This Red Earth Page 4

  Jim says: ‘Come on, for your twenty-first.’

  I laugh: I had my first beer here at seventeen. ‘Just thought I might catch Dad. I’ll see him at home.’

  ‘Home?’ Jim raises his elbow off the bar and comes over to me at the door, a look on his face saying Hang on a minute before his mouth is telling me: ‘But your dad’s up at Brewarrina.’

  ‘Oh? What’s he doing there?’ I’m more disappointed than surprised. Dad never stops working. I’ll see him tomorrow then, because that’s when he’s expecting me.

  But Jim is saying: ‘Tank-sinking, I think he said, left more than a week ago.’ He looks at me as if to say You really don’t know, do you. I shake my head No idea, and he tells me: ‘Said his back was a bit crook and so he was taking other work for a spell.’

  That doesn’t make sense, and not only because excavating earthen dams is not spell work, not work you would want to do with a crook back or otherwise, leading a team of heavy plodders back and forth across the dirt with a plough and grader, for days, or weeks on end, and with summer coming on. But still I say to Jim: ‘So he’s meeting up with us at Coolabah on Thursday?’

  ‘No. He told me to scratch him till further notice.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, but there’s a look between us that says there’s something not quite right about this, and then a different concern from Jim, a more important one for him.

  ‘Don’t you start thinking about letting me down too, Gordie. I’ve got two young chaffers on this Coolabah team – where these blokes get their tickets from, I don’t know.’

  I do: their dads making them go shearing to get out of national service, and hopefully stay there, in a protected occupation. Jim would know that too of course, but I don’t want to chat about it right now. I tell him: ‘I won’t let you down. But I’d better be going or I’ll fall down. Probably see you tomorrow for tea, yeah?’

  ‘All right, Gordie,’ Jim tips his hat back with the rim of his glass to watch me leave. I can feel my gait is slow, creaking so as you could probably hear me coming: I didn’t bank on the ride being this hard on my arse.

  ‘You come from Sydney on that thing?’ Jim laughs.

  I don’t turn back as I say, ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she,’ mostly because my neck is stiff too.

  ‘Gunner Did,’ he calls above her engine, ‘you might be clever, but you’ve got a roo loose.’

  In my top paddock. I probably do: that was quite a ride, and I am dangerously sleepy now. I can only just wave hooroo. There’s an inviting smell of mixed grill coming from the new Greek milk bar across Pangee Street, the California Cafe, and the light’s still on there, too. But as much as I can taste their American Beauty butter­; scotch whirl from here, I know I’d probably only pass out in it. I keep my eyes on what I can see of the road out of town, keep awake looking for actual roos. I’ve got to get home. Why didn’t Dad tell me what he’s up to?

  It’s not far out to our property, if it can be called much of a one. Still Waiting, she’s actually called: waiting for the flood that never comes. She sits on just enough of an elevation on this side of the Overflow, just far enough from the Bogan River to the west and Gunningbar Creek to the east to keep her perpetually in drought. As I see the first of her fence posts now I remind myself that Dad never did a walk-off from any of it. He stood his ground with the bank each time he defaulted, daring them to kick him off, and they never came either, that’s how decent this land is. But he paid off the debt all the same. That’s who Dad is. Tough as fencing wire. And he hasn’t done a walk-off now. He’ll be back from Brewarrina tomorrow and he’ll tell me what’s gone on then. He’s sent me a note last week and it’s missed me. That’s probably what’s occurred.

  The sun is beginning to set directly behind our house when I see it, the pitched roof and verandah posts in shadow against the sky that’s turned to copper plate in the dusk. Copper. That’s what’s in this land, and might’ve given Dad’s life a different story if the government was interested in it. There’s little diggings all over the place, made by the Chinese and which I mapped out last summer. There’s also what I think might be an old ochre pit at Blackie’s Camp, on the Crown land just beyond our northern boundary, but no one’s interested in that either, not even Professor Richardson, and Blackie’s no longer here to tell anyone about it anyway. No one’s here. Moved off, or moved on, left a pile of stones for an unmarked prospector’s grave. As I pull up at the gate, the wind picks up and makes a sound like a shiver, reminding me that when I was little I used to think that sound was the sound of the land, I used to think that rocks could really speak. I was probably that desperate for company at times. Now, it’s just the drop in temperature and the lack of Dad’s ute out the front, the lack of Tess our kelpie barking hello.

