by Steven Lang
He breaks from her eyes.
‘Did you do that?’ he says.
‘No, it was only the wind,’ she laughs, delighted. ‘The air spirits checking us out.’
‘Did we pass?’
‘I think so.’
He draws her to him. He wants to kiss her but she turns her face away. It’s not the right time for that.
The stringybarks yield to other species, silver-top ash, tall trees whose black bark gives way to smooth-skinned, shining limbs, sparse-leafed, their trunks leaning awkwardly into the slope.
The first time she came here was by mistake, trying to find the summit, following the ridges up and trusting in her faith that any valley she dropped into would bring her back to Gubra Creek and, eventually, the Farm. This particular rock-strewn ridge, the trees so vast and far apart that their fallen leaves could not manage to cover the ground, troubled her. It seemed to hold some darker purpose. Its lonely asymmetry was like a curtain drawn across the doorway of a deeper place. She had shied away, dropping off the side of the ridge.
Now she takes the same route, but out of choice.
‘I thought we were going to the top,’ Kelvin says.
‘There’s nothing there,’ she says. ‘You can’t see out or anything.’
‘What’s on the other side?’
‘Cooral Dooral.Well, not exactly, that’s way off to the north. But once you cross the ridge you’re on that side.You take one tiny step either way when you’re at the top and you come out in completely different country.’
‘So let’s go.’
‘I want to show you something else.’
She takes his hand, guiding him down, but then has to release it to maintain her balance, the slope is so steep. Underfoot is loose, broken-edged rock. There are shrubs and young trees to grasp but some have vicious thorns. Below them is a tight mass of greenery, uninviting, impenetrable, difficult to reach.When they get close they are on ground so perpendicular that it appears to be literally underneath them, that they must step down into it, like entering water. Indeed, when they do so, the change is almost as radical and immediate.They push through and, after another hundred feet of scrambling, find themselves on a valley floor, a wide level place completely enclosed by the canopy.
In the half-light leopard-spotted trees rise up like pillars. The ground is an interwoven complex mosaic of roots and round pebbles.
‘Wow,’ he says, ‘rainforest!’
‘Is that what it is?’
‘I guess so. I’ve seen it up north, near Cairns. But this is different.’
‘It’s my lost world. I always expect to see dinosaurs.’
Beside him a liana as thick as an elephant’s leg curves down and then up again like a hammock.
‘Do you like it?’ she asks.
She had thought she was bringing this young man here to show him what was important, a kind of object lesson in the face of his own self-centredness. Now she feels like the one on display. Her vulnerability everywhere obvious. She goes to him, comes inside his arms, feels his breath in her hair. She raises her lips to be kissed and the touch of his are instantly hot and moist, as if he has been waiting. She places his hand on her breast, finds the bare skin beneath his shirt. He smells of all the branches and leaves and shrubs he has brushed against. Against his chest all her anxieties evaporate. She unbuttons his shirt, fumbling, unable to take time to look, her hands on his belly and chest. She undoes the belt on his trousers, the button, the zip, finds, tangled within, his cock, holds it with both hands, quivering. He undresses her and she sits on the curve of the hanging liana; she reaches up and grasps the strands of the vine for balance and he comes into her. She wraps her legs around him and pulls him to her. She is filled with the fecundity of the place, she is in the mountain being fucked by the forest in its darkest realms, her white skin glowing in the half-light. The vine sways, she curls her legs around his back, he sucks on her skin, licks at her neck, kisses and kisses her open mouth. And although she is lost in his touch, is like a cipher of his every movement, pushed hither and thither by his desire, she is also in him. She is the mountain, the forest, the crumbling broken-rocked slopes and the vines that hold them together, the wind in the open trees, the tracking ants, none of it is too large or too small to be encompassed in the act they share in this deep recess of the land.
When they are done he moves away. She stays, strung out on her vine. He lies on the soft damp leaves, she can see the broken pieces of them on his skin, but although they are rotting, crumbling, they bear no resemblance to dirt, they lie on him or about him but he is not altered by them. He is separate.
He opens his eyes. ‘Shall we move on then? There’s mozzies about.’
He is already gone. It is the way with men, but it always shocks her, their abruptness, their readiness for the next thing. She wants to stay here forever, or for at least a minute more. He has already left. A moment of doubt troubles her mind. Did she do the right thing? She so easily reveals herself to another, as if the bare essentials of herself are the greatest gift she can offer. It is, of course, what she was looking for from him. How often has she done this, taken someone into her private places in the hope that by doing so they might reveal theirs, and instead been left stripped bare? As if it will take her lifetimes to learn the nature of the word private, what it means, that it suggests things for her alone, for no one else.
Then he comes over, loose-limbed, and kisses her, still precarious on her vine. He runs his broad hand down her body and back up again, cupping her breast. There is an additional scent attached to him. He smells of her, her in the forest, and she is glad.
eleven
By the time he made it up to Carl’s house it was seven-fifteen, Jessica’s car was way back over the hill and he was already out of breath. Carl was on the veranda, waiting. After taking one look at Kelvin he said, ‘Coffee?’
Kelvin nodded gratefully, collapsing in a chair.
