The Year of the Farmer

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘No,’ he said, appalled. He would never murder owls.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Esther Shugg’s. Got your bike?’

  ‘Nah.’ Her little brother, Levon, had the bike that day.

  ‘I’ll dink you.’

  They remained firm allies and strong sporting opponents. Mitch remembered the kids at school saying that if you gave Mandy Roper a sherbet bomb you could meet her behind the weather shed and she would pull down her pants and ‘show you’. But he never did. He didn’t want to and he never bought sherbet bombs.

  The first day Mitch came home from boarding school forever, he and Neralie eagerly consummated the adoring friendship that had been swelling for years. It was a loose, intermittent pairing, clan and tribe boundaries dictating, but they’d belonged to each other.

  When her grandmother died, Mandy lost weight. Then she inserted herself as much as she could into the pub hierarchy. The whole town was at the pub the night Mandy Roper smiled at Mitch and told him she’d like to buy his dead mother’s little white wagon. ‘Can you come and take me for a ride in it?’

  Lana said, ‘Do something,’ but Kevin said, ‘You can’t deny anyone a root,’ and Jasey said, ‘She’ll be hard to get rid of.’

  They had failed to rescue Mitch, and now Neralie was back they felt that failure.

  The rain ceased so Mitch went to the silo and filled the feeder bin for his suffering ewes, the cry of their lambs close. He felt a little better and gathered some nice lucerne hay and fed it to his chastened donkeys. They looked at him warily, so he assured them that everything was alright. Since he was still harvesting fecund mounds of sprouting manure, he had no doubt they still felt unwell – ‘You’re probably coeliac now.’ Cleo let him put a lead on her halter and, after a gentle tug and a snap at her heels from Tink, she let herself be led, Mark following. Mitch drew them slowly to the yard and put them in with the weaners. There was a greeting of sorts, the lambs bunting and the donkeys sniffing their charges. ‘God,’ he said, ‘that’s lovely,’ and Tink closed her panting mouth.

  o0o

  Because she was late, Callum assumed Esther was dead – she’d passed away in her sleep or slipped in the mud and died of exposure in the wet, windy night. There was nothing to be done. They would take the useless dog – one more mouth to feed – the Jeongs would buy the property and Mitch would lose the supply channel. He rubbed his sore hip and looked out to the rain falling on Mitch’s crop. The wind rattled the drips from the trees, willie wagtails ruffled their feathers in the bare fruit trees and galahs trilled as they showered on the clothesline. The lambs were still bleating in the distance and once in a while rain rumbled across the verandah roof. Cal hauled himself up and crept inside to wash three analgesics down with sweet black tea. He reached for the telephone.

  o0o

  It was the letter from the Department of Primary Industries that had thrown Esther’s routine. She read it while the wood stove gained purchase on the morning chill. ‘Threats,’ she said, but Peppy, curled on the hearth, was oblivious to all but the biting wind slicing through the gaps in the walls and around the doors. ‘Fines, “involuntary action”, “compulsory rabbit baiting” and “interventions”. I’m besieged.’

  She put on her coat and hat and went to her Dodge, Peppy following. They sat in the warm dry cab, Esther’s eyes watering in the glare bouncing off puddles, like welding light. Unidentifiable birds dived and circled around the gums by the stock ramp and a peregrine hung in the cold air. Butterflies flapped prettily over some dock weed and a pair of kookaburras watched them from the sheep yard fence. She studied her little corrugated-iron and timber house, the water dripping from the roof and into the rooms through the cracks. This year, spring had brought rain and wind; summer was coming and the house would thrum with heat and hot dust would pierce the gaps like soldering flames. It would bring snakes to curl around the eaves and eat the owl chicks and then autumn would herald another winter to cut to her old bones. ‘I am in my eighty-fifth year,’ she said. ‘This is where I have always lived and it might just kill me.’

  She drove to the haystack and lowered the sling, readied it to receive a fresh bale. She leaned the ladder carefully against the haystack and climbed. At the top, she reached over to a sweet bale and everything shifted. She couldn’t recall the view on the way down, exactly, but was relieved when she landed and found herself alive, though covered in mouse shit and dust, fetid hay and straw. She also found she couldn’t move, that she was wedged with her feet above her shoulders and her chin pressed to her chest in a collapsed chasm in the middle of the stack. ‘Oops,’ she said.

