He tilts his head at the other boy.
Yeah but so what, says the boy. At least I don’t faint.
Wallace is trying to tear the vines apart but they won’t budge. He swears and takes out his knife.
Course you don’t, says Wallace. Take it too bloody easy, don’t you. At least your mate gave it a go.
Wallace cuts the vines and pulls out foliage, throwing it into the row. He takes off his hat and wipes his brow and his glasses and his knife.
Yeah, but I never fainted, says the boy. Fainting’s for women.
Wallace puts his hat and glasses back on and looks at his knife. He folds it and puts it back in his pocket. He looks over at the boy, pushing his glasses against his face.
That’s what you reckon is it? he says. Shows how much you’ve seen of life, boy.
I stick my shovel into the ground and lean against it. It is a hot day, still hot.
It’s a pity about the boy, I say.
Yeah, says Wallace, picking up his shovel. I know.
It is hot all day long and nobody asks about the funeral.
After knockoff Roy parks the ute outside The Imperial.
What you parking here for? I ask.
Having a drink, says Roy, pulling up the handbrake. What’d you think I’m doing?
Yeah, I say. But here?
Roy takes off his hat and tilts the rear-view mirror to look at himself. He licks his fingers and combs his hair back with both hands.
It’s a pub, isn’t it? says Roy, looking at himself. It’s a pub, serves drinks. He feels his stubble with his thumb.
Yeah, I say. But Imperial? I don’t mind Imperial nights. Friday night. Saturday night. But afternoons?
Roy is looking at his fingernails.
Afternoons Imperial, I say. Mob of ratbags.
Roy is studying his face in the mirror, turning it this way and that. I watch men going into the pub.
Well nobody’s forcing you, says Roy.
When I get out of the ute, Roy is still sitting looking at himself.
I walk down to the river and along the bank out to Spit’s fishing spot. Twigs and leaves crackle under my boots. Skinks dart before me and butterflies dance. I pick up a stick and pound it against the ground as I walk.
I find the spot all right, but no sign of Spit. The ashes of a dead campfire sit in a shallow hole, rocks set around them. I scoop some up and rub them between my fingers. They are still warm and smell of urine. I cooee but nobody comes and nobody calls back.
Across the river cormorants line a dead branch fallen across the shallows. They are unmoving, their black wings outstretched, drying in the fading sun. I pick up a stone and shy it across the river. It skims the surface, jumping six times in a curve, water beading and flashing from out of the brown murk. The cormorants watch without interest.
Squatting down on my heels, I rummage through the brittle groundcover, the bark warped, the leaves bleached and pitted. There are hooks and lengths of line, the hooks bent out of shape, some new, some tarnished, some rusted through. I pick one out and snap it between my fingers. It is Spit’s spot and has been for some time.
I go and sit on the roots of an old rivergum, leaning down to wash the ash off my hand. Resting my back between the buttresses of the trunk, I stretch out my legs, waiting.
A pelican comes down and hits the water in front of me, its wake rippling and churning. It holds its beak up and flaps its wings and rises from the water, shaking itself. It glides away up the river.
By the time I leave, the sun is setting red behind the rivergums. It looks as though the sky is burning up. And in the water the water is burning too.
Going back through town I see Spit’s ute parked outside Poachers. Inside it is empty except for Ted Matthews sitting watching the television and Spit at the bar talking to Liz.
I thought you was fishing, I say to Spit.
I was, says Spit.
Liz pours me a lemon squash.
Roy Thompson said you was fishing, I say. I just been down the river looking for you.
Yeah? says Spit.
Spit hands Liz his empty pot and lights a cigarette. He is leaning with his elbow on the bar.
I’m in the doghouse at home, he says.
Liz hands him the pot back full and he drains it and slides it back to her.
It’ll blow over, won’t it? I say.
Yeah, I suppose, says Spit.
