by Rosalie Ham
Mandy didn’t miss a beat. ‘You can’t prove they’re using water to fill the lake.’
‘That’s the point.’
‘You’ll still sail your boat on it, I bet.’
‘You’d love to go on my boat; you’re just jealous because you never get invited.’
‘Instead of taking the money for a boat, you should have let Mitch keep it, you’ve got enough.’
Jasey came out of the crowd, Kevin lunging to restrain her, ‘You’d be happy to shoot through with Mitch’s money at the first opportunity.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, I like where I am.’
‘Well, you’re the only one who does!’ Lana said and Mitch rushed to put himself in the middle of the women.
Kevin appeared at the lectern, his pale skin glowing in the overlit hall. ‘I’m going to change the subject but not the method. I’m subsidising every one of you through the water rates I pay and the income I let you all keep instead of paying me for the work I’ve done to keep you viable. These bloody ferals are the only ones who actually pay me – cash! I can see about three thousand dollars at the very least that’s owed to me in just the back row and I have to sit in the pub with all youse freeloaders while you splurge on counter meals and seventeen bloody rum and Cokes and I won’t get paid until you’ve paid off your maxed-out credit cards.’
A farmer condemned to bachelorhood said loudly, ‘And I guess you need to pay your credit cards since you’ve got two wives to support, more than your fair share.’ The crowd booed and before Kev could move Mitch grabbed his arm and said, ‘Steady . . .’
Someone said they’d pay him if they could and a ropey-haired scruff yelled, ‘Man, I thought we were all here for the water. If there’s no river there’s no water, there’s no nature, no farms, no food, no one to sell food, no town, no animals . . . nothing.’
Elsie grabbed the microphone from Cyril. ‘Next time you venture out of your air-conditioned office, come for a drive to where the water is, why don’t you, see what it is that you’re actually monopolising! Take a look at what remains of our mighty river before you decide to take more water and sell it cheap to your mates who contribute to your political party.’
Mandy Bishop grabbed the microphone from her and turned to Stacey, who was now filming it all on his iPad. ‘It seems I’m the only one here who’s happy to pay my share and willing to stand up for a better water system that’ll help us all.’
Her husband, red now with frustration, said, ‘Your point would be reasonable except that farmers are expected to pay to maintain a new system that makes life even better for the people who control the water while the pressure on us is impossible! We grow all the bloody food!’ He was shouting at his wife in front of the entire town but it didn’t matter; he would not lie down, he would fight his point because it was the truth. His wife was loving it, partly because he was showing Stacey and everyone else that her marriage wasn’t happy. Let Mitch fight for his water because when it all finally fell over, she would get half of it. She deserved at least that.
It was one of the ferals who broke the awkward silence. ‘We thought we could negotiate something here tonight but it’s got angry and out of hand and Glenys is gone, which means now no one’s voice is being heard.’
Mitch said firmly, ‘She wasn’t here to listen to you, pal.’
Some feral’s wife started clapping and chanting and the silence was drowned out by ‘The riv-er, the riv-er, save the riv-er . . .’
Paper aeroplanes made from meeting agendas flew across the top of the disintegrating tribes to the sound of scraping chairs and chanting, clapping ferals. Jasey texted a thumbs-up emoji and a smiley face to Neralie, and Mitch watched the crowd file to the exit. No one looked at him. His wife was standing beside him, smiling.
Lana, Cyril and Stacey watched the last backs disappear through the dark doorway, leaving their carefully arranged chairs in disarray.
Stacey said, ‘That went well.’
‘Got them all on side now,’ said Lana, and Cyril said he needed a drink. Lana wished she could tag along with Stacey and Cyril for a drink, but that would mean betraying the riparians, townies and farmers. And the ferals.
o0o
The bedroom door was wide open and he wondered if he could actually lie down next to Mandy, that solid form nestled a little too close to the low ridge dividing the mattress. He felt silly standing there in his pyjamas, his underpants underneath in case she touched him. Why did he even sleep in the same bed? He failed to find the courage to sleep in Isobel’s old room so kept his back to her and stayed on the edge of the bed. Beyond his window the world was still damp and his pitiful crop was soft, wet and ruined, but in light of his fiscal dilemma and his water issues and the state of his life, it was probably irrelevant.