  After a short while she understood that struggle was pointless so she reconciled herself to missing the grand opening at the pub due to her slow death wedged in a nation of tunnelling mice and their small wet nests. Millions of the filthy little shitters and their pink wormy babies pattering all over her. There would be a snake, possibly several, fat and full and torpid in a smooth crevice. Esther Shugg prepared to meet her Maker, but was called back when she suddenly understood that her death meant Cyril Horrick would get her water and the Jeongs would pay money to take the land her ancestors had bequeathed her. She knew then that she wasn’t honouring the land – she was honouring an obligation to people who were dead. Gone. There was no point honouring them. They didn’t know. They’d never know what she did with the land, and once she was dead, like them – gone – the people she was keeping the land from would simply take it. She looked into the longing face of death and said, ‘To you I might look like a fool, and I see now that all my yesterdays have lit the way to this dusty trench, but I am not a wisp of candle smoke yet, no sir.’ She closed her eyes and waited because Callum possibly hadn’t died in his sleep and he would realise soon that she hadn’t arrived to collect him for their regular drive around their ancestral lands.

  Mitchell’s phone rang and Callum said that Esther hadn’t showed up.

  ‘Righto,’ Mitch said, knowing his father thought Esther was dead of a stroke in her bed, but if she was dead Mitch could just continue to herd his ewes to the low paddock, away from the lambs he had just stolen from them. Or perhaps Esther was not quite dead. He could leave her to proceed alone towards her end, thus avoiding the slow rotting death of an invalid at the nursing home. But if he rushed to save her he would have to go on enduring her weeds and vermin. ‘Probably just got a flat tyre,’ he said, and finished droving his ewes to their new paddock.

  o0o

  The sound of Mitch’s approaching ute woke her. She gathered her breath when the tyres rumbled on the familiar dirt and stones of her very own yard, then a puddle splashed and brakes squealed. The pumping of her heart made it difficult but she used what she had in her lungs to cooee.

  He stood in her yard and beneath the sound of wind against corrugated iron, he heard a faint sound and moved towards it. The ladder was discarded alongside the haystack. ‘That you, Esther?’

  ‘No, it’s Hillary Clinton.’

  He rested the ladder against the haystack and was about to climb when she said, ‘Don’t climb, you’ll drown me. Get help.’

  She stifled a small sob when she heard the message go out to the entire district on Mitch’s CB radio. ‘The haystack has given way under Esther Shugg, she’s trapped and injured.’ She heard the waves of voices from all over the Riverina planning her rescue, and then many utes and trucks slowed and rumbled over her small bridge and stopped alongside her dry irrigation channel and people walked up the drive and she said through the hay, ‘I think I’ve wet my pants,’ and Mitch said, ‘People piss themselves at the Bong every Saturday night, Esther.’ Then a blanket fell from above and, a little while later, the Bergens arrived with their cherry picker, and a medic was lowered, and Esther Shugg was delivered to the ambulance and driven to the hospital and given over to the capable care of Nurse Leonie Bergen.

  Mitch lifted Esther’s warm, deh
ydrated dog from the cab, saying, ‘You’ll have to come and stay with us, Peppy,’ and she sneezed.

  o0o

  In his ute, Sam Jeong followed the events of Esther Shugg’s rescue blow by blow via the CB radio and imagined sneaking a kilometre-wide, self-propelled boom spray filled with herbicide defoliant onto her land while she was away and annihilating every atom of chlorophyll on the place. In his mind’s eye he saw poisoned vermin fleeing in every direction and a future without the need to spray chemicals around so often. But it was a pointless fantasy and he let it go when he saw the ambulance drive past his gate, two utes and three cars following. Instead, he phoned Bennett Mockett, who told him he wasn’t the first to mention Esther’s vermin problem. He rang off, saying, ‘Mum’s the word.’ Sam googled the expression, and was pleased.

