Incurable

by John Marsden

  It was only a few days since Mr Young had sat in my kitchen and mentioned the magic word ‘agistment’.

  The cheque felt like it was vibrating in my hand. I sat down that night with the notepad and calculator and spent more than ten thousand bucks in half an hour. It was quite exciting. Five thousand dollars to the people we were renting from. That covered the whole month, plus a thousand in back rent, so they’d know I wasn’t trying to rip them off. Three thousand, seven hundred and sixty dollars to the bank to cover a month’s interest. Bills I hadn’t paid yet, from Jack Edgecombe for stock transport, from the DMT for rego of the Toyota, from Larry Whelan for taking out a pine tree that was about to fall on the shearing shed. One thousand, four hundred and thirty-five dollars for those three jobs, and I knew damn well Larry had charged me charity rates. Basically only the rent of the cherry-picker, which wasn’t his. Some blokes’d charge a thousand bucks just for looking at a tree as big as that. But Larry acted like it was a normal job so I swallowed my pride and didn’t say anything.

  I sat there looking at my calculator and notepad. Bingo. Almost all gone. Eighteen hundred bucks left. I’d hoped to reduce the overdraft but there wouldn’t be much left of the eighteen hundred after a month. For Gavin and me merely to exist was incredibly expensive. I spent a moment wondering if it would be possible for anyone just to live, without having to spend money to do it. Why should we have to pay for the privilege of being alive?

  I went back to the notepad. Gavin needed new everything, just about. He wouldn’t stop growing, even though I banged him on the top of the head occasionally, to slow him down. There were a couple of odds and ends I wouldn’t have minded for myself. Wirrawee was changing so fast with all the new people. Where we’d had one clothes shop, now there were four. Where there’d been zero coffee shops (unless you count the bakery, which I don’t) now there were two. Mr Downs, who sold second-hand farm machinery, had been forced to move his yard out to Sherlock Road, and the new bloke who owned the chain-saw repair shop was moving in a few weeks because the rents in Barker Street were so high.

  The new Wirrawee had shops like Main Drag in Barker Street. I’d seen this great top in there. It was pink, not usually my best colour, or my favourite, but I liked this one. It was eighty bucks. Before the war I’d have had every chance of talking Mum into getting it for me. Now? Could I talk myself into getting it for me? Which was more important, me having a new top or reducing the overdraft?

  There was no time to make such big decisions though. Mr Young’s cattle demanded attention from the moment they arrived. I’ve never known such pain-in-the-neck cattle. They had been so well-behaved as we drove them here that I thought they’d be the perfect guests. They’d just eat and put on weight and pay my bills. But I guess they thought that for three thousand dollars a week they were entitled to breakfast on a tray and a story read to them every night. When they didn’t get that they kicked up a fuss. They just wouldn’t settle. And on the fourth night we had a disaster.

  I have to say that we were unlucky with the weather. The forecast was for scattered showers, local thunderstorms, clearing. Minimum 7, maximum 19. Not the kind of day you’d be planning a pool party or a BBQ, but nothing to get excited about. We were out early, Gavin and I, and checked them. I did think they were restless and I knew I really should stay home, but I just couldn’t miss more school. I’d had Tuesday off already, to move these beasts, and Wednesday, to make sure they were OK, then I’d gone to school yesterday. The little man was sitting on my shoulder muttering into my ear: ‘Don’t go, Ellie, leave your buns at home, girl, don’t take your buns to town.’ I just shrugged him off and left him sprawled in the mud. We nearly missed the bus though, while I dithered around wondering what to do, and then when it was time for Gavin to get off he came down the back of the bus and said quietly to me, ‘Those cattle were a bit crazy this morning.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so too,’ I said, wondering why we hadn’t had this conversation back at home.

  He waited for me to say something and all I could do was shrug and say, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do now.’

