Coming Rain

by Stephen Daisley

  ‘Boss,’ Painter called to him.

  They saw him pause and look towards them. Then, recognising Painter’s voice. ‘Hayes?’

  ‘We are down at the yards. A dingo been here, in with the muster.’

  The dog ran down to the yards and leapt over the rail. Lew watched him. The hair on Jock’s scruff was standing and he was growling and running in circles, nose to the ground, seeking out traces of the intruder’s scent.

  Drysdale walked to the yards. ‘Smith that old dingo shooter come down from Thompson’s Find, far as I know, he laid poison baits and a trap or two at Daybreak Springs. Might have flushed a few out.’

  Jock was growling and whining as he circled.

  ‘Clara was right about those dog crows then. Can’t have a dingo about. No. Get here to me Jock. That’ll do you.’

  Jock jumped back over the yard rail and sat at the man’s feet. ‘I heard Smith also cleaned up a big mob at Yate Valley station. I’ll get him onto it in the morning.’

  They all looked out into the darkness to where she had gone.

  Drysdale nodded. ‘Nothing we can do tonight. What time you getting a start in the morning boys? We got the pens filled. Should see you right for the first run.’

  ‘About four we reckon,’ Painter said.

  ‘Good. Six for first smoko.’

  He straightened and walked back towards the Land Rover. ‘Night boys. Here to me Jock.’ Jock ran to him and leapt onto the back tray of the Land Rover.

  ‘Night boss.’

  *

  When they returned to the quarters, Painter served the kangaroo-tail soup which they ate in silence with thick slices of bread and butter. Once they finished, Lew heated water on the stove and shaved some soap into the sink to wash the dishes. ‘What do you reckon about that wild dog?’

  Painter shrugged. ‘Old man Smith’ll get rid of it.’ He took a jar of preserved peaches and held them up. ‘These look all right Lew. Be good with a bit of milk.’ Nodded at the door.

  Lew walked outside to the veranda and returned with the bottle of milk Jimmy had left in the Coolgardie safe. They sprinkled white sugar on the peaches, poured in the cream from the top of the milk and ate, sucking the sweet peach segments from their fingers.

  ‘Sounds like he’s been busy,’ Lew said as he ate. ‘Old Abraham Smith.’

  Painter looked up at him. ‘Oh yeah. You wanted to try that prospecting didn’t you?’

  Lew nodded. ‘Yeah well I did. After we cut the shed out, what do you reckon? Head out to Thompson’s Find.’

  ‘See how we go son.’

  Later that night they were still sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. Painter was rolling smokes for the following day and Lew was reading a 1952 National Geographic magazine by the light of a kerosene lamp. Looked over at Painter. ‘There’s an article in here about playing three thousand golf courses in fourteen lands. Good photos, look.’ Showed the magazine.

  Painter squinted. Nodded. ‘I think I need glasses.’

  Lew went back to reading. After a while he stopped reading and watched Painter. ‘You ever play golf?’

  ‘No.’ Painter had about ten rolled cigarettes lined up in front of him. Tamped stray tobacco in at the ends of the cigarette he was holding with a Redhead match. Made a grumbling noise and started rolling the next cigarette.

  Lew folded the magazine. Slapped his knee with it. ‘Why did you used to drink like you did then? When you bad on it. Singin’ out to who knows what. Fightin’ all the time?’

  Painter leaned forward, interlacing his fingers, and stared at Lew. He waited. ‘I just liked it.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yep.’ He looked down and counted the cigarettes. Picked one up and put it in his mouth. ‘Yeah I did. Loved it. Every fuckin’ minute.’

  ‘Cut it out Painter. There’s got to be more to it than that?’

  ‘No. No, there’s not.’

  Lew stared at him for a bit.

  ‘Gettin’ drunk? Goin’ somewhere else.’ Painter sighed. ‘Like walkin’ to China son and believin’ in Jesus.’ He lit the cigarette with a burning stick he had taken from the stove. ‘Better than playin’ fuckin’ golf I would imagine.’

