Texas

by Sarah Hay

  Texas most of it in the kitchen and that it was suffocatingly tedious? But perhaps it wasn’t like that for her.

  John came and went, taking the cool-room keys and returning them. She placed two bowls out on the bench for the children, spooning mashed potato and boiled vegetables into them. The meat from the frying pan was cut into small pieces and stirred with vegetable mixture and flavoured with tomato sauce. Ollie moved his spoon around in his food, using it like a shovel to make a hill and then a road.

  ‘Eat,’ she said as she always did.

  Ned bit down on his spoon and refused to take it out of his mouth, nodding up and down as though the spoon was a beak. He thought he was funny, pecking Ollie’s shoulder. Ollie pushed Ned and he fell sideways, his elbow knocking the bowl off the table and onto the floor. She knelt carefully, spooning the food slowly into the bowl, and then picked up the child. She sat with him on her knee, jiggling him up and down until he stopped crying. But she let him remain there, snuggled in under her neck as she listened to the voices outside. John was talking. He was telling a story and fragments found their way into her kitchen. Except that she knew it wasn’t his story. John had never worked in the north until now and it sounded like a story he might have read from his collection of Australian stockman’s autobiographies. They always seemed to have been written by men who had either retired injured to their Sunshine Coast apartments or who were driving taxis in the city because they’d run out of other options. She imagined their wives being so tired of the yarns they lived, even after the view from their kitchen window had changed.

  When her mother was dying she talked a little about her early married life. Her memories of seeing for the first time the little cottage she was to live in. She said there was nothing there, nothing surrounding it, only sand and then fence and paddock. Whilst her mother talked Susannah glanced up and out of the window to the gaily coloured flowerbeds and the oasis of a well-kept lawn and an exotic weeping willow. Her mother became animated by the memory and asked Susannah to find the photos. Susannah remembered staring hard into the black and white picture where everything seemed a different shade of grey. The square fibro cottage stood beside a tightly strung fence of ring-lock and barbed wire. Her mother had other stories. There was the heatwave of 1964 when Susannah, a one-month-old baby, had almost died of overheating and her mother had sponged her every hour until the heat broke with the crack of a summer storm. Lightning cut through the darkness and lit the farm in pieces, splitting the newly erected jam-tree fence posts, and then the rain came in fat warm drops.

  Looking at Ollie on the other side of the table and with Ned squirming to get down from her knee, Susannah shivered, and thought of illness, of accidents, of being so far from anywhere.

  It was also a fear of being unable to escape, a claustrophobic fear of being trapped in a story that was not of her making.

  When she tucked the boys into their beds Ollie wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling her closer. Awkwardly, she

  Texas pressed her cheek against his, bending over his bed. After a while she pulled back but his little grip held tight.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ he asked.

  ‘Let go,’ she murmured.

  He released her and she sat down on the edge of his bed. The two little boys were like chrysalises, cocooned in their pale sheets. When she was a child she dreamed of dressing in her mother’s cast-off nightie because it was soft and fairy-like and when her pony, who was called Mischief, came to her window in the middle of the night she would climb on its smooth warm back, wearing her flyaway dress, armed with her bow and arrow, and they would follow the animal trails through the bush to the granite where they would live forever and hunt crows.

  She returned to the kitchen as her husband was pouring rum into a glass and for some reason it irritated her. He noticed she was watching.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  She shrugged, leaning down towards the oven door to retrieve their meals, trying not to let it show that he annoyed her immeasurably. But just looking at him across the table after she’d placed their plates opposite each other was too much.

  ‘God I hate this place,’ she said furiously. Hating him.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘What’s wrong with me? Look at yourself. Who do you think you are? You grew up in the city. You don’t belong here. None of us do.’ She glanced down at her plate and then back at him. ‘How long do I have to put up with this?’

  ‘You’re not the person I married. You’ve changed. Since your mother died.’ His eyes were blinking rapidly, hurt.

  ‘My mother’s got nothing to do with it. Perhaps you were thinking you were marrying someone else.’

  Before he could answer, she added: ‘Do you realise how boring it is?’

  His eyes hardened. ‘You’re so bloody ungrateful. You don’t have to find two hundred steers out in this country. Get them to the meatworks. You’re not the one who has to answer to some boss in Perth.’

  ‘At least you get something for it,’ she muttered, her energy spent.

  Her knife cut awkwardly through the meat that was tough and dry. The thick yellow fat was the only thing worth eating on the plate, fat flavoured by the animal’s diet of spinifex.

  The cutlery scraped the plate. When she looked up she stared slightly to the left of her husband’s face at a spot on the wall where there had been a picture. She wondered what it might have been like. She could see it silver-framed, a scene of white sand, waves and, beyond, a glimpse of glistening turquoise water. Any sign of human activity seductively absent.

  That evening he took off his clothes before his shower, unrolling the sleeves of his shirt, pulling the press-studs apart, and she wondered what it would be like to be married to someone else. The fan creaked above her bed and the tattered ends of the curtain wavered with a rush of air. He left his hat on top of the dressing table and his clothes on the floor as he walked naked across the hall to the shower.