  I can’t get through the gate and across the verandah quick enough to get the lamp on, and when I do I push open the door and see that everything is as it should be. Always as it is with Dad: everything neat and tidy and in its place, ready to pack up when the work is on. I smile as I feel the weight of the lamp in my hand: he would have topped up the kero for me before he left. I light the big lamp on the table by the hearth, that lights the whole place, which isn’t difficult: it’s only one room. Dad’s bed is on the far side, sheet regulation-folded over the blanket, corners as square as the joinery of the loft above it: where my bed is. Cup of tea first. I could murder a cup of tea. I get the fire on and find that the billy is full. Of course it is, just as Dad has the handles of the four cups on the dresser standing at exactly forty-five degree angles.

  It’s not until I’m pouring the brew into one of them that I see the note on the table, sticking out from under the base of the lamp:

  Dear Gordon

  I am sorry that I am not around to meet you but I had to get away to work. I wanted to congratulate you in person on finishing your university degree but I’ll just have to write ‘well done’ here for now.

  All the best,

  Dad

  PS here is £10 in case you need it

  Ten pounds it is, folded under the base of the lamp. It’s too much money: more than I could spend till my own pay starts. A warning bell is ringing quietly in my head: this is not right. Dad is a man of few words, but the ones he speaks are always clear and true. This is as clear as mud. All the best? Pip pip cheerio, that’s not Dad. This note should state when he expects to be back from Brewarrina. It gives me the shivers enough that I check to see that my rifle is by the door. It is, where it should be. And so is Dad’s, next to mine. We’ll go rabbiting tomorrow at dusk and I won’t remember what I was worried about.

  But before I can worry some more about why Dad decided not to take his rifle up there, I have to eat something myself. I’ve got a headache coming on from not eating since Dubbo, and now I’m too far past it to even open a can, so I check the biscuit tin first, and find a whole fruitcake. This is good, and reassuring for two reasons: I know Dad’s left it for me – a lone, unnoted fruitcake is permission for me to eat the whole thing – and it indicates that Dad continues to be looked after by the Country Women’s Association, who regularly provide him with cakes and slices of all kinds when he’s home. CWA special charity: he might be cranky and old before his time, but he’s a good-looking bloke. They took it in turns to look after me when I was a baby. This is Mrs Wells’s fruitcake, I can tell from the amount of peel. But as I tuck in, a heaviness drops over my shoulders, and it’s not just tiredness. There’s a good reason why the women of this district have a soft spot for Dad. I don’t know much about her, my mother, other than that she was a nurse, from Bourke, her name was Caroline and they met in Bathurst when he was discharged from the army, and that’s who I get my brains from. That’s always seemed enough to know about the tragedy. But tonight … the loneliness of Still Waiting is …

  What’s happened to Dad?

  Nothing’s happened. Dad’s tank-sinking in Brewarrina for a spell. And, as he would say, worrying about things you can’t change is about as
useful as kicking a dead dog backwards up a hill. I’m just disappointed he’s not here. Crawl up into bed and go to sleep.

  BERNIE

  ‘Smile, Miss Cooper,’ the photographer says and I paste one on. ‘As if you’ve just seen a handsome surfer walking up the beach towards you. That’s it. Great shot.’ Flash. Smile. Flash. ‘Come on, Miss Cooper.’

  Sorry, not coming easily to me, not even picturing the way Rock flicks the saltwater from his hair when he emerges out the back of a wave, not even for this photographer who’s quite a dish himself. It’s half-past eight after a sleepless night and I don’t want to be too late to my desk in at work, don’t want Count Heany’s disapproving grimace, that I’ve been up to something frivolous. Even if I’m technically at work right now, hanging about in a swimsuit getting sensationally programmed does seem at odds with … just about everything.

