the next page he’d written:
I AM IN CHARGE OF INSTALLING HAITI’S HUMANWASTE BIODIGESTERS!!!! POO POWER FOR THE PEOPLE! How cool is that? I love you, Mum. You taught me well. Love to Dad, Zac xx
She was so glad he was doing well, but he hadn’t mentioned Amos in his letter. She prayed he would come home safe, soon, so her family could heal its fractured feeling and they could be together again. She knew the tropical look of his latest card belied the truth about Haiti. Zac was working in the roughest slums, where sometimes gunfights broke out and lasted for days. It was diseased and dangerous. She wished him home, but at the same time, what was here for him? He was following his calling where he was. He, at least, was keeping their family dream alive in a meaningful way. She felt sorrier for Amos, who’d made the sacrifice to stay.
Gwinnie looked out the northern window of the roadhouse to the paddocks beside the highway. The long grasses and shrubs looked pretty in the bright sunlight with their seed heads reaching up to the blue. She had at first loved seeing the land come alive, but now she felt displaced from Culvert, and as though she had wasted much of her life here.
When they’d first seen the farm and roadhouse business next to the sewage works, they knew it had all they needed. A farm and a sewage plant! Elvis had been recently flush with cash from his brother’s buyout of Elvis’s rights to the family farm and Gwinnie had felt in her bones it was the right move. But some days now she felt like packing up and leaving and not even telling her sons and her husband where she had gone. She knew she loved them too much to do it, but she did think about it. Gwinnie went back to the computer and looked down at the bills and sighed. Maybe they should think about a sea change and put the roadhouse on the market? But who would buy out here? Things were extra slow in Culvert. Drought had dried up the activity of the surrounding farmers and people were slowly but surely leaving town, or dying.
Gwinnie’d already been to three funerals in three weeks. First old Funky Baker, leaving a big hole in Waltz Me Around Again Darlin’; and next Dwaine had died from blood poisoning from an infected wound, so their only local abattoir had closed, meaning any home-use animals needing processing had to be trucked to Rington. Gwinnie had made herself go to his funeral, in honour of Tara, to make sure Dwaine Morton was put in the ground, never to return. On the day of his death, Gwinnie’d left a phone message with NP Co and sent a letter to Tara at Goldsborough station, but she’d never heard back from her. She had a sinking feeling Tara was lost to her and to Culvert for good. And why should the poor girl ever come back here?
After Dwaine’s death, rumours were circulating that Elsie’s mother had cancer and had shut herself away in the big old Grassmore house to die.
Then Chunky Nicholson’s wife, Barb, had suddenly dropped dead in her kitchen when she was dipping lamingtons in chocolate for the fire-brigade fundraiser; she had a brain aneurism. Now the town was in uproar — there was no one to run the canteen come footy season, and they were short a CWA secretary, a teacher’s aide at the school and a flower lady at the church since her passing. The funeral had been extra upsetting as no one could waste water on flower gardens, so the only decent flowers on show as they carried her coffin past was a bunch of agapanthus (now listed as a noxious weed with council) and some summer daisies. Some said they could’ve trucked some blooms in from somewhere distant over the mountains, but Chunky was never one for giving his wife flowers.
Gwinnie had offered to help supply and arrange some kind of vegetation, thinking there were plenty of native grasses and plants that would bunch up beautifully, but the townsfolk simply told her there was no need, then less than tactfully turned their backs and went about their business. Despite how kind and smiley she was, Gwinnie knew no one wanted to associate with a woman whose husband had been gaoled for stealing public shit. No wonder the boys held a current of anger within them towards their father, or at least the situation created by their father.
The once-a-month visits all the way to Sydney to see Elvis in gaol became costly and depressing for them all. A few times, Amos refused to visit his father, using care of the stock as an excuse. On those trips, Gwinnie had pushed her large service-station sunglasses up her nose and cried quietly, alone on the train.
She felt more tears on the rise now as she began to open what she thought would be a bill from Clarkson Rural Merchandise Store. Instead with surprise and delight she discovered a big fat cheque for the heavy lambs they had sold the previous month. It was enough to meet several of the larger bills. The flash of good fortune made her smile. As Tara used to say, it was a sign that maybe things would turn around.
Gwinnie sat up proudly. They were getting the property management more than right. While every other farm was blowing to dust, theirs and their lease country was holding on strong and they were even turning off stock that, given the conditions, could be considered ‘finished’ for the butchers. Even though the sheep were only sold in small numbers compared to the bigger farms, at least they weren’t hand-feeding half-starved corpses with hard grains like the other farmers. She fe
lt a surge of admiration for Elvis and Amos. With the cheque in her hand and the view of the oasis out the window her optimism returned. Today, Gwinnie Smith decided she would book herself in for a haircut at Culvert Snip and Clip and tomorrow she would start wearing her pretty dresses again. What was the point in longing for the coast or her youth, when life could feel OK in the moments of now? C’mon, Gwinnie, you can do this, she said to herself.
As she did, the phone rang.
‘Good afternoon, Culvert roadhouse, Gwinnie speaking.’
‘Is that the beautiful Gwinnie Smith?’ came the voice of a woman down the line.
Gwinnie spun about and pressed the receiver closer to her ear. ‘Yes?’ she said slowly.
‘I hoped I’d get you. I knew I’d get you. Hello, Gwinnie. It’s Tara Green.’
A smile beamed on Gwinnie’s face like the sun emerging from behind a cloud.
‘Oh!’ Gwinnie pressed her palm to her chest. ‘I was only just thinking about you. Tara, it’s so beautiful to hear from you!’ Suddenly for Gwinnie the world felt brighter.
‘Gwinnie,’ Tara said, a cheeky smile in her voice, ‘can you keep a secret?’
Forty-eight
When Elsie came to, she first saw the digital display of the clock and a glass of water by the bed with two tablets and a note. She remembered vaguely Jacinta being there, and some uptight lady doctor who’d injected her with something. She sat up and squinted at the note from Jacinta instructing her to take the tablets when she woke. Her head felt like someone had stuffed it full of ceiling insulation and her guts felt like she’d guzzled Jif cleaner. It was late afternoon and she could hear the traffic thickening in the Nashville street below. There was also the sound of someone humming in the bathroom. Elsie unfolded her long legs and tugged her T-shirt down over her knickers, padding to the bathroom.
‘Hello?’ she called gingerly. She cringed, wondering if she had picked some bloke up again.
From around the bathroom door a middle-aged woman with flame-red dyed hair and curves bursting out of a white maid’s uniform appeared with a mop and a bucket in hand.
Cleanskin Cowgirls Page 30