by Tim Slee
Jenny and me run back up to the milk cart where there’s a huddle going on with Mum, Coach Don, Mr Garrett, Mr Alberti, Mr Maynard (I never knew he was in the convoy), Karsi and two other cops who have just pulled up in their car and waved everyone in to the side of the highway again. The lady from the Geelong Advertiser is hopping around taking photos with her camera and so is the reporter from the Portland Observer who has turned up out of nowhere and they’re busy getting in each other’s way and growling at each other.
‘What I’m saying, Karsi, is that this is as far as this nonsense goes today, and tomorrow Regional Command can decide what happens,’ the older of the new cops says. He’s got a beard and beer belly and his police hat pushed right back on his head.
‘So what are you proposing?’ Karsi asks. ‘They all sleep on the side of the road?’
‘The cemetery is just up the road,’ the younger cop says. ‘Might be easiest.’
Karsi and the other cop just look at him.
‘Just saying,’ the young cop says. ‘Two birds with one stone kind of thing.’
‘My husband is going to be buried in Melbourne,’ Mum says. ‘Not bloody Port Fairy.’
‘Maybe you want us to set up camp in the middle of the Princes Highway?’ Coach Don asks. ‘We’d be happy to.’
‘Don’t even say it, Don,’ Karsi says. ‘They’ll think you’re serious and do you for public nuisance. What about the showground?’ Karsi asks. ‘Next left, then whip around to the showground, could get twenty cars in there no problem.’
‘And a Clydesdale,’ Mr Garrett says. ‘Good facilities for horses at the showground. Won a blue ribbon there. It’s where I would have suggested anyway – there or the caravan park.’
‘I’m not having you scare the tourists with that bloody coffin,’ the older cop says and sighs. ‘OK, the showground it is.
‘Right, you two, up on the milk cart,’ Mum says. ‘Quick smart.’
It’s another party like a Lions footy final, but without the party mood. Someone says it’s like a rolling wake, which sounds better than funeral procession. All the cars pull up on the main oval at the showground and some people set up barbecues and someone rolls a keg off the back of a ute. A Port Fairy CFA truck turns up saying the police told them to but they just scratch their heads a bit and then sit down and start eating sausages and drinking beer like everyone else.
Karsi has gone off with the Port Fairy police to do the paperwork, he says, which Coach Don says means get a schnitzel at the Royal Oak Hotel.
The sausages are a bit burned and there’s not enough sauce. A man brings a crate of soft drinks but they’re warm and I don’t like taking ice out of eskies; sometimes there’s beer labels floating around in them and the ice tastes like glue. So I’m looking around for ice and I see Trevor the tractor guy has pulled up a chair next to Pop and Mr Alberti and they’re drinking the home-made stuff Mr Alberti always brings to parties in a paper bag. He mixes it with red wine and lemonade and adds ice, so I know he’ll have some ice.
‘Business all right then?’ Mr Alberti is saying to Trevor after he hands me his ice bucket and I start fishing some out for my Coke.
‘Plant hire?’ Trevor says, laughing. ‘After today’s job I’d arranged to drive that one to Warrnambool anyway, sell it back to the dealer. I used to hire out by the day, then it became the half-day, now it’s by the hour, and that doesn’t keep the wolf from the door.’
‘Stick with us then,’ Pop says. ‘All the way. Good for the TV news, having a tractor in a funeral procession.’ He reaches out his glass and clinks it against Trevor’s. ‘You’ll be welcome.’
We’re hiding from Mum because we know any minute she’s going to say, right, you two, teeth and bed, so we explore the showground a bit and play murder in the dark for two. Then I notice something.
‘Hey, it’s real quiet,’ I say to Jen.
‘Getting scared, scaredy cat?’
‘No, shut up, listen.’
‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘That’s the point. Where’s the voices?’
We run out from between the buildings and can see there’s still lights on the showground oval, and cars, but all the people are gathered around the milk cart and no one is saying anything. They’re all just standing around, looking down at the ground, and some have got their hats and baseball caps off and are holding them. The reporter from Portland isn’t there but Geraldine from the Geelong Advertiser is.
