by Rosalie Ham
‘Because you didn’t give us adequate or correct instructions.’ The dusty man waved his long, grubby finger at Cyril. ‘We are not surprised, man, nor are we disappointed. You use water for the accumulation of wealth, and that generates corruption for power. You use the most important thing that supports life to exploit people. Like Queequeg, we cast the runes and the runes, man, they’ve come back in the shape of the destructive capitalist system.’
The bloke behind, who had a third eye, said, ‘Your system unfairly concentrates power, wealth and profit among that small segment of society that controls capital and it also gets its wealth through exploitation and maintains it through corruption. And politics.’
Earlobe man poked Cyril in the chest. ‘And no one’s going to leave a casket for you to float on when the destructive capitalist system comes back for you, and that’s as sure as whales are big, man,’ and, like krill from a whale, they scattered to their wheeled hovels.
He didn’t fully understand what the hippies had said about ‘ruins’, but Stacey was more unsettled than he’d ever been and he knew for sure he was part of something with far more reach than he’d realised. He had not dedicated enough thought to this topic, it was clear, but instinct told him he no longer wanted to trade water.
Cyril said, ‘Jesus, what a scruffy-looking lot. They’d better stay home the night of the cull,’ and Pam sprayed antiseptic air freshener all around the porch and vestibule.
Then Cyril put his hand on his crestfallen accomplice’s shoulder. ‘Not a problem, young Stacey, not a problem at all.’
Stacey felt grubby. He needed to change his shirt and brush his teeth. Suddenly he longed for his corner at the Bong and Lana with the lovely smile.
Pam picked up the puppies and told Cyril he’d have to get his own dinner.
o0o
Mitch went to the laundry and retrieved the gun from the safe. He grabbed his swag and half-a-dozen beers and headed back to Cleopatra. She was folded on her legs with her nose in the dust, singing a low and guttural song of grief. Her furry body was juddering with anguish, so Mitch sat with her, and she was quiet. He opened a beer and sighed, but then her long, cruel heehaws recommenced, flooding the air with anguish, barbed wire in his soul, and the farm dogs started yelping and bouncing about on their chains. Nearby, sheep huddled together behind logs in the furthest corner. At times the noise died to a long, eerie keening and the air over the paddocks was quiet, but then Cleo regathered herself and resumed her loud squealing and honking. By nightfall Mitch was irritable and exhausted and could only imagine how the Jeongs were coping, but he rolled out his swag and stretched out next to his grieving donkey and closed his eyes.
24.
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve arrived bright, and sunrise told Mitch it would be hot. Tink was sitting on top of the hill, alert to the world, fire-edged by the rising sun, and beside him Cleo slumped against the hill where her dead brother rested, whimpering. ‘Cleo,’ Mitch said, ‘sleeping with you is like sleeping with a church organ on Sunday.’ He patted her white belly, rude to the world, rubbed her furry cheek and tickled her nostrils, blowing small bare patches into the dirt. She closed her eyes.
He tried to get his jenny to stand. She would not move. She just cried for her brother like she was being sliced in half. The farm dogs responded with long bandsaw howls that made the hairs on Mitch’s arms stand up.
‘You are an exceptional donkey, you were good at your job, loyal and idiosyncratic, and I have always loved you and I always, always will.’ He loaded the gun, nestled the butt against his clavicle, closed one eye and steadied the crosshairs on the whorl, like the crown on a baby’s downy head, just above the beloved eyes of his jenny. Mitch’s donkey ceased whimpering, sat up on her haunches and her ears rose to right angles. She looked directly at her human friend and he imagined she saw from the long, convex pupil of her round, wet eye a gun barrel, huge, hollow and black, and at the far end of it a small person, all elbows, shaking and bawling, like herself, with grief. He decided she might just come good. He lowered the gun and reached for a can of beer.
o0o
The text from Mitch said: I need to see you.
As she left the bar, Neralie yelled, ‘LEVON!’