On her side of the bed Mandy plotted. She deserved what she was owed and the longer she stayed the more it would hurt everyone and the more she could take from them. But they had not won yet. She had not yet lost. Her husband was still there, on the other side of the bed.
11.
Consequences
The caravan park proprietor wasn’t surprised when he saw the Water Authority car turn down the track to the ferals’ camp – he’d seen all types go down there at all hours – but he figured this visit was about the dogs. They barked half the night and the other half they roamed, and no amount of warning would make his new, smelly tenants tie them up. The skinny one with the ropey hair just said, ‘We don’t like to tie creatures up. The greater one’s humanity, the greater one’s free will.’ Then he started talking about Queequeg, and Captain Ahab’s great ship Pequod: ‘We look like the devil but we’re angels, saviours. We settled in this peaceful place to embrace the symbol of nature and freedom . . . Ahab’s great white whale.’
The caravan park proprietor said, ‘Two things, mate: there are no whales in the river and there’s no such thing as free will. It’s all about instinct, so that’s why you have to tie up your dogs, and their instinct.’ These days, he turned away those who tried to book in with a dog.
Stacey hummed along to the radio, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel as the car lolloped through the muddy potholes and wound between the grey gums and the tents and vans. He wanted to catch them before they dispersed to the scrub and their crops, wanted to settle the deal and get back to thinking about the lovely Lana. He stopped his car and studied the river as he took a piss. A dozen dogs came barking up to him and vans rocked as sleeping people rolled over or snuggled back down. There was a slight increase to the flow in the river, a little noticeable, but not so much for this stoned lot. Anyway, they’d be pleased, as would the riparians. A young woman stuck her head out the end of a tie-dyed teepee and a miniature pig tottered out. ‘Alice,’ she called, but the pig scampered up to Stacey and sniffed his boots. Someone whistled, but the dogs and the pig paid no heed. Soon there were children crying and people emerging from burrows all over the site, clutching sarongs to their thin bodies.
A skinny bloke with a third eye tattooed on his face approached Stacey, flicking ropes of hair out of his eyes, and said, ‘Wow, man?’
‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’
Third Eye shook his head and held up his hands, No, but Stacey said, ‘I’m offering cash, for work. It’s outdoors, you work in threes or in pairs, up to you, you split the fee, and it involves installing solar-powered meters.’
‘Solar power. Cool. Where’s the rip?’
‘Rip?’
‘The invisible grasp that drags you down, man, the silent stranglehold that steals from the truth.’
‘You’ll be taking water from the river, but ethically, and it’s to feed the masses.’
‘Feed the masses.’
‘Now that has to be good karma.’
Suddenly, the hippie dropped his spiritual preceptor impersonation and turned into a bloke. ‘Cash, you said?’<
br />
‘Cash.’
He sat down on a log and the dogs stopped barking.
‘Cuppa tea?’
‘Lovely, thanks.’ Stacey sat and the dogs lay down around them.
The women retreated with their snag-haired kiddies and the men attended to matters around the fire while the billy boiled. A bloke with plugs in his earlobes as big as a tribesman’s lip plate kicked away a few coals and found a camp oven. He took the lid off the oven and started tearing chunks of thick-crusted damper from the hard mound. He gave Stacey a chunk with jam on it, as a bald guy wearing a loincloth arrived and sat cross-legged on a nearby stump.
‘Politicians know nothing about anything,’ said the dreadlocked bloke, pointing to his third eye.
‘But we’re trying,’ Stacey said.
Third Eye said his name was Edward Hull-Jones. Edward introduced the guy with the lip-plug ears as Jonathan Rhys. They didn’t mention the bald guy in the loincloth.
After a pannikin of gritty river-water tea, Stacey showed them the certifications they’d receive once the pumps were up and running. ‘Certified! Last thing we ever thought we’d be, eh?’