  Dad hasn’t enlisted, as it turns out, and he’s not abandoning his building society payments either – he’s been blooping commissioned is what’s happened. Captain Cooper. I can’t believe it. He’s put himself on extended leave from the garage, given Mum a list of customers to write special letters to in her neat hand, and he’s going to Ingleburn tomorrow, wherever that is, some paddock on the edge of the far-flung suburbs. He’s going to live there. He’s going to train recruits. They’re building a barracks; only thirty miles away but it might as well be on the moon. He’ll be home every second weekend.

  How could I morally say no? he said gently into Mum’s inevitable defeat on the back steps. Can’t have these lads going off without knowing what they’re in for. The inference being that he and his company had to work it out for themselves last time. And I won’t be going anywhere myself, nowhere further than Ingleburn. I’m to train them, Peg, that’s all. Mum’s response was entirely lacking in hysteria: The army will do with you what they like and you know it, Bill. But then she kissed him on the top of his head, in the middle of his bald spot, a tenderness that surprised me, stupidly, with the idea that she was a woman before she became my mother, that she really was Peggy Doyle who went all the way to Melbourne by herself to meet Bill Cooper off the troopship, true as the six-month gap between their wedding and my birth is a secret more tightly guarded than her recipe for treacle pud. A young woman braver than me. True as Dad’s conviction that he is doing the right and only thing now, again, for better or worse, for the benefit of others, for these lads, for Mum, for me, to protect everything he’s worked so hard for, and so the least I can do is –

  ‘Smile, Miss Cooper.’

  And studiously apply myself to a reconsideration of my options. My choices. The foggy depths of selfishness I’ve sunk to lately. All my parents want is for me to be happy. For me to marry Rock. How can I morally say no?

  ‘Come on, Miss Cooper. You still asleep?’

  GORDON

  ‘Sheep!’

  I quickly hate them. I dream of sheep, twenty-four hours a day, six days a week and all day Sunday. After one week and two days here at Yarranbulla Station, they are the enemy. I don’t know how Dad has done this for twenty years and more. This is my third year, very part-time, and my last, and I am a psychopath already. The ewe I take now between my knees kicks up and gets me below the belt struggling. I take it personally. I look her in the eye and say to her: ‘Do that again and I will clip it right off.’ Then I nick her on the hock and have to call the broomie for tar and I’m shame-faced for hurting her. Not that I have time to go and join the RSPCA about it. I’m too busy calling: ‘Sheep!’

  ‘Only ten minutes to smoko, mate,’ says this bloke called Rennicks in the stand next to mine, and he’s said it as if I might need a rest.

  I ignore him and pull another ewe from my pen. I don’t know him. He’s come up the Long Paddock from Deniliquin or somewhere, don’t care – I don’t know anyone in this eight Jim’s put together, all of us oddly enough around about twenty-one – but this Rennicks seems to be sure that I’m some silvertail. As if someone with an education avoiding national service is somehow different from anyone else doing it. He’s sure of himself: thinks he is ringer of this shed. Pig’s arse he is. This is my shed. This is what shearing does to an otherwise rational man. I will kill myself before Rennicks catches my tally again, and it’s got nothing to do with the money, even if I am almost doubling what I banked on at this present rate. I will also continue to let Rennicks think what he likes of me; give him a look now and again, as Dad would do, and say nothing. Leave him to wonder if I might be a silvertail, or a psychopath.

  He decides to have another go at provoking me, nodding out towards the homestead. ‘What do you reckon of the cocky’s little sheila, eh? Reckon she’d want some of this for smoko?’

  He’s butting his equipment into the back of his ewe’s head and referring to the grazier’s daughter. Her name is Jennifer Fitzgerald. I taught her her seven times tables on that big verandah over there when I was ten and she was eight, and her father is no cocky, he’s one of the most respected graziers in the district, and a good bloke. So now I lose what little cool I have, and react: ‘Yeah, I reckon. I reckon she would – if you bent over backwards and ate your own shit.’

  As Jim yells out, ‘Duckie!’ from the wool room, to warn of a female approaching the shed. Too late.

  Rennicks has just blown off with some language even I don’t like to hear, with Jenny Fitzgerald’s boots just about under his nose. But she couldn’t be less interested. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ she says. ‘Gordon, I need to speak to you please – outside.’

  I’d be pleased at that little run of events if it wasn’t for the look on her face.

