The Vintage and the Gleaning

by Jeremy Chambers

  That old man! he shouts. He look like a weak old man to you? You think you can take him on, do you? Ay? Young bloke like you? You think you got muscle?

  John Langtree stands up and his gut flops below his belt. He puts a hand on my shoulder. He’s got big hands and arms, his bloated face bursting scarlet across the cheeks. He’s a big man all round and he is not a good man, drunk or sober.

  That’s an old shearer, that is, he says, slapping me on the shoulder. There’s nothing tougher than an old shearer. You think you can take him on? Bullshit!

  He takes his hand off my shoulder and pushes the boy hard in the forehead with one finger. The boy’s head reels back and he grabs hold of the rail.

  You think boxers is tough? roars John Langtree, holding his finger up to the boy’s face. You think wrastlers is tough? He drains his beer and slams it down on the bar towel. Pissweak!

  He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  There’s nothing tougher than an old shearer, he says.

  He dumps himself against the bar, his elbow hitting the counter. He leans over the boy.

  You think you can take him on? he growls. Yeah? He stays there bent over, steadying himself against the rail, his angry face with its firework cheeks right up to the boy’s. He moves his head about, glaring at the boy.

  Just let him be, John, I say.

  John Langtree keeps staring. The boy grins. John Langtree mumbles and stands up. I am not looking at him but the boy is. I look straight ahead.

  John Langtree stands there with his finger pointing nowhere and there is a long silence. He drops his arm and looks into space, muttering and swearing and then he turns, pitching against the bar, next to me.

  You was gun shearer, wasn’t you, Smithy? he says.

  I can feel his hot sour breath on the side of my face but I do not turn around.

  That’s right, I say.

  He takes his hand off the bar and rests it on my shoulder again.

  You was ringer, wasn’t you? he says.

  That’s right, I say.

  John Langtree stays there with his hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off and he mumbles and looks around for his pot.

  He leans towards me against the bar, the wood squeaking against his bare arm, his face close to mine.

  How long was you ringer? John Langtree asks me.

  I went shearing forty-seven years and then I quit, I say.

  John Langtree looks at me. He drops his elbow onto the counter and his body thumps against the wood.

  Yeah, but how long was you ringer? he asks.

  That’s when I quit, I say. When I wasn’t ringer no more.

  John Langtree stays there, his eyes searching my face. I look in the other direction. He belches and wipes his mouth with his arm, looking over at the boy, swearing under his breath. He reaches across the bar from behind me and tries to grab the boy’s hair. He misses and grunts and slides along the bar until his body presses into me, hot, damp and stinking. I stand up and John Langtree slips forward into the barstool, its feet scraping across the tiles. He blinks and reaches out and snatches at the boy’s hair, pulling the hair and the boy’s head with it, twisting it to the side. The boy makes a sound of pain and his hands flail. His stool starts to topple. I put out my boot and steady the stool and I look at John Langtree.

  John Langtree gives the boy’s hair a yank and the boy is in pain again, holding his hand to the tight strands in John Langtree’s fist.

  What’s this? John Langtree scowls. What the bloody hell you call this?

  Even with the hard grip tearing at his hair and his face forced downwards, the boy is grinning.

  It’s just the fashion, John, I say.

  John Langtree gives it one last yank and lets go. The boy straightens his neck and takes his hair in his hand and looks it over, drawing out thin blond strands and running his hand over his scalp. He brushes it back, still grinning. He takes a drink from his pot.

  John Langtree pushes himself up from the barstool, swearing as it slides under him. He heaves his chest to the railing with a grunt, rolls of pink flesh naked through the back of his drenched singlet. Finding his footing, he staggers over to me.

  What’s say we do him like the old days, he says to me in a low voice. Take him down the sheds. Give him a run over with the clippers.

  I walk past him and sit back on the barstool.

  John Langtree turns, looking for the boy. He goes over and grabs a full fist of the boy’s hair, jerking the boy’s head back and looking him in the eye. John Langtree’s face is raw and mean.

  That’s what we would have done in the old days, he yells. Take you down the shearing sheds give you a haircut.

