The Far-Back Country

by Kate Lyons

  ‘No. I’m a teacher. Or I used to be. Retired now.’

  As Freda embarked on a long ramble about teachers and Ronnie and governesses and how they couldn’t get one to stick, not after that other business, years ago, and how if it was history she wanted, they had miles of it, always tripping over it, and she had some brochures somewhere, in one of those drawers, Ursula saw herself doing it. Telling the truth. To this fat, friendly stranger who’d dropped a sausage and was down on her knees, chasing it around the dirty floor, wrestling it off the dog.

  She nearly did it. Nearly broke a silence of thirty-odd years. Something about that peachy guileless face.

  ‘Put these together myself.’ Freda had unearthed some yellow stapled photocopies from the sideboard. Was holding them out, shyly, with meat-speckled fingers. ‘There’s a mud map in back, if you feel like a drive. The old homestead is worth a look.’

  ‘Thanks. Maybe later. I’m not really here on holiday, Freda. I’m actually looking for someone. I think he works here, or he used to.’

  ‘Yeah? Who’s that?’ Freda was still busy twisting knots in the sausage links, looping them high above her head. ‘We get a lot coming and going out here.’

  ‘Ray McCullough. Do you know him? He’s my brother.’

  Freda went still, her face stiff. Dropping the sausages in a tangle on the table, she turned, went to the sink to wash her hands.

  ‘He used to work here, I think. I just wondered if he’d been here recently or if you’d know where he lives.’ Freda was uncharacteristically quiet, staring out the window again. Just the buzz of flies, the drip of the tap. Ursula started gabbling.

  ‘You see, I’ve been looking for him for a long time. We lost touch. If you know anything …’ She petered off.

  A bad feeling in the air, undeniable as the burnt toast, that smell of week-old meat. Then a phone rang somewhere in the hallway, amplified and shrill. Freda shot toward the table, snatching up a brick-like mobile, her hat, a bunch of keys.

  ‘That’ll be Sam. We got fires. Gotta go.’ Before she rushed out, leaving the meat on the table for the flies, she thrust the bunch of photocopied sheets into Ursula’s hands.

  ‘Here. Max can take you out if you want. He’s down the shed.’ And she was gone, the flyscreen banging in her wake.

  Ursula found herself out on the lawn. Blinking, bewildered, reading Freda’s brochures, taking nothing in. Densely spaced and boldly misspelled, they told her so many head of sheep, so many goats. An historic goldmine, an historic homestead, first steam-driven something or other. At the back there was a grainy photocopy of a page from a local newspaper, dated 1962. Something about a dead farmer, late of Ruby Downs, first to import some type of sheep. At the bottom, a story about Aboriginal people receiving the vote. A local said nothing would change. That their town had its own ways with blacks and whites. She bet it did.

  ‘That your dog?’

  She turned around. The voice seemed to be issuing from inside the wall of yellowing pines. Then a head bounced into a view. Blonde curls, a pair of bright black eyes, disappearing again. A twang of springs.

  ‘What’s its name? Are you the new governess? Are you gunna live with us?’

  When she walked around, she found a little girl jumping on a trampoline while eating something from her hand. Her solid brown body was naked except for a too-big bikini top.

  ‘Other one died,’ the girl told her through a mouthful of scone.

  ‘Sorry. Who?’

  ‘The governess.’

  ‘Did not. Don’t fib.’ An older, darker haired girl came hurtling from the treetops, hanging by her hands from a flying fox. Landing with a flourish on the trampoline, she bounced the little one right off. By the time Ursula had hurried around to check, the smaller girl had scrambled back up and was bouncing again.

  ‘Did too.’

  ‘Did not.’

  Did too, did too, while shaking wild blonde curls out of her eyes. The older girl eyed Ursula stonily, reminding her of the blue heeler, which had appeared again out of another of the numerous verandah doors. Ursula tightened her hold on Winston’s lead.

  ‘Did too.’

  ‘All right. I believe you.’

  ‘Did not. She just went to Adelaide.’

  ‘Did too.’ The little girl finished with a decisive bounce, right off the edge of the trampoline. Fell over, bounced straight back up, still grasping her scone.