  The bus came to a halt, shuddering, and there was no more time for conversation. Gavin got off and I was left feeling nervous for the rest of the day. Not that I could necessarily have done anything if I had stayed home. I suppose it just would have been handy to know if trouble was brewing. Our paddocks are quite bushy and these beasts were used to flat and bare. I think they were shocked by things like rabbits and snakes and owls and young wattles that waved at you suddenly when the wind blew strong.

  I could have called in some help, but I’d be a bit embarrassed to do that unless I was certain, and certainty is not a word in the cattle dictionary.

  Anyway, I was keen to get home, and relieved as I cruised through the paddocks on the four-wheeler to see that nothing had happened. The weather was building though: the air was heavier, the grey stuff lower, and in the distance a dark patch of cloud was getting black and angry. This all added up to storm, and I didn’t think a storm was a good idea with these beasts so twitchy.

  I went back to the house, got dinner and talked it over with Gavin. For all that Gavin could be a headache on the scale of a major migraine, it could be quite comforting to have someone to talk things over with. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I don’t think I would have stayed on the property. The loneliness was still pretty severe with Gavin there, because there were so many things we couldn’t talk about. At first his deafness had been a big part of this, but as time had gone on, I’d gotten so used to him that I didn’t notice it any more. The stuff we didn’t talk about was more to do with his age and personality – and sex. Like, he just wasn’t good to talk to when you were having mental struggles about whether you missed Lee so badly that you wanted to scream down the phone at him, ‘Come back, please Lee, I have to see you and feel your strong arms around me again.’ And the same when I was trying to figure out whether I liked Jess or whether she was too overpowering. And Gavin also didn’t show a lot of interest in whether I should buy that pink top at Main Drag.

  Cattle, they were a different matter. Gavin had hardly seen a cow till after the war ended but he was a natural cattleman. What he said about cattle was often pretty smart. He’d never seen a mob of cattle in riot mode – I hadn’t seen it too often myself – but he knew something was wrong with these beasts. I mean I knew it too, but I just thought they were restless, toey. He seemed to know it was something more than that.

  We were a good team, because he had more intuition but I was the one who knew what to do about it. I got the Yamaha and the four-wheeler out and checked the fuel and oil. Told Gavin to find some torches, put in fresh batteries and get us both some warm clothes. Did an extra delivery of hay, which was expensive, but I figured a well-fed steer was a happy steer. They still didn’t feel right though. So I swallowed my pride and rang Homer’s dad, Mr Yannos.

  For once he didn’t bother with the jokes and the questions about my health and life. ‘I’ll send Homer over,’ he said briefly. ‘I’d come myself but someone has to look after the cattle here and George is away.’

  We waited out in the paddock for Homer. I stayed close to the worst offenders. It was dark now but I could pick out some of the ringleaders. They were the sulky ones, who wouldn’t look at you and who poohed their great plops like it was personal. They pawed impatiently at the ground and tossed their heads. Him, with the perfect little white circle on his forehead. Him, with the piggy eyes and tough face. Her, with the roan coat, and her, who looked at you sideways. It was funny how quickly cattle took on their own personalities and funny how quickly you got to know them. I mean, it was deliberate on my part too. My dad had always taught me to notice those cattle in the mob you could use as pointers. Some cattle like to lead, some like to huddle in the middle, some like to dawdle behind, others prefer to be out on the flanks, going along with the crowd but keeping a bit apart. ‘I want to be in charge,’ ‘I don’t want to be n
oticed,’ ‘I want my own space,’ ‘What’s the rush – why is everyone always in such a hurry? And where are we going anyway?’

  I felt more and more justified that I’d called Mr Yannos. Beasts were settling on the cold ground then getting up again a minute later and walking away to another position. I didn’t like that.

  But who knows what sets a mob off? Homer arrived with a list of stories he’d heard: a placcy bag blowing across a paddock; someone walking between a fire and the mob, so that their shadow looked like a giant looming out of the darkness. I added my stories: the clatter of a tank being rolled off the back of a ute; someone shaking out a tarp with a crack of the fabric; a kid screaming suddenly in the middle of hide’n’seek. And of course anything at night was a thousand times worse than anything in daytime. It was the same for humans. I often wondered about that. Why did night-time have that spooky atmosphere? How come it was the time for witches, hobgoblins, vampires, ghosts, cattle stampedes?