  Texas He turned off the light and sank into the mattress, causing her to roll into the middle. With his weight on her she felt as though she would slip through the springs. In the half-light she saw the curtain sigh, and through it she heard a dingo howl and the lonely bellow of a cow in trouble.

  V

  She was washing the kitchen louvres and thought of the dam, how the water must have covered some of the country Irish was talking about. She imagined what it would be like beneath the surface, how far down it would be dark, traces of trees, in black silt, a forest of ideas submerged. When her boys were men, where would they belong? Perhaps they wouldn’t need to feel as though they belonged anywhere in particular. She knew that not everyone was like her. It only became important when she was so far from home, so far from where she started. She thought of the farm where she grew up. It was different now that her brother was working alongside her father. One day he would inherit the property. Even now she could trace the topography of the land in her mind, remembering the yate-tree swamp and the small clumps of acacia, the banksia scrub surrounding a little knob of granite, and attached to all those places were memories of her and her family’s experiences. But she realised there was another way of knowing a piece of land, a slice of country, other than merely living there. It was learning what came before. Irish had many stories about the people he knew and the yarns they told. They were like the broken strands of a spider’s web floating in the bush after someone had unthinkingly walked through it. Once they would have connected. And it made Susannah think of her own fragments of memory, which included the young Aboriginal woman who came from the hostel in town to help her mother with the ironing. She didn’t stay long and Susannah recalled her mother telling her that the poor girl had been from the Kimberley. It was a long time ago, and Susannah was probably only about eight or nine, but she remembered that the young woman never spoke. Susannah had never thought of her again, until now.

  She realised that the woman’s story might have been connected to all the ot
her things she didn’t know about the country in which she grew up. There was always the excuse of not being told, but neither had she listened nor seen, nor asked questions.

  Memories could lie submerged in the still depths of the dam without ever being disturbed.

  Men fell prey to her

  angel eyes and her

  killing ways

  I

  Texas turned off the engine and one of the men stood up. Laura recognised it was Jimmy by the shape of his hat and his grin. The other men were seated on drums and tree stumps and swags, the lower half of their faces illuminated by the fire in the middle; behind them their hat-wearing shadows moved about on the corrugated-iron wall of a shed. Jimmy said something quickly or perhaps it was in a language she didn’t understand. Texas laughed and climbed out of the vehicle. He lifted a box from the back and disappeared with it around the side of the shed. She hesitated and then reached across for her backpack. Texas returned and picked up her swag.

  ‘Here, I’ll show you where to put your gear.’

  She followed, attempting to see the ground where her feet touched it, and then they were on the other side of the shed and a small gas lantern on a table revealed the shape of the place. The shed was open on two sides and Texas took her to an area on the other side of the wall, opposite to where the men were sitting at the fire. The place was shadowed by the shed but she could make out the shape of an iron bed without a mattress, on which he put her bedding.

  ‘Can I move the bed inside?’ she asked, thinking she would prefer to be under the roof of the shed where the floor was concrete instead of dirt.

  ‘Better out here. Nothing fall on you. You know, like ant or snake,’ he chuckled. ‘Here this is a good place. Quiet too. Them fellas camp over the other way.’

  She placed her pack on the bed and quickly felt inside for the torch, shining it on the ground in front of her.

  A man she had met briefly at the homestead, a man who introduced himself as Cookie, was standing at the table which was more like a bench, since it was too high to sit at and each end was welded to the supporting metal posts of the shed.

  Hanging above it were blackened slabs of meat suspended from butcher’s hooks.

  ‘How you going?’ He looked up. ‘Wasn’t expecting youse back tonight.’ He continued wiping the bench. ‘So you come out to do a bit of mustering eh? That’ll be a bit of fun. You want to watch out for this fella,’ he nodded at Texas, ‘he make you work hard. You want something to eat? There’s a big pot of stew by the fire. Grab yourself a plate, there’s the knives and forks and when you’re finished wash your stuff up and put it back in here.’

  Texas ‘Yeah, and if you don’t do what you’re told, eh Cookie? What happens? No tucker.’ Texas picked up his plate and turned and caught her eye. She smiled and let go of the torch in her pocket to reach for a plate, at the same time glancing over at Cookie, who was no taller than her, his face clean shaven except for the Mexican-looking moustache. His eyes were black and they caught the lamplight as he grinned.

  She settled on a flour drum with a plate of stew on her knees and the talking seemed to fade. One of them would say something quietly, not loud enough to hear, and another responded with either a small grin or a noise that sounded like a suppressed laugh. Occasionally she caught one or two of their words and she was reassured that they weren’t talking about her. She remembered Jimmy and Gary. Jimmy was related to Texas and Gary might have been as well. She couldn’t remember what John had said on their way out to the station. Cookie told her the others were Peter, Tommy and Maxwell. Peter was the solid guy in a blue singlet with red trimming and a voice that was deep and hoarse. Maxwell was an older man who leant in towards the fire, his elbows resting on his thigh, and Tommy slipped a quick glance towards her. She assumed they were all local Aboriginal people except for Tommy and the cook. She looked around for Texas.