  ‘What’s your dog’s name? Ours is Lolly. That’s ’cause she likes them. She ate a whole box of chocolates once, spewed all over my bed. She nearly died. Is yours sick? Or just old? Dad’ll shoot it if you want.’

  Not waiting for an answer to any of the questions, her mother’s daughter all right, she scrambled over to where the blue heeler lay sprawled and panting in the shade of the trees. ‘Lol’s having babies. See her boobies?’

  She grabbed one of the dog’s swollen teats, started squeezing it in a familiar milking rhythm, the dog not moving, just groaning, in and out in time with the child’s fingers, like a set of old, mottled bagpipes. Feeling faintly sick, Ursula asked the child her name.

  ‘That’s Ellie,’ the older girl said loudly. ‘I’m Ronnie and Marcie’s my other sister but she’s not here. I’m the eldest. Who are you?’

  ‘See, when babies come out, they come from there.’ Ellie had lifted up the dog’s tail, was preparing to poke in there with her jammy fingers until Ursula caught her by the wrist.

  ‘Don’t, dear. Not while you’re eating.’

  ‘She can if she wants.’ The older girl folded her arms across her grubby pink T-shirt. ‘You’re not the boss.’

  Ursula thought of Tilda, how she would like a T-shirt like that, all pink princesses and spangles, and then shut out the thought. She didn’t have time to worry about Tilda right now.

  Shading her eyes, she stared out toward the collection of tin buildings behind the house. ‘Can you tell me which way to the shed?’

  ‘Which shed?’ Ronnie sounded scornful. ‘There’s lots.’

  ‘Yeah! Lots!’ Ellie was up on the trampoline again. ‘There’s the shearing shed and the feed shed and Dad’s shed and the tractor shed and the dog shed and the other shed, and Dad’s shed …’

  ‘I’m looking for Max.’

  ‘Cooking shed. Over there.’ Ronnie pointed out toward a long low tin roof, rippling with heat.

  Putting her hat on, Ursula pulled Winston to his feet, stepped out from the shade of the trees.

  ‘You’re not allowed down there but. Not if you’re a visitor. Dad said. Because of the dogs.’ Ursula became aware again of that frenzied barking in the distance. Realised it had been going on ever since she left the house. ‘Some boy tried to pat one and he got bit. Fucking city kid.’ Ursula had her hand on the gate but stopped. She was tired. But not that tired.

  ‘Rhonda. You shouldn’t talk like that. It’s not nice.’

  ‘My name’s not Rhonda. It’s Veronica. Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘I know that’s not a nice word. Why aren’t you at school?’

  The girl rolled her eyes. ‘It’s smoko. English then reading, then smoko, then maths, then geography, then lunch.’

  ‘Yeah! Smoko! Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  Halfway to the shed, Ronnie called out to her, ‘Watch out for them dogs.’

  ‘And the pig!’ Ellie piped above the jangle of the trampoline. ‘It got out. Dunno where it is.’

  By the time she found Max, in a hot metal shed next to a cage full of snarling hounds, she was too tired to dissemble any more.

  ‘Hi, Max. I’m looking for someone.’

  He held up a finger, warding her off while he counted out cups of flour.

  ‘Ray McCullough. Is he around?’

  ‘Good morning to you as well.’

  ‘Well, is he?’

  A timer buzzed on the stove.

  ‘Come in if you’re coming in, but shut that door. Flies are getting in. Dog stays out
though. Sam’s rules.’ She was getting heartily sick of Sam and his rules. But she tied Winston up in a bit of shade near the water tank, sending the curs in the cage into a frenzy. When she came back, Max had a mixer going and she had to scream above the din.

  ‘Well? Do you know him or not? Is he here?’ He turned the mixer off suddenly and her voice boomed rudely. Max was shaking his head.

  ‘No. He used to work here. Not any more.’

  She sat down on a stool. The day gone dull, even in the glare.

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  He was shaking his head again, scraping batter off a spoon. ‘Sorry. Wouldn’t have a clue. He did a runner, that’s all I know.’

  She sat there for a long time, watching him work. He was making scones now, cutting butter through flour. All the wind knocked out of her. Sun rippled off water somewhere, finding all the gaps and mistakes and weaknesses between the tin wall and the iron roof.

