I visit her every day. We don’t talk much. Her body begins to recover, but her confidence has leaked like the colour from her face. She tells me that the men had come back for the crockery she didn’t have, and then bashed her in their anger. She doesn’t know why they were so upset, and why anyone would care about plates and cups so much.
Then she goes to stay with her mother.
It’s as if a violent storm has hit, done its damage, and then cleared to a blue sky. The boxes stay in the laundry, and I stay away from them. In the mornings, I drive around the farm, not doing anything, just driving. It rains again, and the grass stays green, even though it usually grows less and less as the weather gets colder. The phone rings a lot, but I hardly ever answer it. Occasionally I drink myself into a stupor, and stay that way for days. Then I spend several days feeling sick and remorseful, recovering. In this way, several weeks pass.
9
I drive into the windmill paddock, and there is a ewe, cast on her side, on the edge of a gully. As I approach I see her, a large woolly sack slumped on the ground. She is dying, and in her last moments is being taunted by five foxes who have already eaten the soft parts of her and the lamb she has just struggled to give birth to. I’ve never seen so many fully grown foxes on one sheep. I am unmoved. I should really be upset. Before, I would have been. I call the dogs back, and they reluctantly obey.
I have always hated foxes, even though I know how stupid it is to hate an animal for the way it behaves. They are the worst of nature: ruthless, opportunistic, adaptable, and, of course, cunning. Autumn is the time when they are the biggest pest, because the vixens have cubs to feed, and I reckon it takes a lot of grasshoppers, crickets, native berries, and roots to keep milk up to a couple of fox cubs. A good feed of meat will fix that. This group of scavengers has thick, bushy red coats with no signs of the mange they often suffer from around here that will as good as kill them. They look like they’ve come out of a stud farm and will go on to successfully reproduce many more killers of the helpless and the native. I train my rifle on one of them, and take her out with a single shot. The others are gone, quickly disappearing into long grass that was never meant to protect them so well. I shoot the ewe, and drag her and the dead fox, and the remains of the lamb, down into the gully. It is as productive as I have been for months.
James didn’t like shooting much. It was the one thing that set him apart from his peers. All his mates loved shooting and spotlighting, and dreamed of getting their own rifle. When they got their first, they dreamed of getting a second and a third. James didn’t mind the rifle side of it so much, but he was uncomfortable with killing things. I’m not sure why. It’s the sort of sensitivity that farmers don’t acquire until they’re older. I kind of respected it about him. He never felt the need to do something just because everyone else did, which is pretty far-out for a teenager.
Sometimes I drink beer at breakfast, even though it makes me crazy and useless. I don’t do it every day, but when I do it makes everything just a little less raw. Another time, I would be cutting and splitting wood for the fire, but now I can’t be bothered. One cold night I pick up bundles of sticks and leaves from the garden, and stuff them in my slow-combustion fire. It burns hot and brightly, making the room kinder and homier for a while. Soon it is ash, and the heat is gone, and I go back to lugging around a doona. I vow I will cut a heap of wood the next day, but I never do.
I think about my father, and how he always had tonnes of firewood cut, usually by one of the men. He was organised, and had a plan for every challenge that turned up. Our haysheds were always full in preparation for the next dry time. The cool room overflowed with meat, drink, and provisions. Machinery was always serviced and maintained; weeds were sprayed and slashed, and fences were in perfect order. If an employee was sick or had to leave us, Dad had someone ready to start the minute there was a vacancy. The workshop was stocked with spare tyres, pipe fittings, small motors, pumps, belts, grease, timber, and so on.
Even then, five years of drought took its toll. We didn’t grow any crops, and you couldn’t store that much feed for animals. We had to sell too many animals at low prices, and later, when it rained and we needed to buy back in, the prices were through the roof. Good old demand and supply. Suddenly we were no longer wealthy farmers. We were farmers with a debt, producing way below our capacity. We never really recovered, because even when things were good we couldn’t capitalise on them, and when things were bad we suffered more. My father always said that the golden rule in farming is: When things are good you have to make a lot of money to cover you for the many times when things will be bad. We couldn’t follow his rule. But his nature didn’t allow for anyone’s sympathy, and he would not give anyone the pleasure of knowing that Five Trees wasn’t the well-managed place it had always been.