  The cook walked between her and the fire and poured some liquid into a mug and sat on the edge of a swag. Texas appeared and bent over, pouring tea from the billy on the ground. He straightened and moved to a seat on the other side of the fire.

  She waited for him to acknowledge her but he turned towards the men.

  ‘Got everything you need?’ the cook asked.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, her hand fingering the outline of the torch.

  Someone reached over to the long white branch that snaked away from the fire and pushed it in further so that the embers crumbled and sparks spat briefly. The flame licked the dry wood, brightening, and produced heat that all of a sudden she could feel.

  ‘Where’s the toilet?’ she whispered.

  ‘Mate . . . there’s the old thunderbox out in that direction but I wouldn’t recommend it. Better off just going out on the flat.’

  That night, lying beneath a sky so immense that it was both exhilarating and alarming, finding it impossible to sleep, she wondered whether she would be able to explain to someone what it was like to step out into a place that was defined by different shades of darkness, with only a torch, with only a funnel of light sweeping the dirt in front of her. Before she went to bed she’d done as Cookie suggested. And when she thought she was far enough away from the camp she’d switched off the torch, and squatted beneath a sky studded with light, watching the men move in front of the fire, hoping that while she could see them, they couldn’t see her. It was something she could never have imagined, like asking for water so that she could clean her teeth, and making a bed as the night breeze lifted the sheet before she had time to tuck it into the mattress.

  She thought of the neon lights in the West End of London and

  Texas the people below them, who never knew this great swathe of natural light, and she felt privileged and brave.

  The day began in darkness. Someone ran an iron bar along the side of the shed and it woke her instantly. Then she heard the cook call out and more sounds drifted across the flat, horses snorting, and the clinking of metal bits and she felt as though she hadn’t been asleep for very long at all. Around the fire it was much the same as the night before except there were fewer men since two of them were rounding up the horses. She was offered stew and tea, and while she nursed her mug, a line of light defined the edge of her world and then extended out, gradually revealing the dimensions and everything within it, and she was surprised by how normal it all looked. Wheel marks in the powdery dirt revealed which way they’d come the night before. The tracks led towards some yards about two hundred metres away which they must have driven past. She followed the men there when it was time to begin work.

  II

  The metal was still warm from the sun. She pushed the gate closed and the noise of the hinges grinding unsettled some black cockatoos roosting in the bare branches of a dead tree. They rose into the violet sky, calling, krurr, krurr, the sound fading as they flew off into the distance, tail feathers flashing red. She secured the gate by tying pieces of wire together that hung from the frame. Tommy was on his horse, holding the reins of her gelding.

  ‘You reckon we got all night,’ he said impatiently.

  She and Tommy had walked a small mob of cows and calves back to the paddock they had come from while the other men loaded steers onto a truck. They’d spent most of the day drafting cattle in the yards and it was about seven kilometres back to the camp. She took the reins from Tommy and tightened them around her horse’s neck and swung up into the saddle.

  The sun was a big red ellipse sitting sideways above the land to her left and it seemed to liquefy into ripples as it approached the earth.

  They were riding across a treeless plain, like the black-soil plain John had pointed out during her last drive with him. She realised she didn’t feel anything for him, not even disgust.

  She was just glad that nothing more was said about it and she didn’t have to see him very often. Susannah was difficult to understand and Laura wasn’t sure whether she could trust her.

  Even if she had been a little more approachable recently, Lau
ra was careful to respect the differences between them. Laura knew her place. She just didn’t expect it to be so well defined in the outback of Australia.

  Tommy spurred his horse into a trot. She gathered up the reins and did the same. The windmill in the distance and the feathery tops of trees beside it were black silhouettes against the glow of the sinking sun. She thought of Texas, perched on the rail, his legs angled casually beneath him, squinting into the dust, calling out instructions. When something went wrong,

  Texas when a cow was drafted in with the steers which meant the mob had to be run through the yards again, he called out and joked with the blokes. They always did what he asked. It was his eyes that drew her in the beginning, set above high sculpted cheekbones. She wondered what they saw when they looked away into the distance. Imagining his dry, hard lips pressed against hers: kissing the mouth that was framed by deep folds of skin. The horse changed pace and she sat deep into the seat of the saddle, the outline of the yards ahead. She gained on Tommy and urged her horse faster, calling out breathlessly over her shoulder, ‘Race you.’

  The hooves of their horses thudded the ground that was uneven in places and she pulled up short of the horizontal rails of the yard. In the half-light she could see the shape of men moving between them. The truck had already left. She climbed off her horse, short of breath, and led it through the opening. Its flanks were heaving. A man was walking towards her. His face was featureless against the pale light of the sky. It was Texas.

  ‘What you thinking eh?’

  Her smile slipped off her face.

  ‘That horse maybe break his leg, flying across the flat like that. Black soil you know. It got holes all through it, and he stumble, then you go and he go. Tommy, you know better eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Before you let them go, rub them down. Get the sweat off.’