We find Mum and go up to her and she takes our hands and holds them like a couple of softballs again and she’s crying.
‘Right,’ says Coach Don. ‘I’d like to say something.’ And he climbs up onto the milk cart and stands on the seat behind Dad’s coffin. Geraldine from the Geelong Advertiser lifts her camera to take a photo but the man next to her pushes it gently down and she doesn’t argue, slings it over her shoulder again and looks up at Coach Don like the rest of us.
‘Most of you knew Tom Murray, some of you didn’t. He wasn’t anyone special and I never paid him any attention at school.’
‘Well, that’s nice. I thought they were mates,’ Jenny says.
‘Shush,’ I tell her.
‘When he inherited Lazybones Dairy there were plenty who said he didn’t have the backbone, and he wouldn’t last a year, but he did. Then we decided he wouldn’t last three, but he did. Because what we hadn’t counted on was that he’d married a backbone, and that was Dawn here.’
‘Nicest thing you ever called me,’ Mum says quietly, but she’s smiling.
‘Sorry, you know what I mean. Dawn filled in the bits of Tom that were missing and together they were a hell of a team and Lazybones was . . . I think you won Dairy Farmers Dairy of the Year in 2006, didn’t you?’
‘And runners-up in 2007,’ Jenny says real loud, then puts her hand over her mouth and a couple of people laugh.
‘And runners-up, that’s right Jen. But then the supermarkets started screwing the co-ops and the co-ops started screwing us and we went to the banks and the banks said they couldn’t do anything, and the politicians and the media and the bloody Farmers Federation and well . . .’
‘See, told you,’ Jenny says.
‘Told me what?’ I ask.
‘The bank manager is here,’ she whispers. She nods across to the other side and I see him, standing there with the lady Pop pointed out. He must have come in the last hour or so. ‘Look how guilty he looks.’ She’s being sarcastic, and OK, he doesn’t look especially guilty to me.
I thought Coach Don was winding down, but he winds up again. ‘And well, no one thought anyone was going to do anything but then Tom Murray said, “I’m buggered if I’m going to let the bank have my farm!”’
A few people cheer.
‘He said, “I’ll burn the bloody thing down before I let them have it!” And no one believed him, but he did, and it went horrible . . .’ Coach Don stops and sounds a bit choked, but he starts again. ‘It went horrible wrong. And now he’s dead, and I want to say a poem over his body.’ He looks down at Mum. ‘If that’s all right, Dawn?’
Mum has wet cheeks and she just nods, so Coach Don fishes a piece of paper out of his pocket.
‘This is by a poet, name of Henry Lawson,’ he says. ‘He wrote it I don’t know, a hundred years ago, but it’s just as true today. I changed it around a bit, but anyway . . .’
‘Is he the cricketer from that card game, Henry Lawson?’ Jenny asks.
‘Maybe, I didn’t know he was a poet though.’
‘Shush, you two,’ Mum says.
Coach Don coughs and lifts his voice.
‘The poor are starved, my brothers! Our wives and children weep!
Our women toil to keep us while the toilers are asleep!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers! rise and break the tyrant’s chain!
March ye! march ye! mighty toilers! even to the battle plain!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers!
Awake! And rise!
Rise Ye! rise ye! noble toilers! claim your rights with fire and steel!
Rise ye! for the cursed tyrants crush ye with their iron heels!
They would treat ye worse than slaves! they would treat ye worse than brutes!
Rise and crush the selfish tyrants! Crush them with your hob-nailed boots!’
Coach Don yells the last line and the crowd cheers and a couple throw their hats in the air and a few clap, then we all clap and Coach Don climbs down and people start patting him on the back.
‘What’s hob-nailed boots, Mum?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, and who was Henry Lawson?’ Jenny asks.
Mum pulls Jenny and me to her. ‘You two have so many questions,’ she says, ‘and I’ve got no answers.’ She starts shaking and Jenny grabs her harder and I just hold on a bit until it starts to get uncomfortable and then I pull away and just pat her back until she cheers up.
I’m learning nights like this, people when they’re sitting around, they like talking about Dad. Do you remember this? Can you believe he did that? Half the stuff I’ve heard before, but some of it I haven’t. So when I hear it’s going that way, people with their camp chairs in a circle around a fire, I just sit behind them in the dark and listen. It’s best when Mum isn’t there too, like now.