  o0o

  The small neutral areas between factions had thickened with bitter offence. The riparians were cool to the townies and farmers when they arrived to purchase cow’s milk or fresh-grown vegetables, and the townies were cool to the farmers when they put goods on credit, and the farmers gathered a little more tightly in the corner of the beer garden at the Bong of an evening. But when the ambulance drove past bearing Esther to the hospital, all the people in the main street – Lana and Jasey, Kevin, Debbie, Paul, Elsie, Levon and Darryl, Denise and Kelli, Cyril and Stacey, Joe Islip and even Mrs Goldsack – stood together on the footpath to watch. In the beer garden at the Bong, to the sound of nail guns and bench saws, the customers speculated on Esther’s recovery and placed a few bets. No money changed hands – that would have been shoddy – but predictions were made. Cyril was waiting on the edge of the footpath when Stacey swung into the kerb. He hurried him into the office, saying, ‘You’ll never guess what God’s just granted us.’

  ‘Probably not, so you’d better tell me.’

  ‘Give it an hour or so, then get up to that hospital and get old Esther to sign over her water.’

  ‘Oh, that – I heard on the CB. We should wait a bit; she might cark it.’

  ‘I’ll send Bennett,’ Cyril said. ‘She likes him.’

  Then the phone rang. It was Glenys Dingle. ‘I hear there’s been an accident.’

  ‘On to it. Her allocation’s fairly insubstantial, but we can certainly –’

  ‘Just let me know what the outcome is.’ She hung up.

  o0o

  The smell of warm bathwater and skin moisturiser told Mitch his wife was close. She looked over his shoulder at the Water Authority website. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The next round of buybacks,’ he lied.

  ‘You going to sell your water?’

  ‘Some of it – have to.’

  ‘Well, what’s the deal with the supply channel now Esther’s gone?’ Mandy chewed her thumbnail. ‘Esther’s had a fall, that always changes things for old people; she’ll be rethinking everything. Ask her for it. The worst she can do is say no. She uses you all the time.’

  ‘We help each other.’ He didn’t want to ask an old lady to hand over the family farm while she was in a vulnerable state. Yet it was the perfect time.

  ‘She might even be relieved. Just bloody ask her. Try. Put your money where your mouth is.’ She left and Mitch’s tension eased, but then she was there again in her snakeskin dressing-gown. ‘If you don’t ask, I will.’

  12.

  No harm asking

  To get to the spot, you could drive along the eastern road, past Bishops Corner, and take a shortcut across Esther’s messy paddocks to the riverfront – and most did. But those who wanted to avoid a drive through town followed the track the Water Authority and Fisheries and Wildlife used to check pumps and meters, or fishermen, drum nets and campers – ‘campers’ being a euphemism for shooters who drove up from the city to hide in the elbows of the creeks and annihilate every rabbit, fox, pelican, eagle, duck and grasshopper they sighted. The spot was a U-shape of land, a fat tick hanging off the river’s meander, the neck of which would eventually erode completely if too much water was released from the catchments. The meander would then become a noose-shaped island with a billabong moat. Esther would lose land, be it only about half a square mile of inaccessible and useless, weed-infested, willow-choked clay. But it was a slow, safe place to swim and fish, and the neck was easily blocked off with a vehicle or a log, a signal that it was occupied, because it was the spot for couples to absent themselves from intrusion on moonless nights. The spot was also an Aboriginal midden site, black soil and ash that threw up bits of bone and shell, axe heads and waddies, reminding everyone that once the mussels had been edible and the First Nation people were gone.

  Esther’s river pump was located far enough away not to disturb the silence, and the forest of willow trees, thick cumbungi and reeds on the river fold provided a camouflage. If he could only have Esther’s water, if he could take water directly from the river instead of paying through the nose to have it pumped from town . . . but the water traders would not see the sense of it.

  He parked his motorbike on the narrow neck, made his way to the far side of the meander and sat on the log. It had dawned warm and dry, the air was sweet with morning dew and damp dust on eucalyptus, the sun warmed his back, and the birds, high and free around him, sang as they set off for the day. There was a breeze to dry out his bedraggled crop and the sun to make it shot and sprung, but there was also Neralie, waving to him from the opposite shore. She made her way cautiously across the top of the old weir on her lovely legs. On safe ground, she fussed over the friendly dog, Tink’s body wagging in three sections, and came and sat next to Mitch.