  ‘He must have left a number or something. An address. He was going to get married out here.’

  A fuse of light, falling fierce on a knife, a metal bowl, and she closed her eyes.

  ‘Don’t know anything about that. Freda’s the one to ask. She and Ray were pretty thick.’ He moved across to the sink, his feet rasping on the rough plank floor. No shoes at all this time. No shirt, no overalls, just shorts. ‘All I know is he left Sam in the lurch and they were getting desperate. Must have been, eh. They hired me.’

  He was rubbing flour and butter to fine seed now with his long brown fingers, adding salt, milk, scattering flour on the table in a graceful arc. Tipping the dough out, bringing it together with slow gathers of his hands. Seemed to know what he was about.

  ‘Ray was the cook here?’

  Max nodded.

  She thought of a small boy no higher than the old kitchen table, watching her knead pastry, sift flour, stir icing. Being good, so he could lick the bowl.

  ‘Yeah. He did odd jobs too, I think. Fencing and stuff. But cooking, mostly. For the men.’

  She tried to see Ray here, in this hot little shed. But like in the pub and, as always, he retreated to an outline, a blank left over from the spaces Max was moving between.

  ‘He cooked in at the pub bistro sometimes too, in town, when I was working in the bar.’

  She leaned forward, into the shadow cast by his body.

  ‘So you do know him. You’ve met him, at least.’

  Max shrugged. ‘Not really. To say gidday, that’s all. We were on different shifts most of the time.’

  ‘What is he like?’

  He looked at her oddly. Seemed about to say something, but just went back to cutting scone shapes from his dough.

  ‘Hard to say. Pretty quiet. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, according to Sam. Although coming from Sam, that’s rich.’ There was a renewed frenzy of barking outside, stopping instantly at someone’s rough command.

  ‘Listen, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember much at all from back then. I could have met the Queen and I wouldn’t have known.’ He went quiet, the table squeaking as he greased a tray.

  ‘See, pubs and I don’t mix.’

  She watched him start on rissoles, shaping them from breadcrumbs, parsley, more of that bright pink pork. Only the wall holding her up. After that, more pastry, more butter and flour, Max wheezing a bit as he launched himself at the table, rolling the shortcrust out with an old vinegar bottle, pressing it into the fluted sides of a tin. Bluebottles hovering, green apples in a silver bowl. The sun through the window hacked him to crystallised parts. Nipples, pirate earring, the faint rough bubble of his lungs. When he offered coffee, he took her silence as a yes. Could have been a few minutes that she sat there, could have been an hour. Long enough for the scones to cook, come out of the oven, be set to cool.

  ‘Ray. He a friend of yours?’

  He stood holding out a mug of coffee. She stood up abruptly, knocking the stool over.

  ‘Sorry. It’s too hot for me in here.’

  She was leaning down, untying Winston, brushing away her tears and the flies feasting at the sore on the dog’s head, when Max came up behind her, so quiet on his bare feet, she jumped.

  ‘He left some of his stuff behind, if that’s any help. Must have been in a hurry. He even left his boots.’

  ‘Where?’

  He pointed out toward yet another shed, on the far side of a dam.

  ‘Old shearers’ quarters. That’s where he slept. Bit basic for me. But I think he liked to be on his own.’

  As she set off, he called out, ‘Watch out for snakes.’

  In Ray’s cell in the shearers’ quarters, she found another monastic single bed. Another pair of boots. Holes in the sole but the right size this time. The bedside table was bare. Just an old-fashioned alarm clock in a metal bucket on the floor. Above it, a little plywood bookshelf battered into the tin wall of the shed. A single book on it, the cover red not blue. Paterson’s poems. There was curly writing on the flyleaf but she couldn’t bear to look at it. She shut it with a bang. She checked under the bed, in the drawers of the bedside table, but there was nothing else.

  She lay down on the bed, into the hollow he’d left, his book of poems clutched to her chest. Thought of him reading it at night. Thought of him waking here, seeing that same light at the same window, through the paltry curtains. Getting up in the morning, probably in the dark. Walking out that door, in his special bobbing lope. Away and away, into silence and dust.

