The Year of the Farmer

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘Small person, big grudges,’ Levon said.

  He could have cried but the love of his life, his soul mate and friend, was smiling at him from behind the bar, because soon they would be together. ‘Enough is enough,’ she said, and he saw now that everyone was smiling.

  o0o

  The Friday evening view was spectacular from Bennett Mockett’s rooftop terrace. The sinking sun turned the new, strong flow of release water orange, the shining flow pushing past the refurbished pump station and its extraction pipes, enormous drinking straws reaching down to the water. Cyril, Stacey, Glenys and Bennett and his wife Megan, cocktails in hand, toasted themselves. They talked of their successes – the reinvigorated river, its flood plains, ecosystems and wildlife, as well as the encouraging responses from the federal government and, most especially, the business investments, jobs and tourism that the Riverglen Lake Resort was bound to attract once the lake was filled. No one mentioned the loss of the swimming hole. Pam Horrick sat with the doggies at her feet discussing Megan’s new boatshed on the riverbank at Riverglen. When Glenys threw her head back to laugh loudly at something the others had shared, she stepped back, treading on one of the spaniels. The dog yelped and held its paw aloft. Glenys looked down at the dog and said, ‘Oops.’ Pam clutched the whimpering animal to her breast.

  With his back to the orange orb in the golden sky, Stacey watched Jasey, Kevin and Lana come out of their little flood-plain house and drive away. When pissed Cyril, dull Pam, ripe and bossy Glenys and Two-shits Mockett were at the height of their boasting, Stacey looked again at his phone. The image was grainy, just blurry shapes really, but it was clearly two people shagging, and Lana looked just how he’d imagined. He could have her now. If he claimed Lana, surely Jasey, Kevin, and everyone, really, would be grateful?

  o0o

  The pub was full now, though Mitch had gone home to his father long ago. Darryl was behind the bar and Levon adjudicated proceedings for the newly formed task force. Paul was handing out photocopied Certified Accreditation certificates, pink-trimmed, while the topic moved through water released from catchments with no warning, the loss of the swimming hole and Digby’s barrages, black water, and Sam’s new you-beaut solar-powered water flow pumps and meters, which had not been earthed and therefore didn’t work. Then there was the lack of water, the fact that a twenty-percent allocation wasn’t enough to grow anything or save anyone, so the factions joined to discuss corruption and set in place a plan. Then the topic arrived at the dog cull, and the reasons to kill: food, suffering and vermin. They had no choice, they reasoned, since it was all for the community . . . for the greater good. Levon asked for eradication volunteers. Esther was first to nominate. She would work with Callum.

  o0o

  Mrs Maloney set off to fetch her cow, which had been grazing near a great toe of riverbank on the lee side of the main river meander, just upstream from the swimming hole. She wobbled along the north side of the river, alarmed at how much the river was up, how much dead water and detritus had swelled to the surface, and the mighty push of it, like one long container ship. She found her brown and white Guernsey cow standing in the river, straining to keep her chin above the water, the whites of her eyes showing, the water lapping all the way up to her thurl. When she saw Mrs Maloney, the cow bellowed.

  It took the bleary people at the cocktail party on the roof terrace some time to identify the sound of metal on metal and breaking glass, and by the time they negotiated the stairs, drinks in hand, Mrs Maloney had smashed the windscreen of Cyril Horrick’s Water Authority car and was slamming the star picket fence post across the bonnet of Glenys Dingle’s Ford Territory. Cyril threw himself at Glenys’s car, but Mrs Maloney was undeterred, and he suffered a split philtrum and several broken yellowed crowns.

  Mrs Maloney yelled, ‘The bank under my cow has washed away – get her out!’ She swung the star picket into the headlights of Stacey’s car as Glenys put her drink down and searched for her phone to take pictures – evidence in the court case.

  ‘They won’t put me in jail,’ Mrs Maloney called. ‘I’m too old. But you’re not.’ She raised the metal fence post again.

  From the deck, Pam watched Bennett and Cyril run towards the river, Megan following with their shoes. Mrs Maloney finished off the cars and turned on Bennett’s double-glazed front windows.