  She touches my arm. Bites her lip. Before she says anything I know it’s news of Dad, and it’s not good.

  She says: ‘Someone’s been found on the Darling.’ She doesn’t mean swimming. On the Darling River. That comes out of Brewarrina. ‘There’s a policeman up at the house, a constable from Bourke, wants to ask you some questions.’

  I can’t think anything or see anything or breathe again until I hear this constable ask: ‘He’s a slim man, your father? About six foot three?’

  And I answer: ‘No, no.’ Christ no, thank Christ no. ‘He’s built like a bull. And he’s five eleven.’ A full inch shorter than me.

  It’s not him. I might be able to think something about relief when the adrenalin in me dissipates.

  As it does, I have an uncomfortable cup of tea with Jenny and this constable on the verandah, shame-faced that I’ve wasted this bloke’s time, embarrassed now that I put the word out with Sergeant Brant before I left Nyngan that Dad might be … I didn’t know what to say and Sergeant Brant finished my question with the words Not too good? I said I didn’t know, just that something didn’t seem right, and Sergeant Brant nodded as if he might know. No one knows, though, and I’m wondering if that’s the way Dad wants it. He knows exactly where I am – he made my engagements for me with Jim. Whatever is keeping him away, stopping him from giving me word, it will be a good reason. I’m just … I just want to know when he’ll be back. I’m starting to get cranky with him.

  ‘Gordon? Have you listened to a word I’ve said?’

  Jenny is standing there with the teapot, the constable has gone on his way; I say, shame-faced again: ‘No. Sorry.’

  She smiles, understanding. I look at her, properly. Geez, she’s got pretty, her hair seems blonder, big blonde curls, and her eyebrows look different. She arches one of them. ‘I said maybe he’s just gone bush.’

  I have thought of that among the million possibilities, but: ‘Why would he?’

  ‘A man doesn’t seem to need a reason at the moment to do anything,’ she says, pouring me another cup. ‘Mr Collins, from the bank, has packed it in to go trapping, and Mr Leighton, that Victor Oil man, has gone off to Dubbo to set up as a florist. Haven’t seen Mr Harrington at the post office for two months now and not a word about it. You know what they all have in common?’

  Not immediately, no.

  ‘They’re al
l ex-servicemen,’ she says. ‘It’s a bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  That makes a lot of sense. That could be a reason for Dad to have gone bush too. I am safely set up, and he doesn’t want to know about this war. I have no idea if this is the truth, but I’ve settled on it already, even if it remains so at odds with his character it’s unbelievable. There are plenty of swaggies who’ve been waltzing Matilda permanently since the last war. Dad’s gone bush and he’s not in Brewarrina, is he, not in Bourke either. Not some poor bastard fallen dead drunk in the river. I look west, across two thousand miles of nowhere that doesn’t vary too much till it falls into the sea. He could be anywhere.

  I hear the bell go for the end of the last run in the shed. I’ve just lost two whole hours without knowing where they went, and I say to Jenny: ‘I think you might be right. Want to go into Nyngan this arvo? To the pictures?’ It’s Saturday and I want an excuse not to have to suffer Rennicks up at the pub in Coolabah as much as apologise to Jenny for not being quite all here.

  She tries not to look too thrilled at the idea as she says, ‘I suppose so,’ and so does Mrs Fitzgerald when she hands me the key to Mr Fitzgerald’s ute. He’s out mustering on his cousin’s property and she’s got us married in his absence. Don’t worry, though, Mr Fitz, that’s never going to happen.

  It would be logical if it did happen, Jenny and me, I think as I tidy myself up for her. Geologists don’t know how to be boring next to graziers. Imagine marrying a bloke who only ever talks about the weather and sheep, now and again breaking from that to chat about dogs, or the cricket or the rugby, depending on the season. And Jenny wouldn’t mind marrying a bloke who’ll be away for long stretches: that’s what she’s expecting. When I come up to the house and see her again, waiting for me on the verandah with her cardigan over her arm, geez, I think, she really has got pretty. But it can’t happen, and not only because her father would be expecting her to marry a grazier: wouldn’t matter if he was illiterate so long as he had good water.