‘He never really did like farming, did he?’ Mr Maynard is saying.
‘Well he burned his bloody farm down,’ Mr Garrett agrees.
‘He burned his house, not his dairy, it’s two different things,’ Coach Don says. ‘He liked building stuff. That was one thing he did like about farming. Fixing things. Fences, machines, walls, buildings.’
‘Army engineer, wasn’t he?’ Mr Maynard asks. ‘He should have stayed in. Good career, the army. Regular pay at least, and nothing to spend it on.’
Pop laughs really loud, then realises Mr Maynard is looking at him. ‘What? You expect me to agree, after the army took my legs?’
‘A rolled-over truck took your legs,’ Coach Don says. ‘The way I heard you tell it.’
‘Rolled-over army truck,’ Pop says. ‘Anyway, he told me he got out before they sent him away to kill jihadis because he couldn’t see the point of that.’
‘Couldn’t see the point of protecting our way of life?’ Mr Maynard says.
‘Fighting to protect Middle East oil is how he saw it,’ Pop says. ‘War is different now. It’s all about money. When I went to Vietnam . . .’
‘Here it comes,’ Mr Alberti groans.
Pop ignores him, ‘Yeah you can joke. We might not have won the battle in Vietnam, but we won the damn war. Tell me how many Communist countries you got left in the world now? Can you name any, except North Korea? Kids probably don’t even know what a Communist is, growing up this century.’
‘The Chinese are still Communists,’ Coach Don points out.
‘Communists my arse,’ Pop says. ‘They’re all about the money too, like everyone now. It’s not good versus evil any more, it’s just us versus them. Tom saw that. That’s why he left the army.’
They’re all quiet. ‘Are you sure he said any of that, or is it all you?’ Mr Alberti asks. ‘I never heard him talk like that.’
Pop takes a last pull on his beer and puts the empty can in the cup holder on the arm of his wheelchair and makes a grunting noise and starts to back out of the circle, then he rolls back in again. ‘Tom was from good stock, a family of people who stood up to be counted, is what I’m trying to say. So when time came, he joined the Royal Australian Engineers and he put in his years.’ He shoots a glare at Mr Maynard. ‘Walking off that farm, it’s not because he was a quitter, if that’s you’re trying to say. That wasn’t an admission of defeat, it was an act of defiance, and there’s a world of difference, unless you’re too thick to see that.’
As he rolls away, Mr Maynard leans forward and kicks a log further into the fire with his boot. ‘Jaysus. All I said was, he never really liked farming.’
I go off to sleep to the sound of someone doing burnouts on the road outside the showground. Far enough away it doesn’t bother me. I wake up to the sound of yelling. It’s still dark. I’m snuggled right down in my swag underneath the milk cart and have to crawl up to the opening and pull aside the hood. People are running around, cars are starting.
Mum’s there. ‘Ssh, it’s OK. Stay in there.’
‘What’s going on?’ I ask her.
‘The bank on Sackville Street,’ she says. ‘Someone set it on fire.’
‘Where’s Coach Don?’ I ask her.
Jenny sticks her head out from the swag beside mine. ‘What?’
I hear the CFA truck starting up. Lucky a couple of them must have decided to stay the night and sleep in their truck, and they go roaring out of the showground, nearly taking a fence with them.
In my mind I see Coach Don standing beside Dad’s coffin yelling out his poem. Mum stands up and is looking around like she wants to be doing something; luckily Mr Garrett gives her something to do.
‘I’m going to town with a couple of the blokes, Dawn,’ he says. ‘Can you keep an eye on Danny? Just give him a feed and some water to settle him down; this racket has got him all stirred up.’
‘No worries,’ she says and goes around the back of the milk cart to get some oats for the horse.
Jenny and me look at each other and I grab my jumper out the bottom of my swag and she grabs hers and we wiggle our way to the front of the milk cart and we’re off. We don’t hardly know Port Fairy but we only have to follow the cars barrelling through town towards the fire and after a few minutes’ running we see lights and smoke and then we find Sackville Street and there it is. Police cars, the CFA truck and a mob of people from the showground.