  He’s just a boy, John, I say. For Christ’s sake just bloody well leave it will you.

  John Langtree mumbles and lets go of the boy’s hair. He stands there looking at us and I do not look at him and he leaves.

  You’d be well advised to stay away from that bloke, I tell the boy.

  Nah, he was all right, says the boy, grinning. Just joking around.

  No, I say. He’s been inside. Stay away from him.

  The boy brushes his hair back again, running his fingers through it. He is sweating. He rubs his eyes with his palms and looks at me, more sober than he was, but his eyes still tired and full of drink. He reaches for his pot.

  So were you a shearer, Smithy? he asks me, drinking.

  Of course I was, I say. Wasn’t I just telling you about it? About the season?

  Oh, he says lazily, I thought you meant season like grape picking season or something.

  No, nothing like that, I say. I never went out on the vines till I got old. I been a shearer all my life. Forty-seven years. I was gun shearer at your age and I was ringer not much older.

  The boy fixes his sleepy eyes on me.

  I wasn’t much older than you at all, first time I made ringer, I say. I remember it, remember the station. Saltbush country. Ever been to Saltbush country?

  The boy shakes his head.

  There’s nothing hotter than a shearing shed in Saltbush country, I say. And that’s not just my opinion. Everyone used to say that, back in the old days. Common knowledge. Hotter than hell, Saltbush shed. You been in a shearing shed before? Working shed?

  The boy shakes his head again, his head drooping and his hair brushing the counter.

  Well, you got to be there to know what it’s like, I say. Stinks. Stinks of men and stinks of sheep. You get a mob of dirty, sweating sheep. Nothing like the stink of that. Lanolin. You know what lanolin is? I ask the boy.

  The boy shakes his head.

  It gets all over you, I say. When you’re hauling sheep all day. Lanolin, daggy fleece, sheep shit. Iodine, ammonia, diesel. That was how we run the plants in the old days. Diesel. Nothing like the stink of a shearing shed.

  It is Mick-the-Pom’s birthday and Wallace and Tony Malone are trying to wrestle him down but Mick-the-Pom keeps dodging them. They are all three of them big men and they belt up and down the pub and around the pool tables. Wallace and Tony Malone lope low to the ground as they go for the tackle, Mick-the-Pom swears as he runs, glancing behind him as he goes. Les watches them, looking nervous.

  I remember the station, I say. Remember the day itself. Saltbush country. Hot, stinking shed. But I was young then. And I was strong and I knew it too. And proud of it, that’s for sure. I had me pride, back then. Plenty of it. You know how it is, when you’re young. Everything ahead of you. Arrogant. I was proud and I was arrogant. I was as young as you are now.

  I go to take a drink but realise I don’t have one.

  I suppose you have to make the most of it while you can, I say.

  Wallace and Tony Malone have Mick-the-Pom trapped against the side of one of the pool tables. Mick-the-Pom feints this way and that, but the two men stay steady. They rush him and the three of them sprawl against the pool table. The pool table tips up onto two legs and the balls clatter together and spill over the side, rolling across the flo
or. The players complain. Les’s eyes pop.

  So I’d tallied one ton by the afternoon, I say to the boy. And I’ve got the others watching me, the old men saying you’ll never last boy, working like that, and they’re shaking their heads, but it only spurred me on. And I’m hauling sheep like buggery and I’m aching all over, but it didn’t feel so bad. Felt good far as I was concerned. Dripping in sweat and I’m shearing quick, but I’m shearing steady too, barely a nick. Shear them, chuck them down the chute, haul them up. One after another I keep going. So that’s shearing for you. When you’re serious about it. When you got pride in it. And I just keep on going. Every muscle in me body aching, but I just keep going. And so I made ringer that day.