The bloke in the loincloth said, ‘I’m certified,’ and Stacey talked through the instructions on the back of the certificates. ‘I’ll pay you a minimum fee, with cash bonuses for each functioning meter installed. Just sign the contract here . . . and we’d like as many as we can done in the next few weeks, before Christmas.’
o0o
Neralie woke in her room at the Bong to the sound of nothing. Sun was streaming through the window and the smell of rain on wet asphalt rose. She stretched, and thought of Mitch lying in his bed, brown skin against white sheets, and she walked in and lay right down on top of him, naked, head to toe. But she removed the image because Bicycle Mandy was lurking so she moved Mitch to the AGA, had him standing there, dressed in work shorts and stirring his dad’s porridge. But Mandy was still in the living room or bathroom, so Neralie got out of bed and went to the balcony, where she found the perfect distraction in the glassy sunshine. The horizon was coloured by dark clouds; more rain was coming. Across the road, Jasey was standing in front of her shop. Its window featured a crudely painted sign: save our river. save our livelihoods. Neralie went back through her room, down the stairs and out onto the street and stood on the white lines in the middle of the road. Kevin was reclining in a deckchair between the bowsers, studying a hydraulic hose. A sign above him read: no cash no Fuel.
‘Morning, Kev.’
‘Nelly.’
Jasey joined Neralie in the middle of the road and they watched a farmer’s wife drive past. She didn’t wave to them. ‘She’s driving to Riverglen to do her shopping. I’ve only had one customer, and that was Elsie to buy milk, but they’ll be back. It’s expensive to drive to Riverglen.’
‘I’ve got a grand opening in a couple of weeks. I need a pub full of happy, friendly people spending money.’
A local with a Commodore full of kids and balding tyres pulled up at Kev’s bowsers. When Kevin said, ‘Cash only, mate,’ the driver placed the fuel pump back in its cradle. Kev thought about phoning the new servo to warn them a bolter might be on the way, but they could afford a drive-off every now and then and, anyway, they’d swallowed up two family-run fuel outlets in the area when they set up shop.
Then Bennett Mockett nosed his late-model Ford into Kev’s drive. ‘Mate?’
‘Nah, stuff it,’ Kevin said, pointing the hydraulic hose at the injured harvesters, tractors and trucks waiting in his huge yard and workshop. ‘I’ve spent months fixing all those vehicles so people can get on with harvest and no one – no one – wants to pay me for ’em.’
‘We’re all in the same sinking boat, mate. How can they pay you when they can’t strip their crops?’
‘I must be the only sucker on the planet who runs a credit book and sends monthly accounts.’
‘Everyone here has to. You know that. I bet I’m owed more than you. I’m owed tens of thousands.’ But Two-shits Mockett was a company man. He got a wage.
Next, Sam Jeong swung into the drive. He paid for a drum of oil with cash, and Kev told him he was a rare thing, ‘rare as frog feathers’.
Bennett drove the very short distance to Mocketts’ Stock Agency and parked outside. Someone had scrawled Steal our liFeblood and see what happens to your liFe on the window.
‘There’s only one person in this whole town who uses a capital “f” in the wrong place,’ he yelled. Kev looked at the sign he’d written: no cash no Fuel.
In his ute, Sam searched for ‘Australian colloquialisms’ and found ‘rare as frog feathers’, smiled and nodded at his phone.
o0o
When Mitch had gone for the day, she’d gleefully set about cleaning out cupboards, and now Mandy was driving to the tip with his precious childhood treasures piled on the passenger seat. There were his balsawood aeroplanes and plastic warships, his old footy and cricket trophies, his first riding boots and photos of every puppy he’d ever owned, every fish he’d ever caught, his pet turtle, pet lizard and galah. Also in the pile was the collar from his long-dead curly-haired retriever and, of course, pictures of Mark and Cleo as foals. She’d considered stealing something from Callum’s office, but there was time yet.