  Lew was still holding the magazine. It was open now at the pages with photographs of perfect long green expanses. A man with a checked flat cap swinging a golf club above a white ocean cliff. Cocked hip, white leather glove on the left hand holding the club. Ventilation holes on the backs of the fingers. ‘This bloke looks pretty pleased with himself. Bet he doesn’t get pissed to bits,’ Lew said. ‘Calling out to Jesus and Mary and wanting to cut the world’s throat. Who will wash my feet? You used to say that. Fighting everybody who even looked at you.’

  Painter smoked, pointed at the magazine Lew was holding. ‘No. He wouldn’t, would he?’

  Lew ignored him.

  Painter stood, tossed the stick on the cement base of the stove and sat back down. Groaned. ‘You know eh, my Mr Jesus never run away even when he could? Never did.’

  ‘I know he never.’

  ‘He was a tough bastard, Jesus was.’

  ‘I know mate.’

  ‘You reckon you know do you?’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  ‘Those peaches were sweet weren’t they? Jimmy give us the top milk too, good boy. Didn’t scoop it off for the butter.’

  In his dream he was approaching an old woolshed. There was banging and calls and yells coming from inside the shed as he walked up wooden steps towards the side entrance. He stood on the landing and slid open the heavy door. Stepped inside, and closed the door as someone was yelling: just in time for smoko mate. But it was he who was the yelling man. I am in time. One of the shearers had begun to hit a frantic, kicking sheep in the head with the side of a handpiece. Yelling at it, I will kill you. Stabbing it in the face. The wool classer looked at his watch as he came to the end of the board and rang a steel railway spike onto a suspended twenty-five-pounder brass shell case, called out: there are no blackfellas here; no they left of their own accord for the flour and the sugar and the tea. Dingo Smith persuaded them, oh yes he did. It was not theirs anyway was it? Just cause they danced here, doesn’t make it theirs now does it? Now it’s a safe place to swim. First run gone down boys…good work… Smoko time. Be careful now…mother’s come home, ducks on the pond so watch your language.

  The song on the radio loud in the shed. Your Cheatin’ Heart. The shearers standing and leaning on the pen doors, wiping their faces with towels, hands on their hips and above their kidneys. Their heads began to nod; one turned to another and pretended to sing, using his empty hand to hold an imaginary microphone. Danced a small jig. The song and laughter lifted up in the shed. They walked tender easy, the shearers, wide shouldered, thin hipped and leaning back a little, rocking to the end of the shed. The song ended and a radio announcer began to speak about the weather and the possibility of rain in the wheatbelt around Koorda. A bushfire near the southwest town of Manjimup. Your Cheatin’ Heart still yet playing on the radio. Hank Williams asleep in the back seat of a 1952 baby blue Cadillac. Good as gold mate.

  He woke in the darkness of the shearers quarters. Looked around and saw nothing. Dream and memory merging.

  Painter, in the opposite room, snoring. The building creaked in the wind.r />
  His bladder was full and that was what mattered at the minute. He sat up in the bed, found a candle on the bedside and lit it. He made his way outside, carrying the candle with a hand cupped around the flame. When he opened the back door the wind caught the candle and blew it out.

  Lew stood there and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a windswept night, desert clear and moon bright. The wind making the immense throw of stars somehow colder and the third phase of the moon falling away to the west. He looked at his wristwatch, 2:15 a.m. He could see where he was now, the outline of the buildings, the truck and the sheep yards. The thrashing trees in the easterly wind. He walked around the side of the quarters to the trees and he urinated, ensuring his back was to the wind.

  As he finished, he remembered the running dingo in the sheep yards. A shadow of long legs and open mouth, glancing back at him with indifferent, killer eyes. Her ears turned to him.

