Fresh Fields

by Peter Kocan

  “Well, I thought the Maserati was gone for sure, and the girlfriend with it. The blade o’ the dozer is about twenty feet from the driver’s-side door when Coles gets control again and stops. By then Miss Australia’s flung herself away and is face down in the mud and the cow dung. That’s the last we saw. We went below the crest o’ the hill then.”

  Clem took a long last drag of his butt and flicked it away.

  “Gosh,” said the youth, deeply impressed.

  “Yeah,” said Clem. “As I say to Gladys: No matter what happens now, we’ve got that to remember.”

  “How long ago was it?”

  “’Bout a year. Jimson hasn’t been up since. He’s lookin’ to sell the place. Even if it hadn’t been for the other things, the tussock would’ve given him second thoughts about bein’ a Pitt Street grazier.”

  “What’s the tussock?”

  “Serrated tussock. It’s a noxious weed. This place is startin’ to be riddled with it. See that line o’ yellowy-green at the edge o’ the paddock over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it. It spreads across an area and takes it over. Sheep won’t eat it. Nothin’ will eat it. Nothin’ will kill it either, except bein’ dug right outa the ground clump by clump. That’s another grudge Jimson’s got against Coles. He reckons Coles should’ve warned him about the tussock at the start, before it got a grip on the place.”

  “Why didn’t he?”

  “I don’t think Coles knew much about it. It only really started spreadin’ down from the north a few years ago. Nobody round here was too worried. Same around Burracoola where Coles comes from. Anyway, Jimson was led to believe that Coles knew everythin’ there was to know about runnin’ a property and would turn this one into a showpiece. I bet he wouldn’t mind stranglin’ whoever it was told him that.”

  They went back under the shed and worked hard for another hour or so, but managed to shift only a tiny amount of earth. Clem was getting fed up. He declared that this “digging out” was a ratbag idea, and typical of boss cockies who wouldn’t know whether their arse was punched or bored.

  “Another one of Coles’s Caterpillars,” the youth said.

  Clem was struck by that and chuckled.

  Gladys came across from the house to see how it was going and Clem told her what the youth had said. Gladys liked it too.

  “I’ve just been tellin’ him about that day,” Clem said.

  “Poor girl,” said Gladys, picturing the scene. “I felt sorry for her. Must’ve ruined her clothes.”

  The youth was starting to feel at ease with the Curreys.

  Gladys made them a nice lunch. Afterwards they tried to dig a little more, although their arms and knees and backs were aching so much it was difficult even to wield the implements. Then Clem slapped his thigh and declared he was jacking up.

  “I’ll tell Coles we did what we could but the stuff is just too hard to shift. And how does he expect anyone to get a proper whack at it when they’re bent double? And what’s the benefit of it? To have a few bags of fertiliser for the homestead garden?”

  He said this firmly but calmly, like someone who has thought it through and is ready to stick by his decision. It seemed to the youth that the digging out offended Clem because it went against some basic rule of economy of effort, and that in turn was bound up with the issue of people’s dignity. Poor people’s dignity, at least.

  They spent the afternoon repairing some broken bits of railing in the sheepyard fence. Clem went about it in the same calm and precise way he had of getting on or off a horse, or rolling a smoke. He seemed to quietly coax the tools to do what he wanted and to caress rather than manhandle the new bits of railing into place. It was the opposite of Mr. Coles’s way of barging and blustering at things.

  Gladys was hanging tea-towels on a line at the back of the dwelling and they flapped in a fresh breeze, and so did Gladys’s flowery yellow apron. The blades of the steel windmill beside the house whirled with a clean metallic sound. The youth thought how much fresher and nicer it felt here on this bare stony ridge than back at the other place. Clem suggested the youth might prefer to sleep in the shearers’ quarters that night.

  In the fading light they rode back to the homestead to do the feeding.

  Again Clem led old Gypsy by the reins so that the youth could concentrate on staying in the saddle. He went the whole way without falling off, but collapsed in a heap again when dismounting. Still, he felt he was making progress.

  They did the feeding. It was almost dark but the sky had cleared a lot and you could see some stars. The youth went to his room in the tractor shed to get a few things to take back with him—his toothbrush, the old flannelette shirt he used as a pyjama top, his magazine with Sweetheart on the cover. Clem had gone across to check that the main house was secure. The youth stood for a minute or two in the dank room, lost in a thought. Then he turned and saw an enormous rat crouched beside the tractor wheel. The rat looked at him with a beady stare, and the youth stared back. He gathered his nerve and made a sudden move, flinging his arms out, thinking this would make the rat run away. But it stayed put. The youth began to feel scared. He wished he had a big stick to defend himself with.

  “We can get goin’, if ya like,” said Clem, squelching into the shed from the mud.

  The rat had gone.

  They rode back to the ridge and the meal that Gladys was making. As they rode, the youth tried to put everything out of his mind except the high clean windy stars above.

  THE COLESES stayed away for three weeks. They’d gone back to their own property at Burracoola. The place needed some seeing-to, Mr. Coles told Clem over the phone.

  “I s’pose that means she isn’t comin’ out o’ the mad state too easy this time,” Clem remarked.

  “It’s very sad,” said Gladys. “I admit I don’t have much time for the woman, but it must be awful for her.”

  The youth thought how Mrs. Coles had looked when she’d stood in the rain near the dunny, her hair plastered and her mouth twisting so oddly and her hands making helpless gestures. He told the Curreys about it, and that he’d not mentioned it to Mr. Coles.