It didn’t break him or us, but it certainly made a dent. He still went to the races in the city, and spent money like he had plenty of it. Looking back, I suppose it was pride, even though I couldn’t see it then — if he hadn’t appeared at the races, everyone would have known we were doing it tough.
But I never cared. My father’s need to be some sort of bunyip landed gentry burned the concern out of me. Forget the status symbols and the big notes, I just loved the land and the farm. I was always more comfortable with people who knew the trees and the birds and the grasses, rather than those who wanted to carry on about the size of their tractors and the extent of their holdings.
It always seemed to me to be the most precious piece of dumb luck that I was an owner of this country. When I had my own family and a farm, nobody could do better than me.
There was only ever one thing that could have stopped me feeling like that, and that was the loss of James. The loss of James stopped everything.
One night, after downing a few beers during the day, I decide to make a visit to the pub. I don’t know if anyone is going to be there, but my store is getting low, and the alcohol I have already drunk is making me feel that it is essential to replenish my supply. I am confident that if I can’t cope I can come straight home. My local is the sort of village pub that can have hundreds of people packing it out, or just the girl behind the bar and the publican wandering around the empty tables.
Tonight there is only a handful of people here: some in the front bar, some at the tables outside, and a few playing pool. I buy what I need for home, summon up the courage to order a beer off the tap, and take a seat at a small table in the bar. I am comforted by the casual noise of other human beings. The beer is good, and I figure my nerve will hold for a couple. And then the door from the pool room opens, and someone yells, ‘Davo! Bloody hell, what are you doing here?’ and Ralph comes through the doorway, sheets to the wind, rubbing his hands together.
‘Just thought I’d come for a beer.’
‘Well, that is bloody good news. Haven’t seen you for ages. Can I buy you one?’
Ralph is a friend from way back — primary school and all the years after. He was a truck driver and now owns a fleet of trucks, but he remains a constant against endless change. I tell him I don’t need another beer, and he flops down heavily at my table.
‘Geez, it’s good to see you, mate.’
Keith, the publican, brings two beers over and says, ‘These are on me. Good to see you out, Davo.’
I thank him, and he gives one nod in a way that makes me wonder why I don’t come here more often. Ralph asks what has been going on, and I try to think of something he might like to hear, but I can’t.
‘The usual,’ I say, and he accepts it, and proceeds to tell me about his business and how hard it is getting good people, and you wouldn’t believe it, but this is his first night off in months. And that’s the way it goes: he talks, and we drink. The flow of alcohol is steady, and we gradually succumb. Ralph finally stops talking, and we gaze at the TV so we look like we’re doing something. An ad comes on for a lottery, a massive US lot
tery that is available internationally.
‘Fifty million bucks. Fuck me. Imagine winning that,’ Ralph says.
‘What would you do with it?’
‘I’d sell the trucks and travel the world. Buy a place on the coast, maybe get a new missus — ha, kidding — and still have enough dough to live like a king. What about you?’
I look down into my beer, blank. I can’t even dream up a fanciful answer. I already have bags of money I’m not using. I guess he’s feeling sorry for asking me. I’m wrong.
‘You wouldn’t do anything with it, would you, mate? You’d stick it in a shed or a cave somewhere, and leave it there. You poor bastard.’
He sits back and slouches in his chair, leaning against the windowsill. ‘If I won the lottery and wanted to put it somewhere safe, I’d give it all to you. Safe as houses.’
I don’t know what he’s getting at, and I figure neither does he.
He leans forward on the small table, and puts his face close to mine.
‘You can’t keep on like this, mate. It’s not good enough. You’ve got to let people help you. Your friends. You’ve got to keep fighting, or you’ll disappear up your own bumhole.’