  It was such a normal thing to see her sitting there, every freckle familiar. There was no tension attached to Neralie, no need to be anything other than how he was, and again he wanted to take her home and keep her.

  ‘How are ya?’ she asked, meaning it.

  ‘Much, much better now,’ he said. ‘How’s the renovation coming along?’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Grand opening soon.’

  ‘It’ll be good, no worries.’

  ‘Someone drinks or eats a counter meal every day in this town; I can’t see myself getting many days off for a while.’

  ‘You will – they’ll just help themselves.’

  She picked up a stick and started flicking leaves away with it. Water trickled through the broken weir, a raven carked and a carp jumped along the edge of the low creek. They both looked up. Was someone watching? They glanced at each other, acknowledged their nervousness.

  Tink came and sat at their legs, nudged Mitch’s calf, and Neralie turned and straddled the log, a leg either side. ‘What are we going to do, Mitchy?’

  ‘Job’ll be right.’

  They watched a thin line of bull ants detour around Tink, her ears back, alert to the falling leaves, rabbits’ traces and far-off farm engines. Then Neralie slid along the log and scrambled onto his lap, her legs around him, and they held each other and kissed for a long time, until she said, ‘We’d better not,’ and Mitch knew it didn’t feel right. For the first time ever, it felt like they were doing something wrong, but it wasn’t because Mitch was married. It was because the dark, eroding power of Mandy Roper’s presence was moving towards them like spilled paint over tiles.

  Mitch gave Neralie a final hug then watched her make her way across the top of the old weir. As her car rolled away along the back track he felt desolate. Tink nudged his fingers, pressed her wet nose up into his palm, and he rubbed her bony occipital.

  ‘Do not worry, Tinka,’ he said, his tone earnest. ‘I will always love you more than anyone else . . . more than the donkeys.’

  o0o

  It was possible that the light rain was the reason Stacey wasn’t at the swimming hole again. But every girl in town was still walking hopefully around the small lake as if they’d been doing it forever. Lana was not there, of course, nor Jasey. No doubt they were
huddled with the barmaid – the barmaid who still had not appeared in public. Afraid, possibly; definitely not confident. If she wanted to, Mandy could have the new water taker. And boy, would that upset everyone. She might even dine out with Gravedigger Dingle at the Riverglen Lake Restaurant, or join Cyril Horrick and his bootscooting wife for a meal at the Bong.

  Then Stacey’s car turned into the car park and Mandy let her bike fall to the grass, tore off her plastic poncho and dived in. It was freezing and her ears were filling up with microscopic creatures and she wished she’d remembered earplugs. Stacey soon churned past her, stirring the mud and rousing the weeds to brush her legs. Too puffed to continue, her lungs hot from the effort, she heaved herself up onto the jetty and rinsed off under the rainwater shower, then sat heaving until her lungs and heart stabilised. The waddlers circling the swimming hole in the drizzle giggled at her, but she called, ‘Got a question,’ and Stacey stopped to talk to her, rubbing his towel over his goose-fleshed body.

  ‘Do you get commission every time you persuade someone to sell water back to you?’ she asked him.

  ‘No.’ He patted his thinning hair with the towel. It was getting thinner each time it encountered water, but there were hair transplants these days.

  ‘My husband wants to upgrade his irrigation system.’

  ‘Great. Tell him to give me a call.’

  She glanced at the waddlers on the other side of the swimming hole and stepped closer to him. ‘He’s got a rich aunt, almost dead from eating too much European chocolate, so he’ll get her money, and there’s Esther Shugg’s water – he’ll get that, most likely.’

  He wrapped his towel around his waist. She had his full attention now. ‘He still has to pay us for the water he takes even if it is from Esther Shugg’s pump.’ And it meant more water back in the system, more revenue generated. And the Water Authority still received money for the water Mitch currently owned.

  ‘You’ll lose the channel,’ she said.