‘Too much screwing, eh?’
Kelvin glanced up, surprised at the coarseness, the failed attempt, if that’s what it was, at Australian humour. Carl seemed equally embarrassed. Quite apart from any common history they might have had with the woman in question, they didn’t know each other well enough.
‘We went walking,’ Kelvin said.
‘Where?’
‘Dunno, across the creek, up the hill.’
Carl got his maps out. He had a great stack of the things.
‘Show me,’ he said, moving the cups and unfolding them on the bench. It was his way of covering for his earlier comment. ‘Maps,’ he said, ‘are the most beautiful things, they’re the key to everything.’
To Kelvin they were meaningless diagrams, instruction manuals in a foreign language. He was simply glad of the diversion that kept them from the paddocks and the fence. He watched politely while Carl pointed out where his house was, where Cooral Creek wound down off the plateau, cutting its way through the hills, where Gubra Creek joined it below the ford. He showed Kelvin where the Farm was, and where he’d been the day before and how really everything was much closer to everything else than it looked, it was just the mountains got in the way so you had to go the long way around by road. Even aside from any difficulty with the maps, though, Kelvin was having trouble concentrating. He’d only been away from Jessica for an hour and already he missed her. He was unaccustomed to the intensity of his feelings. He didn’t need a map to remind him of what had happened between them, he could think of nothing else.
Then, at the end of the day, while they were loading the tools onto the hold-all, the dogs around their heels, stretching and yawning and yapping, Carl decided to worm the horses.
Which, Kelvin thought, was the problem with the man. He was not just relentless, he was meticulous, obsessive. He’d said of the fence, ‘When you look down the line you only want to see the nearest post,’ and Kelvin had heard him but hadn’t paid too much attention until Carl discovered he’d rammed one in squint, a hundred mil out of line, and
two days later they’d had to go back and take the bastard out again, wrapping a chain around its base and hauling it up with the tractor’s hydraulics, then redigging the hole to make it right. Kelvin had been working with him for more than a week, out in the paddock, living with him at night back in his old house, and he admired him, no doubt about that; there wasn’t anyone he’d ever met who had his range of skills and the temperament to use them. He was not so much self-sufficient as self-contained. He appeared, and this was perhaps the most mysterious part for Kelvin, to have the roots of all of his needs within himself, to have a capacity to be satisfied simply with what was around. The trouble was he didn’t seem to know when to stop. He had no idea when someone else’s limit might quite genuinely have been reached. He always had to go the extra mile. They were in the top paddock and the horses were nearby so he figured to round them up, dismissive of Kelvin’s objections.
‘Won’t take but a moment. I oughta’ve done it days ago.’
By the time they had them yarded the last of the sun was on the hills, a line of gold creeping towards the distant ridges. Carl went to the shed for the drench. Kelvin sat on a rail. In the mellow light the colours were deep and distinct, the dark water in the dam reflecting the silver sky, currawongs calling their songs back and forth across the valley, the air clear and sweet from the remaindered heat of the day. The four horses were confined in one pen, ears up and back, wide-eyed, watching for clues as to what would happen next. Carl came back with a device like a grease gun.
They took them into the next pen one at a time. Kelvin’s job was to hold the rope while Carl inserted the tube in the back of the horse’s mouth and squirted. He stood next to the animal, so much larger than he had ever imagined now that it was here, right next to him, its sharp hooves stamping. The older pair were apparently resigned to the process, at least accustomed to the indignity, and tolerated his touch. The operation took only moments: he held them, Carl squirted the foul grey liquid, and then they were back out in the paddock, coming back to watch the action from the safety of freedom, their tails up in disgust.
The filly was only a yearling and flighty, terrified of the men, ears flat, eyes rolled back, lips curled; but when Carl approached, talking gently, she accepted the rope and allowed herself to be held while the drug was administered. When Kelvin let go she coughed and spat and stuck out her great tongue, shook her head and trotted out.
‘Now you,’ Carl said to the speckled gelding.
In the twilight the dun was turning this way and that against the rails, high-stepping, raising and lowering his head and snorting. A pair of those slow black march flies that favour the cool of evening were bothering his heels. He stamped a foot and swept his tail, the coarse hair brushing against a post.
Kelvin knew enough to stand stock-still in the centre of the yard, his arms by his sides, palms out, while Carl moved forward, murmuring. The horse backed himself into a corner, trying desperately to see this man with both eyes at once.
‘Gently now,’ Carl said, saying it again, softly, repeating it over and over, ‘gently now,’ getting up next to the gelding and passing the end of the rope under the beast’s neck and then over while the horse stood his ground, quivering.
‘Come now,’ he said to Kelvin. ‘Round to my left, that’s right, slowly now, here, take the rope,’ speaking in that same gentle monotone and yet, even with that, his voice possessing a shocking authority.
Kelvin took the rope. After three horses he was confident that he knew how to calm the beast. He placed his open palm on the gelding’s neck, feeling, abruptly, beneath the short hair and skin, the hardness of the flesh, the terrible strength of the animal. He whispered quietly to him. He had allowed himself to nurture the belief that it was his empathy that had calmed the other animals. Carl reached the drench over from the rail and brought it up, saying, ‘Hold his ear now. Hold him.’