Noise comes from the television. The greyhounds are on. Light flickers over Ted Matthews’ face. Liz puts another pot down on the counter.
It always blows over, doesn’t it? I say.
Yeah, says Spit. Eventually.
Spit fiddles around in the pocket of his jeans and takes out his wallet. He hands Liz a note and she opens the cash register and puts change on the bar towel. Spit grinds his cigarette into an ashtray and lights another one. He picks up his glass and turns around, leaning his back against the counter.
How was the fishing? I ask him.
Piss-poor, says Spit.
Friday, Spit doesn’t show but the boys do, both of them.
Wallace is pleased. He is trying not to let on but you can tell Wallace is pleased.
Whaddya doing coming in today for, he says to the one who’d dropped. You should have taken the day off. Take it easy. Build your model airplane.
I’m all right, says the boy.
Yeah, well, don’t work yourself too hard today, says Wallace.
Just take it slow, all right. Smithy’ll pick up the slack.
Wallace gets the jerry can from the back of the ute. He tells the boys to hold out their hands.
Not like that, says Wallace. Like this.
He shows them, cupping his hands.
Wallace pours turps onto the boys’ hands.
Rub it in, he says.
The boys rub their hands together.
That’ll toughen them up, he says. Put some calluses on them.
He shows the boys his hands.
What about the old-fashioned way, says Roy.
Wallace laughs.
I still reckon the old-fashioned way’s better, says Roy.
They want to do that it’s their business, says Wallace, pushing his glasses against his face. Nothing to do with me.
He watches the boys rubbing the turps into their hands and gives each of them a shovel. They run their hands up and down the shafts, making them shine.
When you got some calluses there, I’ll give you a go with the mattock, says Wallace. Put some muscle on you.
He looks at the boys for a moment.
Righteo, he says and goes into the vines.
Boss comes up to see how the boy is going.
Glutton for punishment, isn’t he, Wallace, he says.
I’ll keep an eye on him, says Wallace.
Boss leans over the vines.
You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you, he says to the boy.
I’m all right, says the boy.
Boss folds his arms and rests his chest against the tops of the vines, looking at the boy.
You were pushing yourself too hard, he says. No point in that.
He smiles at the boy and stands up straight, wiping off his jumper.
No point pushing yourself, is there Wallace? he says. Not if you’re going to knock yourself around.
That’s right, says Wallace.
He is chopping at a knot. Wood chips fly about and he grunts as he works.
I mean, these vines aren’t going anywhere, are they? Boss says to the boy. It’s not a competition. Not a race.
He picks at his jumper.
You make sure he takes it easy today, he says to Wallace.
Yeah, I got my eye on him, says Wallace.
He brings his shovel down hard and the knot splits off, scudding across the ground.
Best put some tar on that, says Boss.
Righteo, says Wallace.
Boss heads off down the row and then turns and comes back.
You mind if Iris
borrows someone for the afternoon? he asks Wallace.
Yeah, no worries, says Wallace.
Boss looks up at the sky.
Just a bit of garden work I think today, he says.
Wallace squats down to look at the vine. He rubs the raw white gash with his fingers.
I’ll send someone up, he says.
Good-o, says Boss.
Boss leaves.
Wallace stands up and points at the boy, the other one.
That’s you, Yap-yap, he says.
Roy laughs.
Wallace is grinning. He looks at the boy.
He’s going to love working for Iris, says Roy.
What’d you mean? asks the boy, stopping his work and looking up.
Roy and Wallace look at each other over the rows and then they both look at the boy.
By gee boy, you’re in for it today, says Wallace. There’s no fooling Iris. No getting away with things like you do down here. Not with Iris.
The boy says something.
You’ll see, says Wallace.
He’s going to love Iris, says Roy.
Wallace laughs and goes back to work. Roy spits and pulls up his shovel.
I’ll go, I say. Makes no difference to me.