Upstairs, she applied lipstick and pulled the brush through her hair, then rubbed most of the lipstick off. She grabbed a handful of tissues as she stepped into her sandals. At the door she caught a glimpse of her reflection and decided to change, then remembered it was all about Mitch and his donkeys, and left.
o0o
Mandy’s attention was captured by the sound of a throaty engine travelling too quickly, then suddenly braking. A black 2010 Audi RS Coupe did a quick U-turn and swung into the kerb at the Bong. A well-groomed chap in a pair of dark skinny-legged pants and a long-sleeved black shirt got out and stretched. He pointed his keys at the car and a loud boink slapped up and down the street. Definitely a city person. He vanished into the pub.
Over the road, Jasey was watching the smooth black-clad visitor too, her phone at her ear, and opposite, Kevin was standing between his bowsers, scrutinising the Audi.
Three barflies sat benignly at the counter looking at the blow-in. One smiled at the stranger, his teeth tiny and low in his gums. ‘Get you a beer?’
While the stranger sized up the beer taps, the smart decor and the pool table, a derelict bloke went behind the bar, poured a cold glass of amber liquid and put it in front of Beau. ‘How was your trip?’
He sipped his beer. ‘Long.’
‘You wouldn’t be here if you only took a short trip.’
Another barfly asked how things were in Sydney.
Beau looked around to see if there was someone normal. Then a short square woman in activewear entered the bar. She didn’t seem to think it odd that no one was there to serve; she just sat on a stool and smiled at him. ‘You from Sydney?’
He frowned, put his beer on the counter and looked to the nearest exit. The barfly poured the woman a very big glass of red wine.
‘You won’t get anyone to service that car of yours around here.’
‘Right.’
‘She’ll be down soon,’ the barfly said, and pointed to a door that led to a stairwell and the kitchen.
‘Has to be,’ the other one said. ‘What goes up . . .’
And the other one said, ‘. . . must come down,’ and then she was standing there in the doorway by the stairs, holding a basket spilling over with lettuce, carrots and apples. She was the only girlfriend he’d ever had who wore shorts, and her lips were painted red. ‘Babe,’ he said. ‘Happy Christmas!’
The barflies cried, ‘Sur-prise!’
Neralie said, ‘I’m on my way out, actually.’
Beau sculled his beer and looked up. ‘Let’s go.’
But Neralie said, ‘It’s not something you’d enjoy. You see . . . there’s been a death.’
Beau looked at the basket of produce, put his keys back down on the bar. ‘I’ll wait here.’
The short square woman said, ‘She’s off to see her boyfriend, who is actually my husband.’
Neralie walked towards the woman in activewear and pointed a finger in her face. ‘I am off to support an old friend who is upset!’
The squat woman said, ‘I wouldn’t bother with apples for Cleopatra, I’d just shoot her if I was you.’
Beau put his beer down. ‘Steady . . .’
‘If anyone deserves shooting it’s you.’ Neralie turned to Beau. ‘We’ve got water restrictions here. You can’t take long showers.’
Beau watched her run to the ute and the woman said, ‘I’m Mandy Bishop, and you are?’
Jasey and Lana burst through the pub door and began talking loudly and cheerfully to Beau, and then Levon arrived to pour drinks and they laughed about that time at the Spanish restaurant in Sydney when Jasey had complained that he
r soup was cold, but the wine was hot! And Mandy was left sitting at the bar, looking at the back of Beau’s creased shirt.
o0o
The twelve-kilometre drive along the supply channel road through the dull flat landscape to Mitch took longer than it ever had. Neralie felt the pity of everything and wondered why it was so hard, so sad, when it should have been a straightforward thing to settle down and lead an uncomplicated life with Mitch and familiar people who cared about her pub.
He was sitting on the ground with Cleopatra, and neither of them looked up at her as she approached. Beside them a drum was full to the brim with fresh water; the hay, lucerne and oats were fresh too, but the carrots were limp and soft. Ants devoured the apples. Neralie held out a fresh apple but Cleo kept her big brown eyes on the dirt at the end of her furry nose.
Mitch stroked her ears. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Yes, you do, you just don’t want to do it.’
‘But what if she comes good? Do you think I should get another donkey to keep her company?’