His ear? Then the horse was up. He lifted himself into the air as if Kelvin was not there. His sharp hooves pawed the air around Kelvin’s head. He shrieked and thrashed above him. Kelvin ran. He turned and ran. He clambered up on the rails as the horse came down and took off around the yard, circling as fast as he could within the confined space, pounding the ground, tossing his head, kicking up his hind legs, shuddering his breath.
Carl had not moved. The drench was still in his hand, the dropped rope at his feet. He did not look at Kelvin. When the horse began to slow he approached again, moving with that same quietness in the settling dust, bending to pick up the rope, stepping inside the horse’s space, putting the rope around and calling Kelvin to come off the rail. He climbed down. He crossed the dirt and came over beside them. He took the rope.
And once again the gelding was above him, so big, the white underbelly revealed amid the raking hooves, this ancient unnatural contract between man and beast shown for what it was – the animal was trying to kill him. Again he ran. Once again Carl did not falter. He waited until the horse calmed. There was, though, a harder set to his shoulders when he approached. But not in his voice. Gently, he spoke. As soon as he was inside the gelding’s range the horse was up. Not waiting for the rope. His forelegs right about Carl’s head, his face thrown back to the side, his mouth open, the pink gums bright against his flashing teeth. He didn’t neigh, he screamed. Carl stood. As the horse came down, as his head came down, Carl punched him. He brought his fist around and punched the animal on the nose, directly, then immediately again, punching hard, with a sharp right swing. It was as if the world had come to an end. All the evening light and warm air and colours ceased. The horse was stunned. All his terror given form. Involuntarily he shat. A stream of turds. He tried to move away, backing into a corner, his buttocks against a rail, snorting, lowering his head, pawing at the ground. He was about to rise up again, and again Carl hit him. Then he stepped right inside his space and slipped the rope around, talking to him in that same gentle monotone, as if there had been no anger, as if nothing had happened at all, but calling him all manner of obscenity, gently, evenly, only stopping when he was ready for Kelvin.
‘This time,’ he said, ‘hold the bastard. Take his fucking ear at the base and hold on. Don’t let go.’
His fist hurt. He hadn’t meant to hit the horse and he felt bad about it and about doing it in front of the boy. The horse would get over it but he wasn’t sure the boy would, a thing like that can turn someone, just when you think you’re getting their trust out it slips and all the work you’ve done, all the fine stuff, gets lost. The difficulty was that watching the boy was pretty much like watching himself at the same age.Although a less generous part suggested he had been like that at a younger time.
He drove deliberately. Kelvin’s impatience was not his, he had nowhere to be and it was his truck, his suspension, his tyres. He’d been reluctant enough to drive him over the hill as it was, knowing full well that the boy was running from him and his hardness. Who wouldn’t? But he’d like to have been able to explain. What? That it is a battle, that you can’t let things, animals, people, the world in general, push you around. You have to stand up for yourself. Did Kelvin think this farm had fallen into his lap? Carl was negotiating the rough bit of road down towards the creek and the Murray Greys were there, they must have come down for their drink and they only moved when he was right on top of them, such pretty cattle, a lot of the Angus in them, stocky beasts that he’d reared from poddy calves, bottle-feeding them at night, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them. He’d only been on the place three or four years but it was more his home than anywhere in the world and that was because it was hard won, because it was beautiful when he came and was more so because he’d been there.
It was also possible, he thought, that Kelvin’s need to see Jess had nothing to do with the horses. That, too, was something he recognised from his younger self, the need to be single-minded in the pursuit of a woman. That a man’s desire for a woman could not be simple desire, it had to be grand passion. If he was not consumed by feeling then
the event would somehow lack tenor, it would be nothing, not even a statement.
Carl couldn’t have more than fifteen years on the boy and yet he felt immeasurably older, possessed of an almost parental desire to educate him, to communicate a small amount of his small wisdom. It was ridiculous to be thinking in that way after such a short time. But perhaps Kelvin was partly to blame. He generated this sort of feeling, he was like a vacuum, presenting an invitation to all and sundry to fill him up, to be the one who would affect him. It was probably what attracted Jessica.
The boy said nothing all the way over the hill and down through the forest on the other side; a rough bit of road, very sharp rocks, strange the way the geology of the place changed so radically so quickly. Then, at the Farm, he suddenly announced he’d get off at the end of Jim’s road. He said he’d walk up to see Jessica later. Perhaps Kelvin had just needed to get away from him after all.
twelve
It was a relief to be out of the truck and in the night, walking with the full moon bleaching the road, making strange crisp black shadows out of familiar things. To be away from Carl and his obsessions. The cold air quickening his steps. As he approached Jim’s he could see yellow light leaking out through the cracks in the wall. The house was barely more than a shack, a mishmash, a large one-roomed place built out of round poles and scavenged materials, sitting in its own little dell, different sections of wall made out of different materials, wattle and daub, weatherboards, sleeper offcuts. Various bits of cast-off machinery, old cars, a rusting tractor, littered its surrounds, glinting dimly in the moonlight.