  The wind chilled him and he returned to his room and got back into his swag on the kapok mattress. The warmth of that. Soon he fell asleep, dreamless yet somehow also aware that he was sleeping until the alarm clock woke him an hour later, 3:20 a.m. It was time to start breakfast.

  CHAPTER 18

  Away from the water she had continued to run east. White under the waning moon, a crescent shade less than full as it was throwing light across the land, she ran until the moon was almost directly overhead; slowed and stopped, waited, listening to the night, smelling the wind, and began to circle back. It was the hunger. Cutting and recutting her tracks. Stopping often now and listening, her nose lifted. Coming around to the south, to be crosswind of anything that might be following. Waited and let the quivering knowledge of the night come into her. She began to hunt. Something stopped her; she stood still, lay down and waited.

  Waited until she knew nothing. Now she could hunt again. She cut across her tracks, stopped and squatted to piss, ran on and stopped to defecate; scratched at the earth behind her. Circled and sniffed and again ran in a large backtracking circle to be upwind of where she had come from. Checked her leavings, others too. Rolled in them. The hunger hollowing her like the lack of water, she resisted the urge to howl, growling out instead her need, her whelps’ unvoiced need, for hunting. Began once again to run. The calling in her blood. After a long time, she had returned to the homestead and shearing shed where she had been that night to water. The shed was in darkness but there was still a light burning in the big house.

  She had travelled in a wide shape to be in the west of a holding paddock where a large mob of young hoggets had been mustered the previous day. The great bumbling stink of them came rolling to her. Their blind walking and touching comfort of each other’s presence. The constant unthinking urination and shitting and lying down in stupidity on the bare stony ground. These creatures are what they are.

  The bitch stood and slunk along the fence line. Waited and again slipped sideways through the rails. This time not to drink. This time to slaughter. She stopped. One foot raised. Her body focused, alone, absent from the pack run and kill. Took two tentative steps forward. Again raised a hunting foot, flattened her ears and head lowered below her shoulders.

  A small ram hogget had strayed near enough to her to sense an unwelcome presence among them. He stamped a defiant front hoof and studied the darkness. A moment later, realising what was there, he let out a terrified moan and turned to escape.

  The bitch was on the hogget in the time it took him to turn. Her teeth caught first along the eye socket and cheekbone. She readjusted in an instant and her mouth closed on his throat and she tore and bit down hard, strangling any noise, and they rolled over in the dust. She continued to bite down on his throat, shifting her body into the shape of her kill. Her back legs through and around his back legs. Without the pack, she had become the pack. Her patient eye lit in the shape of the moon watching. Deepened the grip of her mouth into the hogget’s arched neck. She was waiting for the weakness. Waiting for the giving. Once it came she immediately ripped out his throat. Blood gushed over her face and she lapped at the torn hole. Paused, resting for a moment, blinked and relaxed. Panted, a bloody mouth and tongue. Waited, stopped panting and laid her chin on its ribs. The last of the hogget eased away and it became still. She crouched and bent her head between the back legs of the dead animal and began to rip and tear at its lower belly, exposing the intestines.

  The pups in her belly squirmed. Aligned as they should be.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lew rose, pulled on his trousers and shirt in the darkness. Remained barefoot, as always, his eyes becoming accustomed to the light. His feet silent as he crossed the veranda boards of the breezeway and opened the cookhouse door.

  The kitchen was lit by three Coleman lamps and there was the faint smell of warm kerosene among the smells of cooking eggs, hot fat and roasting meat. Jimmy using a spatula to make small waves over the tops of the eggs. When the yolks were covered with an opaque film, he lifted the eggs from the pan and slid them onto slices of stale bread to drain. He would feed this bread to his beloved hens later.

  Jimmy did not think in English. He thought in Malay. English was his third language. Penang Hokkien came after Malay. He bent to the stove and removed a tray of lamb chops and kidneys. The fat sizzled as he turned the cutlets and the rounds of kidney. He basted them with a spoon and slid the tray back into the oven. Almost done. Only take a minute. He laid thin slices of lambs fry and bacon in the iron pan in which he had cooked the eggs. Grunted to himself, bloody lambs fry; thinks he funny laughing at me.

