Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  Young Joey has been sent to the King’s School in Parramatta and Jessica feels fortunate if she can just catch a glimpse of him on horseback during the school holidays. He has grown into a tall fourteen-year-old and takes after his grandfather in looks. He is a bigboned boy, a little clumsy-looking, with a mop of blond hair and ice-blue eyes.

  The future owner of Riverview Station has for the past four years competed with boys of his own age at the Narrandera Show, and Jessica leaves Mary to tend the turkeys and stays with Auntie Dolly so that she might attend every event he competes in. Hester and Meg no longer accept Jessica as family — her friendship with Mary has seen to that — so that they look through her as though she no longer exists.

  Joey is too heavy in the saddle and lacks the natural balance needed to be a good horseman, and he always finishes well down in the field. Jessica is finally forced to admit he is a bad loser, for he seems to sulk if he doesn’t win. He’ll hand his horse to a stable boy and stomp away to be comforted by Meg and Hester, who make no end of a fuss of him.

  Back home Jessica tends to bore Mary endlessly with all the details. ‘The boy’s mollycoddled because Jack’s not there to see he grows up proper. He’s soft, you can see it — soft in the saddle, lazy, and he doesn’t respect the horse. Sniffy too, he don’t talk to the other lads much and I ain’t seen him rub down his mount once. It’s Meg and Hester, them two’s made a sissy outa him. Jack would never have stood it. He’d soon have knocked that sort o’ nonsense outa him, his grandpa woulda too. Joe wouldn’t let him get away with that sort of rot. One day he’s got to run Riverview and he’s gotta start earnin’ his respect now. Country folk’ve got long memories and Meg and Hester ought to be ashamed of what they’re doing to my boy.’

  Mary knows this kind of talk will be on for a week after Jessica’s return from Narrandera and she has learned to make all the right women’s noises without taking too much notice. She knows Jessica hopes that her boy will grow up to be like Jack or if he can’t be like Jack, at least like Joe — both hard men. Jessica often wonders aloud to Mary what Joey would be like in a fight. ‘Too soft and slow and he’d go bawlin’ to Meg or his granny,’ she reckons.

  It’s early October and there have been good rains, though with the Depression the bottom has fallen out of wool prices. Jessica can almost hear Joe looking down from heaven and saying, ‘That’s right, good rains for the first time in ten years and we have to shoot the lambs and it ain’t worth clippin’ and balin’ the flamin’ wool. God hates this bloody country!, The rains and the early summer heat have brought out the snakes. Snakes seem to know when there’s a good season about to come, with plenty of rodents for their young. Jessica is losing more than half a dozen turkey chicks a day and she is forced to keep them inside the. run. She’s also losing several hens who are too stupid to look where they scratch in the saltbush, and with so many snakes about, Rusty shows her several dead birds each day. The only good thing that can be said is that the wattle and red gum blossom are in profusion and Mary’s hives are brimming with the best honey the women can remember getting.

  ‘Good thing Solly’s order is down. At this rate I reckon it’s gunna be hard to give him the birds he wants, come Hanukkah.’

  ‘What’s Hanukkah?’ Mary asks.

  ‘It’s Jewish Christmas, well sort of, without Jesus,’ Jessica says.

  ‘And they eat turkey like us?’ Mary laughs. ‘Until I know you, Jessie, I never tasted turkey in my whole life. At the Mission all they give us Christmas mornin’ was cold mutton with maggots.’

  ‘Nah,’ Jessica explains. ‘They don’t eat turkey at Hanukkah, well not especially anyway. Moishe tells me Solly has a notice in his shop for the Mrs Turkey Shoppers. To try a little turkey for Hanukkah don’t make you Christian. It delicious, it kosher, so why not? God bless! But Moishe reckons that Solly goes gentile at Christmas and he’s got a nice little arrangement with Hannan’s Butcher Shop in Rose Bay to sell the turkeys to the rich Eastern Suburbs matrons.’

