Cleanskin Cowgirls

by Rachael Treasure

  Fifty-seven

  From where Elsie sat in the back of the convertible, she could see Amos’s and Tara’s heads jammed into cowboy hats as Amos drove. The wind was whipping the ends of Tara’s hair; under her hat she also wore an Audrey Hepburn-esque scarf and big sunnies. She turned around and smiled at Elsie. Elsie smiled back. Then they screamed at each other and laughed, the sound captured by the fast-moving air, their voices hurled out to the desert that whizzed by.

  ‘Where are we going again?’ Elsie asked.

  Zac leaned closer so she could hear him over the roar of the old Yank-tank. ‘Arizona. Travelling time twenty-four hours and forty-one minutes. Give or take.’

  ‘I know we’re going to Arizona. But where in Arizona?’

  ‘Friends of mine,’ Zac said. ‘Met them in India, then later in Haiti.’

  ‘It’s all part of our global Poo Crew plan!’ Tara shouted back over her shoulder.

  Elsie looked out to the landscape rushing past, to the flat red desert rising up to what looked like Road Runner rocks. She couldn’t believe it. Back in the boot were her bag and her acoustic guitar from all those years ago at the cleanskin camp, she was wearing her leather cuff again on her wrist, and she was travelling with Zac, Tara and Amos. When she thought about it, they were people she now hardly knew. And yet now she could feel she knew them better than anyone. It felt so right. She had come home to her family. Her tribe.

  As the miles passed, she sat and listened to all of their plans. The changes they were preparing in Culvert. Amos and Elvis’s breakthrough in the technology of converting gas to efficient energy in engines teamed with putting the exhaust fumes of tractors back into the soil. Of Zac’s amazing travels that took him to countries like India, Borneo and Thailand and eventually Port-au-Prince in Haiti, all working on biomethane energy systems for Cleanagain. The more they talked, the more excited Elsie became. This was what she’d been shown on the other side. This was her dharma. She smiled up to the sky and sent up her thanks to the larger part of herself that she now knew existed in spirit form on some other plane than this earthly realm.

  A few miles on, they had talked so much they had barely registered how far they had travelled.

  ‘We’re almost outta gas,’ Amos said in a comical American drawl.

  ‘Are you referring to the car or global supplies?’ Zac chipped in.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Amos said. Tara turned and rolled her eyes at Elsie, smiling, both girls elated they were back with the bantering twins.

  They were not far out of a tiny New Mexico town so soon they were pulling into a gas station, Amos getting out, opening the passenger door for Tara and taking her by the hand. He drew her to him, delivering a passionate series of kisses to her lips, his arm scooped lovingly around her waist. Elsie watched, warmed by the sight, and smiled. Next thing, Zac was opening her door and taking her hand, only he was shy and reserved. He didn’t kiss her. He did smile kindly at her. Elsie thanked him and stood watching him unhitch the pump and begin to fill the car. He was beyond gorgeous, she concluded. She was in love. Still. After all this time. This time she knew.

  As the boys busied themselves with checking the oil and tyres on the old rig, Tara looped her arm in Elsie’s, leading her to a shady spot under some trees. She sat Elsie down at a picnic table, arms still looped.

  ‘You OK?’ Tara asked. ‘Being kidnapped for a random road trip like this?’ The roadhouse was the kind of place you expected tumble weed to blow through to the sound of eerie whistling. Elsie squinted to look at the horizon.

  ‘I am. The last trip I took was a bigger headspin than this,’ Elsie said. If there was one person in the world she could debrief with about her otherworldly near-death experience, it was Tara. In fact, Elsie now felt totally on the same wavelength as her old friend. And she knew Tara knew it. She was looking at her now, her beautiful heart-shaped face, hair tumbling around it, eyes burning green with life and vibrancy.

  ‘I got to know your mum a bit,’ Tara said gently, ‘when she was dying.’ Elsie flicked her a grateful glance. ‘She said, “Tell Elsie I’m sorry.” Sorry that she wasn’t the best mother.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tara said.

  ‘She called me Elsie?’