  He began to speak in Malay and after a while he crossed into Hokkien. A good language for cursing, the orifice of a pig sounding much better than in the English. Jimmy shook the pan and added another spoon of lard. Turned the frying bacon and liver.

  ‘Jimmy,’ Lew said, ‘I just got up to light the stove. Thought I heard you in here.’

  Jimmy turned to him and smiled. ‘Mr Lew, I no see you there. Mr John tell me you start at four isn’t it? I get you breakfast. First day. Big job. And you got no cookie. No good…You want a cup of tea?’

  Lew nodded. ‘Thank you.’ He sat at the kitchen table. The lamp was hissing in the centre next to a pile of sliced bread and butter. An opened paper bag of white sugar. Glass jug filled with white milk. A bottle of Fountain tomato sauce. Lea and Perrins, the square bottle of HP.

  ‘No newspapers sorry Mr Lew, you want I can bring you some from the house? Last week paper anyway.’

  Lew waved a hand. ‘No no,’ he said. ‘I never had a newspaper with my breakfast in my life.’

  Jimmy laughed in bewilderment and looked at the table. Knives and forks had been set out. He placed a mug of tea next to Lew’s elbow. ‘Sugar gula on the table. Susu…milk too, fresh from cow. Sorry but don’t put wet spoon in sugar OK?’

  ‘All right Jimmy.’

  ‘I mean it OK? No bloody wet spoon in sugar. It really piss me off. Brown lumps pretty soon whole bowl had it, then, pretty soon, whole bag had it. Semut…ants coming anywhere then and no sugar for a month. No wet spoon in sugar OK?’

  ‘Yeah, all right mate.’

  The door opened and they both looked up as Painter came in and closed the door. He stood behind Lew and looked at them both, and around the kitchen. The smells and sounds of breakfast. The soft yellow lights and shadows of the lamps. Jimmy with a white apron and a white plate in his hand.

  ‘Mr P
ainter.’

  Painter looked at his wristwatch. ‘It’s three-thirty. Just after. Twenty to four.’

  Jimmy indicated the chair opposite Lew. ‘You sit. Cup of tea in a minute.’ Began piling eggs and bacon, chops, kidney and lambs fry on a plate. He came to the table and placed the breakfast before Lew. ‘There you are Mr Lew.’ Slid the plate onto the table.

  ‘Thank you Jimmy.’ Lew took the bottle of Lea and Perrins and shook it over his eggs. Then the HP, poured a sauce line across the chops. Sprinkled salt and pepper and began to eat.

  ‘Welcome.’ He looked at Painter. ‘Mr Painter. You want some bleakfasts?’ Almost shouted the last word.

  ‘Thanks mate.’ Painter coughed and cleared his throat. ‘Morning son.’

  Lew paused from eating, took a sip of tea. Nodded to Painter. Reached out and took a slice of bread and began to butter it.

  Jimmy placed the mug of tea in front of Painter. ‘Sugar and milk there. No wet spoon in sugar please. I ask don’t do it OK?’

  ‘Righto mate.’ Painter sniffed.

  Lew paused from his eating and looked up as Jimmy turned back to the bench and spooned eggs and chops and bacon, kidneys, lambs fry onto a plate. Put it down in front of Painter. The plate bumped as Jimmy took his hand away.

  ‘Thank you Jimmy.’ Painter paused and, as was his habit, touched two fingers to his forehead, heart and each shoulder. Whispered a quick prayer of thanks. ‘You and…by Your simple grace, amen.’

  Jimmy was standing behind him, frowned, serving tongs still in his hands. ‘Welcome Mr Painter.’ Turned back to the sink and began to pour the excess lard from the pans into a large tin that had once contained apricots from Mildura. Began to wash the pots. Spoke in Malay and laughed in mock apology.