  Jessica sighs and says, ‘But this year I don’t suppose there’s going to be a whole lot of turkey on the table for most folk, what with the snakes and the Depression. I might as well shut the hatchery down and save the kerosene and grain.’

  These are the things which occupy Jessica’s mind into late October and the coming of summer. It is a really hot morning, the first of the summer blinders. Jessica has let everything except the turkey chicks out of the run and Rusty is busy seeing they stay bunched up in the nearest paddock. Mary has gone up to Wagga to see Polly and Sarah and Jessica is smoking a hive to fill Solly’s weekly order for honey. The order for turkeys is still way down but Solly can’t get enough Redlands ‘By gum, it’s good!’ honey.

  Jessica hears Rusty growl and then give a short, sharp bark. She is holding a full honeycomb, which she’s just removed from the frame. ‘Oh shit,’ she says in alarm and drops the frame and runs to the hut for the shotgun.

  Her hands are sticky with honey as she breaks the twin barrels and feeds two birdshot cartridges into them. Rusty is still whining and barking as she comes out of the hut and Jessica is cursing her sticky hands. She runs over to the nearest paddock just in time to see the kelpie emerging from under an old man saltbush.

  ‘Rusty, come here boy,’ she calls and the dog turns and comes towards her. At ten feet she can see the two scarlet cuts on his nose. ‘Oh Jesus, no!’ Jessica screams, frozen to the spot, and the kelpie goes down on his front legs. Rusty gets up and tries to reach her but falls again. His eyes are still bright but he seems to have lost his sense of direction. He gets up and walks sideways, but falls over and tries once more to stand up. Jessica sees with horror the thin line of white foam around his mouth. Rusty makes one last desperate effort to reach his mistress, and gives a pathetic little whine as though he is trying to apologise to her for being so stupid. Then he collapses at her feet.

  Jessica’s first concern is for her beloved Rusty. She puts the shotgun down and bends her knees to lift him and then cradles him in her arms and starts to carry him towards the hut. The kelpie is heavy and she can feel his heart racing against the inside of her arm. Her hands are sticky against his soft, warm fur and as she holds him, Jessica knows only one snake can have this effect on a dog. She is positive Rusty’s been bitten by a king brown. His entire body is now vibrating with the effects of the deadly venom. In her mind Jessica hears Joe’s words all those years back when she was just a brat. ‘A dog’s got maybe ten minutes, a big man maybe an hour.’ She remembers how he’d looked at her, measuring her weight in his head, and said, ‘Half an hour, you wouldn’t go beyond that, a mulga’s a real bastard.’ Joe liked to get things right — he always called a king brown a mulga, though it didn’t sound nearly as dangerous.

  Now Jessica puts Rusty down on the table near Billy Simple’s gravestone. She knows there is nothing she can do to save him, so she runs to the hut and fetches a blanket to cover him. Then she washes her hands quickly and comes to sit beside him, stroking the kelpie’s head and holding his soft ear in her hand, crying and waiting for her best mate to die.

  ‘You were the only turkey-dog in the world, Rusty, and the best friend a whitefella ever had. I love you and I’m gunna miss you somethin’ terrible,’ she says, then Jessica feels his brave heart stop. With one last convulsive jerk, his legs stiffen and he dies.

  Rusty, who had come to her as a puppy, a little squirming bundle of red colour and curiosity. When she’d come back from the loony-bin he’d been her best mate from the very first. He’d never whined and every morning of his life he’d be waiting faithfully for her outside the hut just to tell her that she was the best missus a dog could have. Rusty, the champion turkey-dog of the whole world, was dead, bitten by a fucking king brown when he was trying to save some stupid turkey hen. Jessica pulls the blanket over his head. ‘There’s too many people I love buried around here,’ she sobs. Then her breast is suddenly filled with rage. Not
hing is allowed to live in this godforsaken land, and nothing ever dies naturally. The land, the dust and heat and floods and drought, everything living off everything else, death and destruction everywhere. Nothing is safe from this monstrous land. For the first time in her life Jessica knows what Joe meant all those years ago, feels the bitterness he felt, shares his hatred and the bittersweet love for this miserable strip of earth.