‘What would you do if they gave you someone to replace Isobel?’ Neralie sat down on the ground in front of Cleopatra and stroked the donkey’s thick fringe, and ran her fingers across the warm, moist muzzle. She offered Cleo the apple again. ‘Please, it’ll make you feel better.’ Cleo moved her nose away and her long eyelashes closed over her eyes.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘It’d be like shooting Cal.’
‘Mitch, she’s pining, she’s not eating or drinking, it’ll kill her, you know that.’
He did know; there was only a slim chance she’d forget her brother, her twin.
‘She’s suffering.’ Neralie picked up the gun, checked the chamber, wiping away tears.
Mitch got to his feet, ‘You don’t have to . . .’ But she aimed, called, ‘I’m sorry!’ The shot whacked over the soft green paddock and Cleopatra settled sideways with a moan and was still. Neralie put the gun down, dropped to her knees and stroked Cleo’s perfect chamois eyelids and long, straight lashes, and the blades of grass around them shifted and flickered as insects scurried away.
o0o
In his room, Callum, octogenarian, was roused from his doze by the sound of a gunshot. Then the dogs yowling and then dead silence. ‘Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies a lass unparallel’d,’ he said, and as the air and the house eased in the calm, Callum felt the nosy hand of old age take hold of his left arm and squeeze. The blood vessels winced and the dull ache thickened and travelled to sit on his chest like an anvil. He arranged himself in case he didn’t wake again and tried to think of what he hadn’t said that he should have. Then his thoughts went to his wife, the lass he married and had lived with for all those years in partnership and love, working away at mutual happiness and succeeding, largely. He thought of his little girl, now a strong, capable and lovely person despite, or perhaps because of, her dill of a husband, and he wished his son had found what he’d had, wished his son was happy, wished that he’d bought more land when given the chance, but he’d been preoccupied with his wife’s illness. ‘Nonetheless,’ he said, ‘you failed in that regard . . . and now see what’s happened.’
o0o
Mandy Bishop left the bar and headed to her newsagency. Neralie McIntosh had no right to come back here when she had a perfectly good boyfriend in Sydney. That was two-timing. How dare she? They all did it – Kev and Jasey and Lana – yet they called her Bicycle Mandy! And he – the beau – was unfriendly. All she did was tell the truth. And then those bitches turned up, as usual, to ruin everything. Mandy turned and walked back to the pub, marched through the bar and straight up the stairs.
In room nine, Stacey was resting on his Bodybuild Olympic Utility Bench, sweating, trying to catch his breath, pondering Christmas with his parents, his siblings and all their screaming shit machines, and regretting the fact that he never got to root Lana. Why hadn’t she shown up at his room by now, just marched in, dropping her dress as she came towards him and flinging her G-string aside . . . Then the door opened and Mandy was standing there, her running shoes dangling from her hand. ‘Not going home for Chrissy?’
‘Heading home shortly, just got a few things to fix up.’
She dropped her shoes. ‘I could do with a bit of fixing up.’
‘No, look, I’ve got one more date with Lana –’
‘Lana’s not going to root you, you’re a thieving water trader, everyone knows that. If she slept with you she’d be betraying five hundred people. Besides, there’s a new bloke in town. A Sydney bloke.’
‘Really?’
‘You’re attractive, but you’re not so attractive that she wants to lose her family and her friends.’ She leaned down and lifted the elastic waistband of his exercise shorts, and he sighed . . .
Afterwards, Mandy and Stacey stayed glued together, Mandy straddling him on the utility bench and clutching a barbell on the upright rack system, and Stacey facing the truth. He was a water trader and thief and Lana definitely wouldn’t sleep with him now. ‘Happy Christmas,’ Mandy gasped.
Stacey said, ‘Christ, I needed that.’
‘Me too . . . let’s do it again.’
‘I thought you had your husband under control?’
‘I do.’
‘Tell him to back off, tell him to stop sending letters and emails to Glenys and the directors and the minister, tell him I’ll sort the upgrade for him, I’ll get him funds to subsidise a sprinkler irrigator, just stop the harassment. I’ll do it sooner than you think, but no one needs to know my part in it, alright? No one.’