It isn’t a very impressive fire. Like, our place burned up something fierce, and I didn’t see the bank in Yardley go up but the damage made it look like a bomb had gone off in there. We get as close as we can to the bank before a firey chases us away. This fire looks just like a window got broken and someone made a fire on a desk with some papers. The fire is already out and people are standing around smoking.
I see the old cop from last night, the one who stopped us out on the highway, talking to some other police. ‘You get out to the showground, no one leaves before I get there, all right? I want names and statements! And find that bastard Karsioglu. I’ll get on to Warrnambool, get them to send some more uniforms . . .’
Mr Garrett and Coach Don and Mr Alberti are standing on the street corner and we go over.
‘Can we get a ride back with you?’ I ask them.
Coach Don looks down at us a little surprised. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Ran,’ Jenny says.
‘Couple of Kenyans, you two,’ Mr Alberti says, whatever that means.
‘Can we though?’
Next morning Mum wants to get going but some detectives from Geelong arrive and they’re still interviewing people. Mostly they’re trying to work out who was there at the showground, who wasn’t there, who might have left around the time of the fire, who’s gone home since.
‘It’s a dog’s breakfast,’ Karsi says, coming over to speak to Mum. Me and Jenny and her are just hanging by the milk cart. Mr Garrett has Danny Boy all harnessed up and ready to go, and it’s starting to get warm in the sun.
‘We’ve got to get on the road,’ Mum says. ‘Got to get Tom to the cemetery.’
‘I told them that,’ Karsi says. ‘They don’t care. Say you could put him in a hearse and have him in Carlton by tonight if you wanted to.’
‘They can’t force me, can they?’
‘Not unless they arrest you,’ he says.
‘For what?’
‘Hell, I don’t know, Dawn,’ he says, sounding annoyed. ‘Being a fuckin’ stubborn old cow?’
‘Language, Karsi,’ Mr Garrett says, coming around from behind the milk cart. ‘There’s kids here.’
Karsi looks at us and takes off his policeman hat and wipes his brow. ‘Sorry, getti
ng hot I guess.’
‘Yeah well,’ Mr Garrett says. ‘You can tell fat Detective Sergeant Wotsit over there that we’re leaving in fifteen minutes unless he’s going to start arresting people.’ Mr Garrett looks ready for a fight.
‘You want to think about that?’ Karsi asks.
‘Try me,’ Mr Garrett says.
‘We just want to get Tom to Carlton like we planned,’ Mum says, a bit less fierce. ‘None of this other business has anything to do with us.’
Karsi bats at the sheets hanging on the sides of the milk cart, the ones about Dad that Jenny and me painted, with #BURN in the corners. ‘That’s your story? Seriously?’ he asks but he walks off to speak to the detectives.
Most of the people from Yardley who stayed overnight are still here and I reckon some more even arrived when people on the phone told them what happened last night. There’s about fifty cars parked on the showground now and people have got chairs and Mrs Alberti and Mrs Maynard have set up a table where they’re selling cakes and Jenny thumps me and points and we laugh because there’s a group of Warrnambool police at her table buying lamingtons for their breakfast even though on the table there’s a sign saying All Monies Towards The Funeral. Jenny takes a photo of them on her phone.
Mr Garrett sees it too and says, ‘Good to see the boys and girls in blue doing something useful. Here, you two.’ He hands us two empty feed buckets. ‘Go around to all the cars and ask people if they’ll give something towards the cost of the funeral.’
Jenny looks at me like, do we have to? but Mum gives me a little shove and so we go do it, and most people kick in a few coins and a few even throw some notes in there.
‘This is so dumb,’ Jenny says when we’re halfway round.
‘You mean embarrassing?’ I ask her. ‘Totally.’
‘No, I mean, you want to raise money you should set up a GoFundMe page, people can donate properly.’
‘Can you do that?’ I ask. ‘From your Facebook page?’
‘I can share it on there. Except I need someone to lend me their phone. I got no data left.’
When we get back Mum’s talking to Aunty Ell. She’s not our real Aunty, but everyone in town calls her that.