  She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew someone was banging on the door. She scrabbled for her shoes. But it wasn’t her father, come with his belt.

  ‘Hello? You OK in there?’

  She patted down her dress and hair.

  ‘Freda said to say it’s time for tea.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  By early February he’d put a new door on the back, a new flyscreen out front. The verandah boards were replaced with timber he’d got from the hardware in lieu of an hour spent shovelling blue metal and a few rolls of Sam’s wire. He’d braced the foundations with an assortment of stones and ropes. But it was all temporary, without proper refooting. A bodge job. Bit like that husband, by the sounds.

  Clearing the sleep-out to make way for his camp bed, searching through piles of old paperwork for farm deeds, a sale contract, some notion of the property boundaries Lily seemed so unsure about since her husband started selling off the land, he’d found, amid the piles of sticky pornos and unpaid bills, a photo of the bloke, sitting astride some brand-new bike he’d bought before riding off to Queensland, never to be seen again. Shortish, darkish, big toothy smile. As Mam used to say about Dad’s brother, Eddie, all shine no shoes.

  Up on the roof again, dragging up iron he’d liberated from the dismantled shed, it was hard to see anything he’d achieved, even after weeks of work. Place still looked like photographs of the American dust bowl he’d seen in his old Brittanica. Scoured boards, rackety dirt-humped fences. The dust was so mounded up in places that a tall man could just have stepped straight over. So long since rain now that when the wind blew, whole paddocks were on the move. At night, dust sifted through the flyscreen of the sleep-out, collected on his pillow. The same sere earth here as those old bad time photographs, red, dull glimmering at dusk, turning sepia as the sun went down. As if any future here was history already, a place nurturing its own drear climate, buried in its little hollow beneath a ring of hills.

  As he battered at the roof, his mouth full of nails again, it wasn’t the lack of water or money, or even the hole in Lily’s ceiling, but those fences that worried him the most. Their frowzy disorder nagged at him like a missing tooth. They made the place look lax, uncared for. Like the woman in the room beneath him, sprawled on an unmade bed, arms and legs flung wide. He shook the image from his head, the dust from his hair.

  Just as he went to hammer the last bit of tin across the hole, the flyscreen banged and the whole roof shuddered, the metal sheet skitter
ing sideways and away, mocking him in the heat. Leaning out to catch it, he snagged his wrist on the edge.

  ‘Ray? You up there?’

  Where else would he be? He counted ten, sucking at the wound. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Kettle’s on.’

  At noon, heat had a hum, hollow as a gong. The brim of his hat divided the world to fence and road, dust and sky. Time fell to wilderness between them. The blades of the windmill etched a shadow like stopped clock hands in the dirt of the yard.

  ‘How’s the roof?’

  ‘Getting there.’

  ‘And the pump?’

  The pump lay in pieces in his lap.

  ‘You want something to eat?’

  ‘Nuh. Too hot. A beer’d be good.’

  She fetched it for him, sat down again, sipping at her tea. A little breeze got up, faint, wilful, riffling the dust, the brim of his hat, playing with her hair.

  ‘Did you check the forecast? I meant to, on the radio. But I fell asleep.’

  ‘Yeah. A bit down south. Nothing here.’

  ‘That’d be right.’

  The wind got stronger. Hot though, no moisture in it. The windmill groaned, clanked once, blades shedding dust, then stopped again.

  ‘You know, I’ve never seen it this bad, not even in the drought. At least back then we had the creek. We had feed growing, too, did I tell you, in those paddocks near the road. We were even thinking of putting in some fruit trees. Limes and stuff, for the restaurants. Going organic. Gary reckons citrus does well round here.’

  Gary reckons. Gary thinks. Organic. He thought of all those empty insecticide drums marked with skulls and crossbones he’d dragged out of the shed. Said nothing. Picked up his rag, dipped it in vinegar, started scrubbing at the rust on the pump.

  ‘It’s not all his. Along the creek. It can’t be. Gary wouldn’t have done that. No way.’ She was leaning toward Ray, her thin brown leg poking out of her thin brown dress. ‘Could we at least try and get the bore going, do you think? Until we sort out the creek?’ Her bare foot on the edge of his boot. The need coming off her in waves.