  We held a committee meeting at the edge of the mob. Homer was being funny and wanting to pretend that it was like a meeting of Liberation or something. ‘So,’ he said, looking carefully at the closest cattle, who were only a couple of metres away, ‘if our friends decide to go for a picnic, and I think you know who I mean by our friends, and I think you know what I mean by a picnic, then what direction do we think they’ll go?’

  This just confused Gavin but once we’d sorted it out he pointed north and I pointed south.

  ‘Well, that’s very helpful,’ Homer said. ‘Personally I’d say east. Or maybe west.’

  ‘I think they’ll go that way because it’s all open once you get past those trees,’ Gavin said.

  ‘I think they’ll go south, because it’s downhill, plus that’s the way they came in,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ Homer confessed. ‘But Dad said to keep circling them so they’re all together, and to do it all night. But if they calm down we can take it in turns.’

  Thunder growled from the other side of the ranges. Maybe it was coming out of Hell. I had left Marmie in the dog run but I felt guilty because I knew how much she hated thunder.

  ‘Won’t it spook the cattle more having us go round and round them all night?’ I asked.

  ‘This brings me to the good bit. They won’t be spooked because we’ll be singing as we go round and round them all night.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The hills will be alive, Ellie, with the sound of music.’

  ‘They will?’

  ‘I’m not singing,’ Gavin announced.

  Homer turned serious, but only because he knew singing did not come naturally to Gavin and it would be a hard job to persuade him.

  ‘You have to sing, mate. I don’t really mean singing, like the national anthem or something. But you’ve got to make a noise, a steady noise, all the time you’re going around the mob. Just a blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah is fine. The main thing is not to stop. It’s so they know who you are and where you are. These guys are so twitchy that if you come out of the darkness at them with no warning they’ll start running and they won’t stop till they’re in Wirrawee.’

  Gavin was – and I’ve been waiting to use this word ever since I learnt it – nonplussed.

  For a short time I felt like an idiot as we began our circuits. We stuck to the same route and the idea was not to catch up with the person in front or let the person behind catch up with you. I went first and it took me a few minutes to even think of a song. My mind had gone completely blank. But I heard Homer behind me calling quietly, ‘Come on, Ellie, can’t hear you.’

  So in a voice that sounded like a windmill needing urgent maintenance I launched into ‘So Much Water’. And if that wasn’t sad enough I followed up with ‘Revelator’, trying to sound like Gillian Welch. How would she feel, I wondered, if she knew her words were being sung in a paddock ten thousand or so k’s from where she lived, to stop a mob of cattle from rioting?

  Behind me Gavin’s tuneless voice gradually grew in confidence, with a chant that had no connection with any song I’d ever heard, except that I’d heard Gavin chant like that before sometimes, when he was tired or unhappy and he didn’t think I could hear him. And then behind him, fainter because he was further away, Homer launched into the kind of stuff Triple J was playing now that Triple J was back on the air.

  In some situations it might have been quite nice doing this. And there were moments when I felt quite nice doing it. But too much had changed in my life. Since the attack on the house I didn’t feel safe out here in the darkness. I didn’t know if there might be another attack, and if there was, what would happen to me. I didn’t want to die. It dawned on me gradually that the murder of my parents might have taught me something I didn’t properly know about before. Oh of course I’d known about fear and felt fear, known what it was like to be scared. But it hadn’t stopped me. Now I felt in my gut that maybe I had a new fear and it would stop me, it was already stopping me. I kept looking around, not at the cattle, but in the other direction, half expecting something to leap at me out of the shadows. And that something was death. I felt lonely so often nowadays, and being out here was like putting myself in the loneliest situation I could find. Like someone with claustrophobia locking herself into a tea-chest for a few hours.