I take that as a sign that it’s time to leave. When people on the drink start giving you advice, you know it’s best to get out. I stand, a little wobbly, and thank everyone for the beers and the evening. Ralph says, ‘Don’t go, mate. We’ve only just got started. Stay the night at my place, and we can have a few more, talk this out.’ I am out of there before he can mount a proper argument.
The drive home is interesting. I am talking to myself, weaving around on the road, thinking at the last minute that there might be kangaroos ready to jump out of the grass, or cars behind me trying to get past. Someone how the roos and the rest of the world stay away from me. I make it home, and pass out on the couch amongst the empty beer cans, dirty cups, and chip packets.
It is morning. One eyelid flicks open independently, and my revealed eye unwillingly pans the room and its detritus of laziness and self-indulgence. Some of the furniture is still upended from the visit of Buzzcut and his mates. Everything hurts, and my stomach is queasy. I contemplate a beer. The hair of the dog has become my best friend, despite my previous boasts of being on the wagon. I stand, but instead of heading to the fridge, I remain still and look around the room again. It is a disgrace. I am a disgrace.
I begin picking up, cleaning up, wiping down, and righting the furniture. I find the vacuum cleaner, and even though I feel wretched, I vacuum everything in sight: the floor, the furniture, the TV, the paintings, Sarah’s ornaments, and the bookcase. I even give my own face a run-over.
Ralph’s words about giving me money are crashing around in my sensitive head. I am a man considered so useless that you could give me a truckload of cash, and I wouldn’t have the wit or wisdom to do anything with it. James would not have expected me to be a disaster. He might have wanted me to be sad, but not this hopeless. A gormless, gutless pisshead. And now self-pitying.
But I feel a sudden flush of relief, because someone did give me money, and I went to the races with it. I did something with it. They are all wrong about me. I am a doer. See me vacuum the house?
But where is the money now? Pretty much where Ralph predicted it would be. And whose money is it? Elaine’s? Ben’s? Buzzcut’s? Mine?
And I remember something Tito said to me after one of our nights at the pub — the words Elaine reminded me of. We were in the car coming home, and the beer was making us talk more frankly than we normally would, which is kind of the point of beer. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re a safe guy, aren’t you?’ I thought ‘safe guy’ was some sort of city expression for ‘good bloke’, so I ignored it and talked about something else. Now I’m wondering if there was a different meaning.
When the floors and the furniture are cleaned, and the vacuum cleaner is more than full, I feel a sense of achievement. The sink and the dishes are still a couple of hours’ worth of work waiting for me, but one step at a time is enough. Outside, the autumn sun is making itself popular, and I think that perhaps I should try harder. I take a beer from the fridge, open it, and glug a few mouthfuls down. It tastes and feels terrific.
The phone is ringing. I’m guessing it’s Marko, because he hasn’t rung for a while, and he has tried to make it a habit. I know he will keep calling until I answer. Marko rang me every second day after James’s accident, and visited me on the in-between days, whether I wanted him there or not. He kept it up for a long time, but I guess I broke him. He thought I would get over it after a while, or begin to recover at least. He was probably hurt by the fact that I haven’t, and that I don’t want to hang with him or come to parties or the pub, or even just chat. What is a friend supposed to do?
I pick up the phone, and he is telling me there’s a fire brigade meeting on this afternoon, and I should go. The suggestion is so off-track with what I have just experienced and the stuff going through my head that I nearly hang up. I say, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and he says if I don’t come he’ll come over to stay with me again. I put the phone down, thinking I do not want to go to a fire brigade meeting. Fire brigade meetings are really just an excuse for a yarn and a few beers, even though some official stuff does get done. The meetings are a bit of a joke, because the people who go have generations of experience dealing with bushfires and grassfires. If there’s anything farmers do well in a group, it is fight fires. But at some stage the government decided they needed to be involved in rural fire-fighting. Farmers couldn’t be trusted to put fires out on their own. There needed to be regulations, rules, and training. So now there are inductions, procedures, courses, bright uniforms, bureaucratic levels of importance, and red fire engines. The fire brigade meetings I’ve been to (under Fire Captain Marko) have been opportunities for everyone to show how little attention they have been paying to government rules, and the delight they have in that fact.