  Jessica rises, fuming, and in her mind she’s marked the spot where Rusty emerged from the bush. Snakes don’t move around much in the heat and the king brown always marks its territory. She walks over to the shotgun lying on the ground — the barrel is already too hot to touch from lying in the fierce heat. She pulls back the hammers and then approaches the thicket of saltbush and wattle. Now she sees why there’d be a snake in there. A small clump of rock is hidden by the bushes — it’s an ideal place for rodents, and a bloody snake would know that.

  Jessica pushes the branches aside, stepping very carefully through the bush. Snakes are almost blind and deaf but if there’s one there it will feel her vibrations as she approaches. A king brown, knowing it has a safe place like an outcrop of rock, will stay put and lie in wait rather than risk coming out into open ground.

  Jessica stands still, waiting until her eyes have grown used to the deep shade under the saltbush, not moving the shotgun held at her waist. She can fire from the hip if she has to — it will throw her back but at least she wouldn’t miss the bastard. Then she sees it — it’s a king brown all right, a real big bastard. It lies curled with its ugly head raised, forked tongue testing the air, knowing she is there and measuring the distance between them. She is close enough to see its obsidian eyes, dark as sudden death.

  Jessica doesn’t panic as she slowly raises the shotgun to her shoulder, pushing the branches aside with the barrel so that she has a clear shot at the serpent’s head. She feels her hand pull back the trigger, then the rending of the air from the explosion and then the snake lashing at the branches as its head explodes when the birdshot smashes it to a pulp. ‘You bastard! You bastard, I’ve got you!’ Jessica screams, then in her fury she lets the second barrel go, the birdshot at close range ripping the already dead snake apart.

  Suddenly she hears Joe’s words loud and clear in her head while the sound of the second shot echoes across the creek to the paddock beyond. ‘A big brown’ll hunt you down, stalk you all the way home. If it’s cranky there’ll be no stopping it. If you’ve shot one of the mongrels always keep a fresh shot up the spout for its mate, girlie.’

  The second snake strikes high, catching her in the neck. She never even saw it, the mate, its deadly partner which has come after her.

  Jessica makes it back to the hut and thinks about saddling the horse and trying to get to Riverview Station, which is an hour’s ride away. The bite is just under her jaw and there is no way she can hope to put a tourniquet on it. She is already feeling dizzy and nauseous.

  Now she’s having trouble with her eyes, starting to see double. She knows she has no chance — she’s got half an hour at the most — and she won’t be able to stay in the saddle if she tries to ride to Meg and Hester and her beloved Joey.

  Jessica pulls the little brass key from around her neck and removes a small box from the shelf above her bed and unlocks it. Inside is a gold hunter watch and a bundle of letters neatly tied. Even with her vision becoming steadily more blurry, Jessica seems to know precisely which letter she wants.

  She places the letter and the watch on the table, drags off her boots and strips off her moleskins and flannel shirt and steps out of her bloomers. Naked, she leaves the hut, staggers over to the creek and wades into the water up to her waist and stands beside the same submerged rock she’d pushed against when she’d given birth to Joey fifteen years ago. Jessica washes herself carefully, conserving her strength, her every movement slow and deliberate. She can hear the water running over the rock and a group of rose-breasted galahs quarrelling in the paddock and the cicadas in the gum trees stinging the air with the pitch of their noise. Somehow she makes her way back into the hut. Her body is still hard and young and she still doesn’t know how attractive it is. There hasn’t been anyone around to tell her that at thirty-three years of age she has become a very beautiful woman.

  Jessica dries herself slowly and then puts on one of Auntie Dolly’s pretty dresses, the ones she’d been given after she’d left the loony-bin. She feels very dizzy as she attempts to button up her good shoes but manages to complete the task. Then she unfolds a clean pinny — it’s one she has kept all these years with Meg’s rosebud embroidered in the corner of the pocket. She slips it over her head and ties it behind her back. Her movements are growing slower and her arms are heavy with fatigue as she picks up the watch and letter and puts them in her pocket. Jessica then walks shakily into the blinding sun, though she feels cold and seems to walk as if in a dream.