  ‘Yup.’ Tears came to Elsie’s eyes as Tara sat in silence, remembering the last time she’d visited Sarah Jones at Grassmore. It had been a dull, still sort of day. Tara put on Elsie’s CD so it gently played in the background. The unconscious Sarah Jones must have been absorbing the beautiful voice of her daughter as a soft smile arrived on her gaunt face and stayed there. Tara had placed a white summer rose on Sarah Jones’s sunken chest and stroked her hair gently, promising her she would find her daughter and bring her home.

  ‘It’s time to let go, Mrs Jones.’ Then she had watched the swirl of a rainbow outside the window that fell through a tiny break in the misty clouds. Tara had washed Sarah’s high paper-skin forehead lovingly with warm lavender water and painted her lips with her favourite colour lipstick and arranged her hair before she had left. The next morning she had died.

  Tara rested her head on Elsie’s shoulder. ‘Your mum was so proud of you when she left, you know?’

  Elsie looked at Tara earnestly and nodded, emotion twisting her sad face. ‘I know. Now I know. She wasn’t the best mother, but she sure gave me the best lessons.’ They smiled at each other, knowing there were so many miles and minutes and moments to catch up on together, but for now Tara had a more pressing issue.

  Tara looked over to the twins and turned back to grin at Elsie. ‘What do you think? Pretty gorgeous, eh?’

  ‘They are divine.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘You and Amos?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Tara said. ‘Best mates on all levels.’

  Elsie thought of the awful time she’d created for them all back in their long-lost youth. It was as if she was thinking about a totally different person. She couldn’t believe she had been that type of person. Now she knew she had changed, utterly. It was time to make amends.

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ she asked.

  Tara turned to her, her generous big green eyes filled with emotion, and said, ‘Yes, of course. We were young and dumb. Both of us were.’

  Elsie let out a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I know you never actually slept with him. He told me that and I believe him.’

  Elsie nodded. ‘It’s true. He stopped. Said he loved you too much. I was jealous of that, but I cared about you too so I knew he was right. Plus at that time, I couldn’t even love myself, let alone commit to anyone, so poor Zac got the raw deal.’

  Tara waved it away. ‘It’s the past. You’ve got a whole new future headed your way if you want it.’ She elbowed Elsie and nodded towards Zac, who was walking over with some drink bottles in his hands.

  Elsie looked at Tara and giggled, hugging her friend again. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘for coming to get me.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Tara said, knowing Elsie meant not just coming for her on the ranch, but also when she was lost in the drift. ‘You’re my friend for more than this lifetime. I think we both know that by now.’

  That night they stayed, travel weary but happy, at a roadside motel in Albuquerque. They had all stood at the check-in desk, Elsie a little behind the rest, wearing Tara’s sunglasses and scarf as a rather pathetic and predictable celebrity disguise. It felt weird walking into a place like that after years of plush five-star hotels. She was overjoyed to see the fraying carpet, the Dr Pepper vending machine on the blink and the plastic pot plant with cigarette holes burned through several of its leaves.

  ‘This place OK?’ whispered Tara.

  ‘Perfect,’ Elsie whispered back. ‘Love it.’

  The comforting-as-apple-pie woman at the desk didn’t seem to notice EJ the famous singer, and Elsie was glad. She didn’t want the bubble to burst. She had enjoyed the day of just being her ‘new self’.

  �
�Two doubles, please,’ Amos said.

  Zac glanced nervously in Elsie’s direction.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the woman. ‘Licence plate number here and names here.’ She placed the two room registration forms in front of them and made Xs on the pages.

  Tara turned and winked at Elsie.

  ‘You don’t want two singles?’ Zac whispered to Elsie. ‘Or a separate room?’

  Elsie bit her lip and quickly looked at Zac. She dragged her glasses down. ‘The double will do nicely, thanks.’

  Zac smiled back and took up the pen in his large strong hands. Amos waggled his eyebrows up and down, and Tara slapped him on the arm. ‘Juvenile,’ she said.

  On the form Elsie felt a buzz when she saw Zac write Zac and Elsie Smith before picking up the key.

  ‘Smith. Jones,’ he said as they made their way out to the car. ‘It’s all interchangeable. I was protecting your identity.’