She smiled, shifted a little on top of him.
‘Tell him, won’t you?’
‘I might,’ she said, grinding a little more.
Stacey thought about Glenys. I’ll see you all charged with theft, corruption, embezzlement and environmental vandalism and anything else I can find in your shed. Bennett Mockett’s career would be ruined as well. ‘Just tell him he can have a new horizontal sprinkler system, fifty spans if he wants, as long as he keeps the channel. Otherwise a lot of people are going to get hurt.’
‘His debts could ruin him any second, his crop failed and his best friends are dead or dying and he wants the barmaid . . . and her old boyfriend has just arrived in town. I’ll let Mitch have the barmaid if he keeps the channel, and I’ll be happy because you’ll let him have Esther’s water and he’ll still have his own water so the farm’ll be worth lots and lots more money and I’ll take as much of it as I can get.’ Then she smiled, and leaned down to him. ‘I might even try to take some of his water if I can, sell it to you . . . and Glenys Dingle.’
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You sure are something, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sick of being nothing.’ She moved on top of him again.
Much later, Mandy left Stacey snoring gently and stepped out of his room to find the pub a ghostly hollow of stairwells and rooms. Pockets of old air – pub food and stale beer – hovered. The bedroom doors were shut and the place was silent. She crept down the stairs and was drawn to the glow from the main bar. The fridges lit the room, making the bottles shine prettily. It was entirely without activity and its stark emptiness surprised her. She was walking quietly towards the back door when a burst from the cool-room fan startled her. She stepped into the dark and humming kitchen and the smell of garlic, the deep fryer and disinfectant. Small switches illuminated the edges and surfaces. The stove still radiated heat and large pots waited on the hob. Puddings hung in the corner. Christmas.
25.
Peace, harmony and goodwill to all
On the drive from her riverfront house to the Bong early on Christmas morning, Elsie noted the storm clouds swelling on the eastern horizon. Sharp sunrays pierced the dark clouds and faint flashes of lightning glittered. It was hot and oppressive. ‘Cabalistic,’ she said, remembering the clue for the
crossword. ‘Relating to or associated with mystical interpretation; occult; having secret or hidden meaning.’ Only rain would break the muggy tension.
In her sparkling kitchen she turned the air conditioner on, then the radio, and tied a fresh apron around her waist. She fired up the gas ovens, filled the pots with water and put them on to simmer for the puddings. She washed her hands and gazed at her list as she dried them and went to the cool room to get the pork for salting. She found the spring-loaded catch resting on its latch, holding the door ajar. In the cool room the air was humid and thick with the odour of tepid meat and fermenting trifles. Small drops of condensation pooled in the plastic covering food and the walls and the doors were slimy. The oysters and prawns stank, the yabbies and the redfin were off, the pork was sweaty and the turkey sticky. The milk, stacked in sturdy crates, was still cool to her touch but the cream on the trifles smelled of ripe butter. Three obese drunken flies tilted at the dead light globe.
The screaming woke Neralie, and Neralie’s screams in turn drew Elsie from her rank and contaminated kitchen. She found Neralie standing at the top of the staircase, watching a trickle of water spilling down the steps into the bar. The dining area was flooded. Levon emerged from his room clutching a sheet, took in the situation and stepped into the bathroom. A moment later he emerged with the bath plug in his dripping hand. Beau appeared, neat in his monogrammed kimono. He looked down at his wet feet and rubbed his eyes. Neralie was glaring at him, so Levon said, ‘It wasn’t him, Nelly.’
The water had escaped under the front door and trickled down into the cellar, which explained why there was no electricity. The whole pub was shorted out. Elsie phoned Darryl and within twenty minutes he and the electrician had the power reconnected and the fan in the cool room spinning and the bar fridges cooling the boutique beer and Christmas wines. The electrician, dressed as Santa, leaned on the counter drinking tea while around him Neralie, Levon and Darryl waited, stunned. Elsie peeled potatoes, tears dripping.