  21.

  Collateral damage

  By the time Glenys could face the sun, it was high, yellow-white and blazing. She stood behind her mirrored glass windows, her one-hundred-percent Egyptian cotton dressing-gown tied tight to contain her struggling waist, and her serum-enhanced eyelashes bending against the binocular lenses trained on the water flowing into her lake. Beside her on the glass-topped dining table, two soluble Panadeine and a Berocca gently fizzed in a glass of soda water. She noted the water level in the lake and looked at her wrist to check the time and date then remembered she used her phone for such things these days, so set off to see where she’d left her bag after the joint SWS/SWA meeting at the Mocketts’ fabulously intelligent, sustainably green, low-impact, high-performance, carbon-neutral, climate- and eco-friendly home with efficient air flow and light access. Then she remembered Mrs Maloney’s cow, and closed her eyes for a moment. SWA would give her a new car. She would tell the board it was the fault of the drunken task force.

  Glenys upended her bag onto the kitchen table but found no phone. The stove clock wasn’t yet working and she didn’t have a television, so she searched for her watch, strapped it to her wrist and prepared to drive all the way back to that wretched town with those barbaric, provincial people. A memory of Mrs Maloney slamming the star picket fence post across her Ford Territory thumped against the inside of her head, and she knew she couldn’t possibly be seen driving a car like that in broad daylight. She reached for her phone, but she didn’t have her phone. A tear escaped from her bloodshot eye and she suspected it might ruin her eyelashes so she went back to bed to lie on her back until she felt better.

  o0o

  Isobel was at a furious six kilometres on her treadmill, four hundred calories burned and her head filled with acid thoughts of celebrating Christmas without her ancient aunt or dear father, and Border Leicesters contaminating her breeding line, and bloody Mandy. A conspiracy of ravens swooped down and settled on the fence at the yards to stare boldly at her prize Merinos. She hopped off the treadmill, letting it run, imagining the murderers wouldn’t notice she’d left the apparatus, and went to the office. She unlocked the gun safe, loaded the rifle and sneaked to the side verandah. From behind the purple bougainvillea, she raised the rifle butt to snuggle into her shoulder. Isobel closed one eye, trained the crosshairs onto the fattest of the sleek, black vermin. It turned and looked at the bougainvillea, crouched as if to fly away, and she pulled the trigger. Digby sat up in bed.

  It was when he was squeezing his morning orange that he saw, beyond his lovely wife on the treadmill, a dead bird nailed to the fence at the yards. The rifle rested on the verandah.

  ‘Bel, you shot a raven?’ They were the hardest things in Australia to shoot.

  ‘They’re corpse-eating scavengers and murderers of the innocent. They’re cruel, selfish and entirely unnecessary to anyone. Vermin. I will get rid of every one of them.’ She stopped the treadmill and started crying.

  Digby went to her. ‘This is no good, Bel, old thing. I can’t have you upset.’

  ‘Mitchell will lose the farm.’

  He handed her his breakfast napkin. ‘But Philippa will still get the sheep.’

  ‘Oh, bugger the fucking sheep. Why can’t she have a whole farm? Rory will get one.’ She blew her nose. ‘And I don’t know what to do about Christmas. It’s a mess, Opal hates me.’

  ‘Let’s take Christmas off this year. We always host and everyone always eats and drinks everything in the house.’

  ‘Mitch brings beer. And peanuts.’

  �
��And Cal gives speeches and cleans his spectacles with a crusty hanky.’

  ‘Careful, that’s my old dad.’

  ‘Let’s all go to the pub. I’ll book it for everyone.’

  ‘Neralie will be there.’

  ‘Good. I hope she spills the burning bombe Alaska all over Mandy.’

  ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to appease, not incite murder.’

  ‘Depends who gets murdered.’

  Later, when her nose was very red and she’d filled a bin with damp tissues, Isobel stood forlornly at the kitchen window watching her lovely Merinos grazing contentedly in the paddock as a family. They would live to their full potential before a humane end saw them consumed for the greater good. It was their right. ‘You want a fight, Bicycle Mandy, you’ve got one.’