  ‘Were you now?’ Elsie grinned. ‘So it wasn’t a marriage proposal?’

  ‘It certainly was not,’ Zac said. ‘I’ve got to woo you and win you back first.’

  As Elsie reached for her bag from the boot of the car, the fading sunlight caught her smile. ‘I have a feeling it’s me who needs to win you back.’

  Zac took her bag from her and carried it over to the door of the motel. ‘You already have,’ he said.

  They looked to the number 69 on the door, then their eyes caught each other with amusement: teenagers again.

  Tara, passing them with Amos, pointed to the door. ‘It’s a sign,’ she said, grinning as she inserted the key in the next room and turned it with a smile and a wink. ‘Definitely a sign.’

  Inside, though, when Zac drew Elsie down on the bed, there was no unveiling of clothes. No moans of passion. The couple just simply held each other and let the tears of relief spill from their eyes. They cried for the wasted years. The miscommunication. Their youthful ignorance. The lonely times. And the long journey back to each other. When they were done crying, Zac and Elsie looked into each other’s eyes, each stroking the other’s hair. Elsie trailed her fingers over Zac’s scars; Zac drifted his finger over the mark above her lip.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you too,’ Elsie replied. They kissed gently and soon both of them were sound asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms, their spirits soaring together at last beyond the twinkling blanket of night sky.

  The next morning the four set off and by sunset were having dinner in Phoenix’s St Francis restaurant beside the glowing heat of a wood-fired oven. They were chowing down on spicy pork chile verde and prime steak with Mike Schnelle, the Arizona CEO of global energy company Cleanagain. The fit middle-aged Mike had greeted Zac like a long-lost son, embracing him and slapping him on his back.

  ‘Zac, my boy!’ he said before turning to the others. ‘How y’all doing?’ He wore a crisp blue shirt, jeans and pointed cowboy boots and had an air of worldly confidence about him.

  Zac had introduced them and explained to Elsie that he had met Mike during his stint with the company in India, then had kept in touch, working for Mike in Haiti.

  Mike sipped a glass of water as he beamed at Zac. ‘I can spot brilliance when I see it. Zac has more than just mental intelligence, but practicality also. I said to Zac, if he ever made it home to Australia and thought he could make methane production work there for Cleanagain, to give me a call. Next thing, I’m Skyping this lovely lady Tara, who I believe is now a councillor and mayor. And we are about to enter a joint venture with you guys in a little town called Culvert.’ He chinked his glass with Tara. ‘But it gets better! Next thing, Zac is on the phone to me, saying he’s in America on his way to me to consolidate the deal. But not only that: he’s bringing a friend. Who turns out to be you! The EJ, who he casually mentions happened to be his childhood sweetheart.’

  Zac looked to Elsie, embarrassed, but Elsie smiled at him, overjoyed he thought of her that way.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m no longer the EJ,’ she said candidly. ‘I’m simple Elsie, Zac’s childhood sweetheart.’

  Mike looked quizzically at her.

  ‘I’m having a break from big-time music and I’ve joined this crew. So here I am, at your service, Mr Schnelle. I’ve got so much I want to bring to the project, and it’s not just finances I’m thinking of. I want to bolster the agricultural component of the project and focus my energies on carbon sequestration of the gas we’re selling into soils by educating people about the importance of grasslands.’

  She laced her fingers into Zac’s under the table and Mike Schnelle raised his eyebrows in approval. To have a big-name celebrity backing a project like this was one thing, but to have someone like EJ who actually knew her stuff on carbon plant function and soils could move them forwards in leaps and bounds with the media. The twins and Tara could tell he was impressed. And so were they. They had all wondered if Elsie’s life journey would have left her too scarred, too far removed from them, but now they could see she was absolutely on the same path.

  ‘I understand,’ Mike said. ‘You’re not the only celeb we have on board to help move this technology on when the time is right. If we are to get the concept mainstream, we’re going to need backing from people like you. There’re some huge mindset mountains to move, but I can see Australians coming with us on this. With the energy and environmental crisis we face, it’s too crucial for them not to. It’s great to have you on the team, Elsie Jones.’