But if I go, at least a meeting will stop me sitting here, thinking about everything. And it will get Marko off my back. This is no small thing. He is used to me saying, ‘No.’ I take a beer out of the fridge, examine it, and then put it back. Perhaps a meeting would be a good thing.
When I arrive at the fire shed there are six utes there already, which suggests a good roll-up. I have not been to a public meeting of any sort since the accident. Come to think of it, I haven’t been anywhere except on my recent excursions to the races, Elaine’s, Dave Martin’s, and the pub. I can see Marko, Ian, Jake Cole, Freddie Doolan, Cliff Peters, Bob Handy, and a couple of others. I know the parents, children, wives, brothers, and sisters of every one of them. Freddie has just become a grandfather, so I know four generations of his family. These are my people, but I am not of them. They greet me warmly. They talk about the weather, and sport, and crops, so no one has to go near a topic that might accidentally bring up a comment about James, or sons, or young men, or death. Despite this, Cliff grabs my shoulder, gives it a bit of a shake, and says how good it is to see me. He is a large, solidly built man with a breaking smile and round, shiny cheeks. I reckon soon a doctor or a wife will put him on a diet, and he will become serious and suddenly older like the reduced often are. For now, he sees life as a great joke, one that he can easily laugh his way through. I would be jealous of this if I could imagine myself in someone else’s shoes.
Marko starts the meeting. There are apologies, minutes from the last meeting, and correspondence from the state fire brigade hierarchy. We stand in a circle and listen. There is no risk of Ben coming, because he would never bother with an organisation that it is not compulsory to attend and that offers no immediate personal gain. Everybody is serious-faced and respectful, until Jake asks if anyone has learned to work the gadgets on the truck yet. Everyone laughs, except me and Fire Captain Marko. Marko gets up into the cab of the small truck, starts it up, and proceeds to give a lecture on all the features of the truck. By th
e time he has small and large sprays going, the lights on, and the heat shield down, he can’t see what he’s doing, and everyone is getting wet and killing themselves laughing. I smile, and get into it the best I can.
When the performance is over, Marko thanks everyone, sets a date for the next get-together, asks if anyone needs to do a training course, and then closes the meeting and hands out the beers. I decline, pat my stomach, and say I’m trying to stay off the beers at the moment. Marko suggests this must be a brand-new idea, and I say it is, and then make to leave. Marko tries to get me to stay, but I am walking before he can get to me. I know the rest of them are shaking their heads, but I just can’t get into this sort of stuff anymore. I don’t even feel part of it. They live in a different world from me, and I can’t find my way back to it. But as I climb into my ute, Cliff runs across the road to get to me. I start the vehicle, so he knows I’m serious. He stands at the door, spreads his hands in resignation, and says, ‘I know you’ve got to go. I just wanted to say, if you ever needed to …’
I nod and say thanks, but he’s not done yet.
‘I know I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but they say, these days, it helps to talk — you’ve got to talk. They might be right.’
I thank him again, say goodbye, and leave him by the road, some of the laughter gone from his life.
Once home, I wander down to the door of James’s room — a door that I usually stay away from. I know Sarah has made sure the room is exactly as James left it: his clothes in a small pile on the floor, crowded by footballs and tennis balls, and a couple of computer-controlled toys, in pieces to be repurposed, under his desk. I don’t need to look in to know that the desk has a laptop, a few upright books, and some paper with notes and doodles on it. There is a large, white, closed wardrobe that holds the rest of his clothes, shoes, and sports stuff. The walls are a pale blue, marked where James removed or replaced a poster, taking pieces of paint with it. The posters that remain are of motorbikes in the air guided by riders made anonymous by helmets and colourful, branded leathers.
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