  She phoned her aunt, who picked up the phone and said, ‘I know it’s you, Isobel, and the answer is no, definitely not. I will not attend Christmas lunch. I won’t travel to Girri Girri this year and there’s nothing you can say or do that will make me change my mind.’

  ‘We’ve decided we’ll all go to the pub for Christmas lunch.’

  ‘Oh, excellent, I’ll catch the bus.’

  o0o

  Stacey parked his bike, removed his aerodynamic sunglasses and unzipped his riding suit. He checked his activity tracker as he moved towards the swimming hole, then remembered the swimming hole was gone, consumed by the river. He set off on his bike again.

  When he got to the shop, the newsagent was reading the paper. She smiled at him. ‘I see you’ve got a tender in to reinstall the solar-powered meters that don’t work?’

  Stacey went pale. ‘A tender in to reinstall the solar-powered meters that don’t work?’

  She handed him his newspaper. ‘Page fifteen. I wonder who’ll get that job?’

  ‘We didn’t put that in, we didn’t advertise . . .’

  He found his office crowded with a slightly odorous groups of irrigators, riparians, townies and ferals. They each had a Certified Accreditation certificate and were busy filling out application forms to reinstall the faulty solar-powered meters out along the creek at the Jeongs’. Cyril opened his mouth to say something. There was a gap where his front teeth once were, and the crusted blood in his nostrils cracked, oozing fresh blood over his swollen top lip.

  Stacey said, ‘Well, at least the golf course and the tennis courts are green.’

  They asked when the levee across the swimming hole – or the place where the swimming hole used to be – would be rebuilt.

  ‘It was due for renovation anyway,’ Stacey said.

  Mitch handed him two pieces of paper. ‘This piece of paper says you are qualified to certify meters, the instructions are on the back, just fill in your name . . . and the second certificate says that all your meters are certified. Again, you have to fill in your own name. The Water Authority will pay you for the installation, and Cyril will supply the meters and pumps from his back shed. Oh, and the tender application is on page fifteen of the newspaper you’ve got there. Give it to me when you finish and I’ll post them off to the Water Authority . . . unless the tender’s been won?’

  Stacey was in strife, for sure, and he might just need a new job.

  Cyril managed to say, ‘The tender’s been awarded.’

  ‘Oh, really? Who to?’

  ‘Experienced workers,’ Stacey said.

  ‘You mean the ferals? They work for C. & P. Water, don’t they, Cyril? You’ve given the tender to yourself ?’

  ‘Gosh,’ Kev said. ‘Weren’t they the ones who stuffed them up in the first place?’

  The office filled with ‘Oh my goodness’ and ‘That’s not very smart’ and ‘I wonder if they’ll get a raise’ and Sam started asking Cyril really curly questions about the new pumps and meters and their maintenance needs, the high-end weather parts and durability in pH or salinity ranges, if the meter could read muddy water accurately, if the coils in the sensor were resin-lined to stop rust (or had he messed that up too?), but most importantly, would the meters be properly installed this time? Cyril nodded, dabbing his raw, shredded face with a bloody hanky.

  When the mob finally dribbled out of the office, Bennett came out of hiding. ‘They sound scarier than they are,’ he said, and fled.

  o0o

  Pam Horrick was bootscooting in her shed, so Cyril left her with her music and used the calculator on his phone to confirm his figures again. If he could just sell another dozen pumps he’d break even and his wife could stomp, slide and clap all the way from one end of the shed to the other without boxes to obstruct her. He’d get a pretty bloody good boost to the little retirement nest egg and a nice website spruiking him as a ‘consultant’. Bennett Mockett would hire him. He looked to the sky – ‘Please, God?’ – and was disappointed to see foliage regeneration in the sparse canopy of the kurrajongs. If bloody flowers were bursting across the land the irrigators would get all hopeful and hold off selling water to see how the recent rain would affect quotas. His phone rang. It was Glenys Dingle.

  ‘Top of the morning to you, Glenys,’ he tried to say, using his best Irish accent. Blood oozed again from his lips and into his mouth.