  Wallace and Tony Malone and Mick-the-Pom scuffle underneath the pool table and it lifts up and down and nearly topples with the players trying to hold it steady. Mick-the-Pom breaks free and runs past the bar and out into the beer garden. The other two charge after him. Stools and chairs overturn and then they come hurtling back in and pass us, thundering like horses at the track. Wallace tackles Mick-the-Pom and all three of them hit the floor and Tony Malone sits on Mick-the-Pom’s chest. Wallace gets up, picking his glasses off the floor and putting them back on. He takes a jug of beer from the counter and pours it slowly over Mick-the-Pom’s head. Men laugh and cheer. Tony Malone holds out his hand to Mick-the-Pom and pulls him to his feet.

  You bastards, says Mick-the-Pom, shaking his wet head. You right bloody bastards.

  So there was about ten thousand head still to go and we sheared them, I say. And afterwards we all went off in the contractor’s lorry, sitting around the plant, downtubes swinging all around us. And we go to the nearest grog shanty and there’s another team there who were finished for the season and with all the men the grog shop smelt same as the sheds. And me team were buying me brandy and I remember looking in the bar mirror at meself, standing there with a brandy in me hand. Looking strong, all that. And the men were calling me gun shearer and speed merchant and they said I had a thing or two to learn yet. And they talked about gun shearers they had known and women they had known and the big cities and cockies and unions and their homes and they sent me outside with a boy from the other team and I knocked him down and I came back in and I looked at meself in the mirror again. And the publican calls last drinks and I remember one man drinking down a whole bottle of gin. Whole bottle, just like that. Pinching his nose while he did it. So we leave the pub and go back to the lorry. But there was this one old shearer, Percy Olsen was his name, and Percy Olsen sits down on the ground outside the grog shop and there’s men standing around smoking and drinking from bottles, but the old fella’s just sitting there. And the men are calling to him but he’s just sitting there and he wouldn’t come over, so they go and try to pull him up but he wouldn’t get up and they had to drag him over to the lorry and I remember his boots coming off as they dragged him and him not saying a thing and one man hauls him up into the back of the lorry, up over his knee like a sheep, and they sit him opposite me and then they go and get his boots and throw them in after him and we drive off. And the other men are still talking and drinking and I remember Percy Olsen sitting there across from me, not looking at anything. He wasn’t looking at anything at all.

  I go to take a drink and remember again that I don’t have one and I look at the boy and the boy leans over and vomits onto the carpet and he retches and spits and wipes his mouth and vomits again and he keeps vomiting until there is nothing left. I look over at Les, who is watching, and I grin.

  Walking home along the railway tracks I remember that night.

  It was a night not unlike this one. The air warm, the breeze in the long grass, its rustling movement regular and all around, swaying to and fro like the ebb and flow of the sea. And I was moving with its tide.

  And the dry, dull fragrance of the grass and the far-off crops, the air fresh, the dark outlines of fences and houses and backyard trees above me, staining the glassy sky. The silhouettes of owls, still as fixtures on the branches, and then falling and soaring before me, their wings beating the air, throbbing with deep vibrations. Frogs chirping in the undergrowth, the nocturnal hum of insects, the twitter and rasp of possums and mosquitoes all around me. The rustle of leaves.

  So it was, I remember. A night like this.

  I was drunk that night, nicely drunk. Just nice enough so I didn’t feel the stones under my boots or the gnawing in my guts. Just nice enough to be moving without effort and feeling without thought. Moving with the hot gusts pleasant on my back, driving me along, carrying me, and I felt as though I were drifting. Just drunk enough to forget who I was or what I was except a man walking, walking towards that great starclouded dome at the horizon, and in the darkness I felt that I myself was walking among the heavens. Just nice enough to forget everything.

  And it was the sound I heard first, the wailing. And the drink had slowed my senses so there was the wailing coming from far off and then it was all around before I heard it for what it was, and it was the same for the misty shape down the track, that dun glowing blur coming closer and the strange high noise had pierced me before I understood, and it turned my guts to ice, the white naked woman emerging from the darkness and the blood flowing from her, from her eyes and from her head and it flowed black down her pale moonlit body and her mouth was open and her cry was loud and dreadful and she kept coming towards me and her arms reached out and grasped at me. And I thought my time had come.