After lunch I walk to the cellar through paddocks and lanes. The sun is strong and high and the land suffers. Paddocks are littered with the bones of livestock, the grass grazed short, scorched or gone to clay. Solitary eucalypts stand dead, dry and enormous, their fallen branches split and hollowed. Flocks of filthy, daggy sheep press together underneath the scrapes of shade, their fleece gone the colour of the earth. I feel their heat and there is the stench of damp, dirty lanolin. Rams jostle through the mob, dipping their horns at me, giving deepthroated warnings.
Flies find me. They swarm and I walk with one hand waving, slapping my neck. I catch one and look at it dead between my fingers, its body bloated and tinted blue in the sunlight. I flick it away. Rabbits bolt before me. My shadow bobs.
Lanes rough with rock, glutted with long grass, soft and loamy beneath their crusts, bearing the deep indents of tractor tyres, crumbling beneath my feet. Vineyards back onto them, the vines crawling wild over the fences and webbing the lanes in a crazed tangle, leaves tiered to the ground.
Brief canopies of trees cast a scattered shade, sunlight glancing through the still shadows. Their bark is thick and scarred and they creak in the heat. The deafening screech of cicadas. I break a branch from a stringy-bark and peel it to its pale wood, pummelling the bald stick against the ground as I go.
Dogs bark as I pass. Quartz juts from the earth and sparkles. A single birdcall sounds across dead open spaces. A motorcycle comes towards me down a rolling paddock, lined by a high deer fence. The farmer, Dan Patterson, waves as he recognises me and turns back to the doe pen. The stags graze in the open. One of them raises its head to look at me, chewing its cud. It is young, bay-pointed, strips of velvet hanging from its hard naked antlers.
Farmhouses in the distance. Crops of blanched wheat and barley. Orchards of towering cherry trees, glossy-leaved citrus, walnuts, olives, vines, always the vines, some disbudded in neat rows, others still wild with summer growth.
A flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos line the bare branches of an ancient gum. They call their harsh call and flare their crests and take off with a sound of wings and the flock dazzles against the shifting vapours of the sky. I spot a half-dead tortoise struggling through the grass and I pick it up, turning it in the direction of the river.
In one paddock a horse trots cautiously towards me, a big Irish hunter. It dodges and feints as it approaches, sniffing and snorting. Coming close, it rests its head on my shoulder, its great weight against me. I stroke the nose and mane.
You’re a big fella, aren’t you, I say.
The horse half closes its eyes, occasionally flicking its nose at the flies crawling over it, making gruff sounds. Its nostrils flare and sigh and I feel its hot breath. Muscles twitch under the sheen of the coat and its back legs shuffle from side to side. Sweat prickles against my cheek and neck. I push its head away with both hands. The horse leans back heavy against me.
All right big fella, I say.
I twist away and it follows me to the fence, stopping to graze and making quick retreats, looking back with large, liquid eyes and then trotting after me again. It pushes its flank against me as I climb the gate. When I come down the other side I stroke the chestnut nose again. The fence creaks under the horse’s chest and it snorts and whinnies as I leave, before turning and galloping away.
I cut through Boss’s old farmyard with its empty dam and broken barley silo, littered with derelict equipment from Boss’s father’s day and his grandfather’s and all the way back. Old winepresses of cast-iron and cracked wood, ploughs and yokes and rusted rims, machines with forgotten purpose. It is overgrown with cactus now, a great sprawling mass of pale leaves spreading out toothed and thick and taller than a man, drooping under their own weight.
Past Boss’s father’s stables, full of saddles turning to powder, mice nesting in the blankets and uniforms, his dress-sword rusted fast to the scabbard, the old .303 gone to pieces and nothing left of the medals but the medals themselves, scattered among the rodent droppings, tarnished green and black and beyond recognition.
In the paddock behind, the descendants of his thoroughbreds have gone brumby, ribs showing through their mangy coats. They turn and flee as I pass.