  ‘You’re not at the top of anything. You’re deep at the bottom of a shit pit. Be in my office this afternoon with a full explanation for everything, alright?’

  Blood dribbled onto his tie.

  o0o

  Jasey was scanning Mandy’s cake mix and dried fruits when she decided to chuck iron filings into the enemy engine that was Mandy. ‘So, off to the pub for Christmas?’

  ‘No, it’s at my place this year.’

  Jasey leaned over the counter and looked at the floor beside Mandy’s feet. ‘Didn’t bring your own bag? Have one of ours for twenty cents.’

  ‘I’m cooking a traditional Christmas lunch for my husband and extended family, and I have my own bag.’ Mandy handed Jasey a used plastic bag from the Riverglen supermarket.

  Jasey ignored the bag. ‘Isobel told me she’d booked a table at the pub. It’s going to be a good day. I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘We won’t bother – it’ll be too hot for Callum.’

  ‘I see,’ Jasey said, making it clear that she understood exactly. ‘If you bring your own bag you have to pack your own groceries. That’ll be twenty-six dollars fifty.’

  It was humiliating. They had not told her about Neralie (even though she knew) and now everyone knew she’d been excluded from the Bishop–Prestwich Christmas celebration. For five years she’d wanted people to see that she was part of that family, in it, attending nice gatherings with her husband. She’d have loved to post photos on social media, everyone in paper hats over a feast, champagne and smiles. All she ever got to do was ride out to the cemetery and stand by the heap of gravel that was her grandmother’s grave and shout, ‘Guess who I married?’

  Her phone beeped. She didn’t recognise the number. The text message read: Have booked table at pub for all for Christmas lunch. Expect to see you about 12.30. Digby Prestwich. Ho ho ho.

  ‘Well,’ she said triumphantly, ‘seems we’re having Christmas together after all, the whole family.’

  ‘Me and you and everybody and the McIntosh family,’ said Jasey.

  Mandy fought an urge to punch Jasey’s round, lipless face.

  22.

  Date number two

  The next day, the regulars watched Neralie, Jasey and Lana rub away at scratchie tickets, the small table rocking and the sound of scratching filling the pub silence. They let their coins drop, one by one, and looked sullenly at the small mound of discarded tickets in front of them.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The regulars moved their focus back to the silent TV.

  ‘Wait – three two thousands, I got!’

&nb
sp; The regulars drained their beers in anticipation as Jasey grabbed Lana’s tickets and studied the numbers. ‘No, you didn’t, you got two two thousands and one twenty thousand.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The girls swapped piles and checked each other’s tickets again anyway.

  o0o

  Upstairs, Stacey watched his reflection in the wardrobe mirror as he completed another fifty bent-over rows with cumulative eight-kilogram weights on his barbell. Then he attached his ankle weights and did some pull-ups using a bar fitted across his doorway. He finished off his session with some flexing in front of the mirror before taking a quick shower and getting himself spruced up for the afternoon. He found he was ready far too early so sat down and tried not to think of the meters or the water mess he was hoping would evaporate.

  Lana was a Holden girl, he was a Ford man, specifically a 290 HP 3.5-litre V6, red or possibly midnight blue, though dark colours showed the dirt . . . What he really wanted was a Mustang, and Lana sitting next to him with her big blue eyes and her fine legs. But if he showed up with an imported car when people were already suspicious, and if Lana found out . . . He took one last look at himself, checked the condom was in his back pocket and that his hair was brushed over his temples so as to conceal the fact that it was receding, then bounded down the stairs into the quiet bar. At the bottom, he met Neralie. She looked trim and compact in short slacks, a light sweater and strappy sandals. He found her appealing, though she didn’t really wear make-up or do girly things with her hair or anything.

  She handed him the picnic basket. ‘On a day like this you gotta love a picnic, eh?’

  ‘Sure do,’ he said, and continued on his happy way.

  He collected Lana from the bar, waited while goodbyes were said to Jasey, then took her hand. ‘You look pretty. You should wear a dress more often.’