  As the dessert order came round, Tara and Elsie pondered over cheesecake in a jar or chocolate stout cake, leaning their heads together as they viewed the menu. Elsie was glowing from within, pulling the occasional ‘can you believe it?’ face at Tara. They listened as Zac and Mike explained that Cleanagain had signed a deal with the Pima County Council in Arizona to build a large-scale biogas upgrading facility, and tomorrow they would all have a tour of it to give them ideas for the Culvert venture. Mike explained it would produce biomethane for sale.

  ‘It’ll not only offset the use of conventional fossil fuel,’ Mike said, ‘but it will also eliminate having to flare the waste product, which is common practice here in Arizona.’

  ‘Flare?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘All organic waste, including human waste, creates a gas at the refuse sites and currently we simply light it and burn it into the atmosphere. Not good for the ozone layer or company profits.’

  Zac smiled at Elsie as Amos chipped in. ‘Wastewater-treatment plants across the world are searching for innovative ways to convert their tips and sewage plants into resource recovery centres . . . exactly like we were aiming for at home. Except we missed a little with Culvert Council.’

  ‘We may have missed the first time,’ Tara corrected, ‘but we’re not going to miss again. Cleanagain are going to do what they are already doing in Europe, North America and Asia. They already have sixteen hundred anaerobic digestion plants worldwide and they not only use human waste in those systems, but also agricultural waste and organic waste from households and industry. Culvert is the ideal place to start small. Then we can roll it out from there.’

  ‘Genius,’ Elsie said. ‘Or should I say geniuses. All of you.’

  Later, Mike Schnelle put his napkin down, waved for the bill, then stood. ‘You young’uns stay on. I wanna get back to tuck my kids into bed. I’ll see you at the plant at, let’s say, nine-thirty for our tour.’

  They could see he was delighted he now had a partnership with Zac’s vibrant group of young Australians. They were smart and enthusiastic and they would make it happen, he knew it. Mike said his goodbyes, then Zac, Amos, Tara and Elsie sat around the table, absorbing how amazing it was that they were all here together. At last. The restaurant was emptying, the red-bricked, gold-lit room was becoming quieter. The candles flickered, burning low. The waiters were beginning to set up for the following evening with fresh tablecloths, glasses and cutlery.

  ‘I think we’ve done it,’ Tara said.

  Amos reached for her hand. �
�I do believe we have. At least we’re on our way.’

  Zac picked up his glass, reaching his other hand for Elsie’s. ‘To the Poo Crew,’ he said, raising his glass. The rest of them joined hands.

  ‘To the Poo Crew!’ they all echoed.

  Fifty-eight

  Twelve months later

  Elsie looked out across the Grassmore paddocks and set her hands on her hips. Like the land around her, her body and spirit were strong and healthy now. Her mind was clear and her heart was bursting with love, gratitude and passion — not just for the beautiful man treading electric fence posts into long grasses for the next grazing move, but for the way her life was now rich with purpose. She was back, grounded on the increasingly healthy soil of Grassmore. The sun was skimming up over the plains. It would be a perfect day under one of her and Zac’s blue-jean skies, she thought. Just right for the big launch later this morning of the new Culvert Co-operative and the partnership with Mike Schnelle’s Cleanagain Energy.

  She pulled on her work gloves and ran out the top strand of white fence tape behind Zac, feeling the life of the land beneath her work boots as the spool turned with a clickety-clack. Beside her, their new red-and-tan working dog, Excuses, who they’d bought as a started dog, raised himself from the nest he’d made in the dewy grasses and fell in behind her heels. At eighteen months he was still really a pup, but these easy-move stock jobs were good for him. No excuses for not bringing him along. His name was a fun reminder to Elsie and Zac to make no excuses about anything in life now. No matter what.

  Behind the gate the sheep had mobbed themselves and were bleating in chorus. The animals now knew that when Zac and Elsie appeared, fresh grassland aplenty would open up for them. Zac smiled at her, a bundle of tread-ins under his arms, the sun catching the smooth and in places puckered skin of his burns, though Elsie only saw the life in his eyes and his beautiful soul radiating out to her.