  The other problem that night was a bit more ordinary, a lot more ordinary, but in the end it kind of drove the first one away. And it was the good old problem that dominated our lives and had done since I was born and would keep doing so forever. Dad said to me once: ‘YouVe got the land and you’ve got the stock and you’ve got the weather, and that’s all there is to farming.’

  I was too young to figure out what the point of this was so I just looked at him blankly and he said, ‘See, all you’ve got to do is know everything there is to know about those three things and you’ve got farming under control.’

  Then I understood that he was being funny – well, as funny as Dad ever got – and that if something can be reduced to one simple word, like ‘weather’, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is simple. A friend of mine had a saying, ‘If you don’t talk about the weather, what else is there to talk about?’ and that’s hilariously amusing, ROFL too, but he was still making a serious point, that country people talk about the weather because it matters to them, it controls them, it is the be-all and end-all of their lives.

  Well, the weather wasn’t simple that night. The thunder rumbled again, and lightning wiggled across the sky in the distance, just a little bolt, but enough to have my skin prickling. The dark sky felt closer and heavier. We all had torches but I didn’t want to waste the batteries so I tried to make do without mine most of the time. A scatter of rain fell across me, then stopped, then started again, this time with more dedication. We were so well organised that as well as torches we had rain jackets. I stopped and unrolled mine and put it on, trying hard not to let it wave around or make a noise in case it sparked the cattle. Looking back I caught a glimpse of Gavin in the light of his torch. He seemed to be doing the same as me.

  The rain got quite enthusiastic. We were just doing personification in English the other day. This rain was having more fun as it went along, and soon it was having a party. I hunched up and kept going, singing louder to make up for the quiet drumming on the dead leaves and the bark of winter. Now I was onto ‘My dad picks the fruit that goes to Cottees . . .’ Perhaps it should have made me sad about my dad but it didn’t.

  The thunder got louder, rolling and rolling. Ten-pin bowling by the Gods? That was Kevin’s theory. I’d never been ten-pin bowling. Forget bowling and pay attention to the cattle, Ellie. All the beasts I could see were on their feet. I moved faster, to head off half-a-dozen who were peeling away for an unknown destination. It was hard to run and sing at the same time but I got to them and turned them. Then, just as they swung reluctantly around, a huge crack went off somewhere to my right, I saw a shower of blue sparks, the ground vibrated, the smell of lightning burnt into my nostrils, and
the cattle were away.

  My first thought was to sprint for the four-wheeler. I wasn’t far from it and without it I’d be useless. But the cattle were surging towards me and they weren’t going to stop. The white faces of the Hereford-crosses stood out but I saw the dark bodies too, and the earth quivered with the accelerating mass of the mob. They would run over me like they were gravel trucks and I was an empty drink carton in the middle of the road.

  As they built up speed the ground and sky shook with their power. I sprinted for a tree on my right. It wasn’t the closest but it would get me nearer to the four-wheeler. I knew if I tripped on a log or a bump in the ground I was dead. I had about two seconds to reach the safety of the white trunk. My God, the speed of a stampeding steer, the speed of a mob. They came at me, they were in my face, but they didn’t see me. Their eyes were fierce and focused. I’d never seen cattle like this. All that breeding we’d done, that thousands of farmers had done over so many generations, all those carefully worked-out bloodlines, so we could get stock with good temperament, all that was gone, and in the primitive world of lightning and thunder the crack of one bolt had fused something ancient in their brains and bodies. They were still accelerating as I raced for the tree. One of them did actually see me and swerved slightly; the others never deviated for a moment, but I flung myself at the tree, feeling the hot breath of the mob wrapping itself around me, and smelling something that wasn’t fear or rage or desperation, that was beyond fear, was something the English language is still trying to find a word for.

  Wow. That was as close as I ever want to be to death, I told myself, panting like mad and for the first time in my life wanting to hug a tree.