Mandy Bishop changed up to fifth gear, cranked the music up and sang, all the while playing the film in her head of how Mitch would look when he opened the cupboard and found his treasures gone. Then she went to the new servo and sat at a window seat devouring her sticky bun and cappuccino, watching the sun find its way through the floating rain clouds.
o0o
Mitch worked at the head of the race, drafting ewes from their lambs, all loudly bleating in distress at their separation. A ewe slipped through and milled with the lambs. Tink ceased her yapping and watched Mitch. He stopped, looked beyond the wet sheep to the barren paddocks, greyed by rain, the topsoil puddling and sliding away down between the clay cracks. His hands were stiff and water puttered off his oilskin down the front of his shirt and soaked his jeans. His feet were cold and heavy with shitty mud. He felt very alone and a little bereft in the vast acres while the rest of the world was inside, warm and dry. And he was separating ewes from their lambs. And a few hundred metres away, the rain was ruining his mature seed heads, folding them, bending stalks. Oh, to be at the pub, near the fire, with Neralie. He grabbed the ewe from the pen and dropped it over the fence to its sisters and cousins and there was a swell from the crying lambs. ‘Weaning is a fretful time,’ he told them. ‘But you’ll still live with your brothers and sisters, for a while anyway.’ Behind him, Tink fidgeted and yapped, so he worked the drafting gate and the dog was happy pushing the sodden and splattered flock through the mud and shit. Cal arrived in his Driza-Bone and tam-o’-shanter and they pushed on, separating ewes from lambs until everyone was orphaned.
Then Mitch went to the donkeys and the lambs and they dropped their heads to sniff their substandard dinner. Mitch tried to pat Cleo but she moved, so he said, ‘Be like that,’ and Tink – sodden, mud-caked – trotted along behind him to the ute, the farm dogs circling. The lambs called plaintively to their mothers through the fence. Isobel kept her sheep in family groups and she swore they were happier and easy to manage. He wondered about her happiness, the husband and children who loved her.
He texted Neralie: The spot, when?
He had loved Neralie McIntosh since they were both eight years old. Little Neralie had stood in front of Mitch in the school choir. One day Mitch pulled her pigtail and was perplexed when she didn’t whine or tell on him but just kept singing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, so he didn’t bother with her again. The following Friday, during sport, Mitch ambled across to the crease, picked up the bat, planted it in front of the wicket and faced the bowler, his face screwed up against the harsh summer sun. Neralie stood at the other end, flipping the hard red ball from hand to ha
nd, calm and pale despite the heat. The teacher watched Neralie turn and walk back, almost as far as the boundary fence, the ball snug between her cupped hands and her brows furrowed by tactical planning. The teacher signalled the fielders and they turned and moved further afield and the wicketkeeper stepped back. Little Neralie ran, her thick curls bending back high in the wind and her thumb and fingers tight and light around the hard ball. She lifted her elbow and swung her arm forward and the missile shot from her fist, an apple-sized cannonball heading straight for Mitch, armed only with a thin oblong of willow. The red missile whistled through the thin air above the baked pitch and bounced a yard in front of him. He stepped towards it, the flat of the bat addressing the deadly thing, but it stayed low, bounced, spun, whipped behind his bat and slammed into the inside of his rear knee. It ricocheted and shattered the stumps, flipping the bails from their tiny nests into the dust beside Mitch, lying on his side in the dirt, holding his burning knee. The ball rolled on, bouncing over low tussocks and disappearing into the clumps of galvanised burr beyond the wire boundary fence. At the other end of the pitch Neralie raised her hand, ready to catch the ball when the fielder found it.
The following day, Mitch pedalled the twelve kilometres to town to the swimming hole. The steadily flowing creek was tea-coloured and tasted like fresh water. You could see your feet when you were standing up to your knees, and in the shallows you could watch turtles going about their business. Later, you wouldn’t see anything in the churning, clay-coloured mire, stygian and sad, because of the carp. He swam out to the pontoon where Neralie was lying on her tummy in the sun. He lay down next to her. She opened her eyes and looked into his and closed them again. After a while they stood up and looked at the wet patches their bodies had left, side by side on the planks, then dived into the creek.
Treading water, Mitch said, ‘I know where there’s a barn owl’s nest.’
She screwed up her nose in disgust. ‘You collect eggs?’