  She reaches the outside table where Rusty lies and slips her arms under his body. His dead weight is almost too much for her but she summons the last of her strength and, lifting him, she places him down in front of Billy’s gravestone.

  Rusty’s head is on his paws as though he is asleep in the shade of the old river gum. Jessica sits down slowly with her back against the rear of the gravestone, against the lettering which says in Yiddish, Compliments Mrs Goldberg. She discovered two years ago that there had never been a Mrs Goldberg — that in fact Sally did all the baking, as Moishe’s mother had died in childbirth. She gives a weak smile at this thought.

  Jessica has only enough strength to reach into her pinny and to open the back of the gold hunter Jack had left her as he lay dying.

  Then she takes the letter from her pocket and unfolds it, placing it on her lap with the beautiful old antique watch on top of it so the letter won’t blow away. Her eyelids feel leaden and she closes her eyes. ‘I loved you, Jack,’ she whispers. ‘I always did and I always will.’

  Mary finds Jessica with her back resting against Billy Simple’s gravestone. From a distance Jessica looks as though she is asleep, so Mary does not shout out to her.

  It’s only when she draws closer that she sees Jessica is dead with Rusty lying beside her, resting together as Mary had seen the two of them so often. ‘Good mates, them two,’ she murmurs, tears springing to her eyes.

  She kneels beside her friend and takes the watch from her lap. Pasted against the open lid is a small curl of blonde hair, which seems to be stuck against the lid with a tiny lump of tar. Scratched into the gold above it in crude letters, as though etched with the blade of a penknife, are the words I love you, Tea Leaf.

  Mary picks up the letter and sees that it is in Jessica’s handwriting. She begins to read.

  6 August 1914

  My darling Jack,

  Today the war clouds over Europe finally broke and they have taken you from me to fight in the war. I know that you will be brave but my heart breaks for fear that I may never see you again. I am writing this letter to you, though I shall never send it. If you come back to me I shall kiss your sweet lips and feel your strong body against mine and tell you what it says. If you do not return, you will never know that I carry your child.

  My strongest wish is that I may give you a son as handsome and as brave as his father. A boy who you may teach to be a man as loving and gentle as you are.

  I shall never love again, for I shall never again feel as I did when you loved me in Narrandera. When you carried me in your arms and stayed by my bed for two days while they made me stay in hospital. I will never forget how on the third night you came to the window. There was a moon, I remember, not quite full, and you came to the window and threw a pebble onto my bed to wake me. ‘Come, Jessie,’ you said. ‘Come and walk in the moonlight with me.’

  And then later we made love under a big old gum, with the wind in the high leaves sounding like the waves against the shore I’ve only dreamt of, those leaves rustling in the w
ind high up in the gum tree. Your body was so beautiful and when you were inside me, the pleasure was almost unbearable and I thought I must surely die. Oh Jack, I loved you so very much.

  I can feel our child, it kicks inside me. I know it will be a boy for already the kicks are rough and wild. With every kick I think of you, my dear, sweet, beautiful Jack.

  Stay safe, dear Jack. Stay brave and true. You are forgiven for Meg, for she has nothing of you and I have everything. I have your child.

  I love you, Jack. I always did and I always will.

  Tea Leaf.

  Mary looks up from her letter at the sound of wailing. Then she sees them, the black people. They are wading through the creek. The aunties and the old men and the gins with babies on their breasts. They’re splashing through the shallows and beginning to wail, to cry in the way that women cry when the greatest has gone away from them.

  At first there are only a few, but as the hours pass more and more come. By evening there are hundreds, more black people than Mary knew there could possibly be in the district. They come continuously for two days from Lachlan River, Nyngan, Wagga Wagga, Wilcannia and all the camps and settlements across the black soil plains and further still. West and north, east and south from the Victorian border, they come, and they don’t know why. And then they know, they’ve come to take Jessica into her dreaming.

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