I cross the road to the cellar and go looking for Boss in the tasting shed and the cooling shed and among the vats and in the stockroom. I stop to chat with the women but they don’t know where he is.
Outside I go around the back to the slumping shanty of the old cellar. It is dim and cool inside, the air heavy with wine and fermentation. I walk through the maze of barrels. Tangled hoses run along the dirt floor. One of the barrels has a ladder against it and I climb it. There is hardly enough light to see inside but I can make out Boss well enough, sitting inside the barrel with his legs stretched out and propped up against the rounded wall, half sunk in the residue and covered in it, his bare arms and legs shiny with the dried sludge, Boss purple all over. He is eating a pie.
Boss looks up at me and scowls.
What the bloody hell are you playing at? he asks.
There is another pie sitting on his lap in a paper bag and a bottle of tomato sauce.
You said Iris needed a hand this arvo, I say.
So what did you come down here for then? he says. Iris is up at the house, isn’t she?
Boss takes an angry breath.
I mean, where’s your common sense?
He takes a bite of the pie and chews it.
Come poking around here, he says. Poking around the bloody place. I mean, what were you thinking? You expect Iris to be down a barrel? Now come on.
He swallows and grins, his eyes white in the wine-soaked darkness.
I was just looking for Iris, I say.
Well, can you see her here?
He picks up the sauce bottle and shakes it.
For Christ’s sake, he says.
I climb down the ladder and start to walk off when Boss calls me back. I cup my hands against the barrel wall and yell into them.
Yeah?
Boss’s voice comes out echoing.
No need to tell Iris about the pies, he says.
Righteo, I say and I leave.
Boss’s house is in the middle of what we call the house vineyard. Before Iris came along the vines crawled the sides of the house and matted the sunken verandah, climbing the chamfered wood supports and running along the guttering. In late summer bunches of dark ripe grapes would hang from the eaves.
But Iris wanted her garden and it was me and Wallace cleared the rows from out the front and a few acres round the sides. We pull up more of them every winter when the ground is frozen solid and us splitting our fair share of mattocks, Boss standing there watching us with a look on his face like we was pulling teeth, as Wallace says. And
Iris got her garden all right and now she grows roses that win prizes at local shows.
I walk along the garden paths. The lines of silver birches planted at the sides of the garden are tall now and gleaming. Underneath the hardwood bower, shaded with new-leaved wisteria, purple blossoms bloom. Soon they will bend their stalks, hanging in bell-shaped masses and they will bloom and die and bloom again all summer long. The jasmine flowers have withered and fallen now, the leaves grown thick over a long trellis bordering the front lawn and pruned like a hedge. In spring the breeze wafts the smell of the jasmine into town. And when those first warm and fragrant nights break through the long chill I know the season has come.
Iris is on her knees, tending roses with secateurs. She is wearing long filthy gloves and a straw hat. She stands up when she sees me coming.
Smithy, she says. I thought they would send up one of the boys.
Well, they sent me, I say.
Iris brushes dirt off her gloves.
It’s just weeding the paths today, she says. Nothing exciting.
Makes no difference to me, I say.
Iris looks at me from under her hat.
But what about your knees, Smithy, she says. What about your poor old knees?
My old knees will be fine, I say.
Iris clucks her tongue.
Rubbish, she says. No point playing the tough man with me.
Iris pulls off her gloves and throws them into the wheelbarrow. She takes off her hat with one hand and pats down her hair with the other.
No point trying to impress me, she says.
Iris goes into the house through the sunroom. She comes back with a cushion and hands it to me.
The cushion is corduroy, a burgundy colour and embroidered with a picture of two birds on a branch. The birds are blue with coloured wings and the wings are patterned with gold thread. The branch spreads across the cushion. One of the birds is beginning to fly, but the wind is blowing it back.
You don’t want to use this Iris, I say, looking at the cushion.
Iris laughs.
The Vintage and the Gleaning Page 5