  Saturday I do some work in the garden and help my neighbour change a tyre. We talk about the locust plague and what the government’s going to do about it.

  Sounds like they’re going to poison half the country, he says.

  Saturdays I try to keep meself busy.

  Sunday I go to church.

  After service the congregation gathers outside. There are farmers and shopkeepers and their wives. Italian widows in black. Working men stand uneasy while women talk. The priest moves from group to group with his soft, smiling face, his high-pitched laugh sounding over the general hubbub. Kids are playing noisy games on the lawn, running about and chasing each other. Teenagers flirt among the cypress trees.

  I am standing by the wall of the church in the shade of a buttress. A boy hurtles past me, nearly knocking himself against the bricks. I catch him.

  Careful there, I say.

  The boy looks up at me, stepping back, looking at me like I’m something strange, something he is trying to figure out but can’t. Then he turns and runs off again, piping even louder than before.

  I am not wearing my hat and my hands keep going to my hair, smoothing it down. I slouch and squint in the sun. I am waiting for the priest.

  The congregation does not move and after a time I go back into the church. It is cool and empty, shafts of sunlight falling from the high windows, catching the play of dust motes, printing light and shadow in stark angles across the pews and the hardwood floor. The floor is rough and nude in the light.

  I sit but I do not kneel. I look for the words but the words do not come.

  It is late and I am standing at the sink drinking a glass of water, about to turn in for the night. The doorbell rings and Charlotte Clayton is standing there, her eyes like a child’s.

  I’m sorry Smithy, she says. I’ve been walking and walking. And I saw your house.

  She looks away.

  It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? I say.

  She nods and looks at me.

  I don’t think I can do this, she says. I don’t think I can face him.

  Charlotte goes home to get some things and I start fixing up Spit’s old room. It hasn’t been much touched since the day me and Spit had our blue. Roy’s slept there often enough, times he was too pissed to go home. But I never bothered to make any effort for Roy. I look around the room.

  Over the bed there is a large poster of a naked woman lying on the bonnet of a sports car. I take that down first and then all the other naked women tacked to the walls and doors, pages torn
from magazines.

  There is a girl coming out of water, her beaded wet breasts showing, another in a pleated white skirt, bent over, nothing under the skirt, a woman sitting naked with her legs spread, holding a red rose between them. It is all tits and arses and cars and motorcycles and the women looking right at you and every one with the same expression. I take them all down and throw them in a pile on the floor.

  The mirror on the old rosewood dresser is covered in pictures as well. There’s the naked girls again and underneath them long strips of photos, taken in a booth. Spit and his mates, making faces, flexing their arms, showing their bare arses. Spit and Belle kissing, hugging, touching their tongues together, row after row of them. There is Spit with other girls too, Spit at different ages with his long hair and earring, tight T-shirts showing off his tatts, a cigarette packet tucked under the sleeve, holding one lit while he kisses the girls, girls I don’t remember. I take the photos down and put them on the dresser.

  Underneath there are more things on the mirror. A swimming certificate with Spit’s name printed on it and a bronze stamp. A green ribbon with Third Place written in faded gold letters. I try to think but I can’t remember Spit being in any sort of competition and I can’t remember him learning how to swim neither. A photo falls to the floor and I pick it up and look at it and then I sit on Spit’s bed and look at it some more.

  It is a family photo, a proper portrait, one we had done in a studio just before Florrie went into hospital. And I remember now about those photos, remember getting them in the mail during my bender and opening the envelope and chucking them in the bin soon as I saw the first one. And it wasn’t because I was angry or grieving or anything like that, but because I wasn’t feeling anything, because I didn’t care about nothing no more. And I didn’t know that Spit had got hold of one of them. And I didn’t know he had kept it all those years.

  We all three of us had driven into the city, decided to make a day of it, and I had asked Florrie beforehand if she wanted to do something special while we were there. And I had meant whether she wanted to go to a restaurant or do some shopping in a department store, something like that. And Florrie said that what she’d really like would be to get a family photo taken, a proper one, because we’d never had one done before. And she must have rung up a photographer and booked it and she set out clothes for us that morning.