  “Ya did right to keep quiet,” Clem replied. “He don’t appreciate anythin’ bein’ said or noticed. We’ve learnt that, ain’t we, Glad?”

  “Yes,” said Gladys earnestly to the youth. “Best to keep well outa other people’s troubles. Unless they’re your own people and they’re dependin’ on you.”

  THE YOUTH practised riding every day and was in agony from saddle-soreness. But he had his balance and was learning to use the reins and to urge the old mare forward with his heels. Even then, it wasn’t easy to get her to do what he wanted.

  “That’s because she knows you ain’t wearin’ spurs and can’t give her a good jab,” Clem said.

  The youth would’ve liked a pair of spurs. Clem wore them and they jingled nicely when he walked. With his spurs on, and his worn leather coat, and his hat at an angle, and his economical way of doing things, he was the very model of a Horseman. A true Horseman wasn’t just someone who rode a horse. It was someone who had a Horseman’s attitude to the world. One of the reasons Clem had hated the digging out was that he’d had to take his spurs off. The cramped space meant you had to sit back on your heels a lot, and with spurs on you’d stick yourself in the backside. The youth sympathised with the idea of a Horseman’s dignity. It was disgraceful to expect a man like Clem Currey to grub about in the dirt! How right they’d been to jack up!

  The youth would wake each morning in the neat room in the shearers’ quarters and go out and douse his head under the tap of the water tank. Then he’d sit on the little verandah of the quarters and look out at the morning sky and at the play of light across the hills and gullies. He would hear the birds’ calls and the baaahs of sheep. Then there’d be a good hearty breakfast about seven-thirty, with Clem
and Gladys talking about local goings-on. They’d both been born in the district, and their parents before them, and they knew everything about everyone.

  There was always a program called Country Calling on the radio at breakfast time. The youth loved it when they gave the weather forecasts for the entire state and ran through the names of the various regions one by one. These names made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, for they were packed with possibilities. You didn’t know what the possibilities were, exactly—that was why the yearning was spiced with a slight touch of fear—but whatever they were, they were brought nearer just by hearing those names said aloud. The youth’s favourite of all was the High Plains. He imagined what a fine thing it would be to have it said of you, “Oh yes, he was a great Horseman. He rode the High Plains with Clem Currey!”

  After breakfast they would ride over to the other place to do the feeding and milking. Clem was teaching the youth how to milk. If you did it as expertly as Clem you got two lovely strong squirts of milk going into the bucket almost without any pause. At first the youth struggled to get any milk out at all. He was squeezing the teat with his whole fist rather than getting the downward ripple motion of the fingers. You could tell from the cow’s reaction if you were doing it wrong. She’d seem twitchy and irritated and would turn her head in the bails and look at you as if to say: What’s the problem? What are you playing at? But then the youth got the hang of the downward ripple and the milk began to flow. “Ya got a real knack for it,” Clem told him. “Just like the ridin’.”

  With the Coleses away the milk wasn’t needed for the homestead, so they gave it to the pigs.

  “I notice ya still a bit nervous round them pigs,” Clem remarked one morning.

  “Yeah, a bit.”

  “Ya need ta show ’em who’s boss,” said Clem.

  “How?” asked the youth.

  “Try givin’ ’em a whack with that bloody great trowel ya got. They’re smart buggers, pigs. They’ll get the idea.”

  So the youth took to leaning over the fence and hitting them on the back with the trowel when they were crowding the trough and not giving him room to pour the mush. It worked. A whack or two with the flat of the trowel would make them flinch back long enough to let him pour cleanly. But the effect wore off in a day or so and they were back to crowding him. He tried using the edge of the trowel. It worked much better. A whack of the edge and a pig backed right off. And they didn’t lose their fear of it. After a few days of using the edge of the trowel he hardly had any more trouble and only needed to give a whack now and then, when a pig came within reach, just as a reminder.

  After nearly a fortnight the youth could manage the milking as well as the feeding, and felt more secure on horseback. He went by himself each morning to carry out the chores, then back to see what Clem was doing.

  The day might be taken up with fixing a fence, or repairing a saddle, or maybe taking the tractor and trailer out on the slopes to cut a load of firewood with a chainsaw. Clem did everything in his graceful style. Watching him, you’d never have guessed how tricky it was to work the tractor on the slopes or how dangerous a chainsaw could be.

  The youth understood that Clem never expected any machine to get the better of him, any more than he expected to meet a horse he couldn’t ride. It wasn’t a case of being arrogant. Clem was the least arrogant person the youth had ever met. It was just that if you honed and practised particular skills every day of your life, and took a pride in them, you were entitled to expect that they would serve you well. The other thing was that he never panicked.

  The youth began to wish he could smoke thin hand-rolled cigarettes the way Clem did. And wear spurs. Those two things seemed to him the height of “panache.” Panache was what Grace Kelly had, according to the article in the magazine. She wore her clothes and jewels with “a panache envied the world over.” It was a lovely word, though the youth wasn’t sure how it should be pronounced. He said it in his mind as “pan-at-chee.” Yes, Clem had “pan-at-chee.”

  So did Gladys. Gladys was like the female version of him, with a similar way of looking and speaking, a similar way of doing things with a light, expert touch. Her “pan-at-chee” was summed up for the youth in the way she’d looked that day she was hanging tea-towels on the line and the breeze was blowing them, and blowing her yellow flowery apron, and moulding her blue cotton dress to her body in a way that showed how strong and shapely she was, even at her age.

  It was nice in the evenings at the Curreys’ place. After the meal the youth would help wash and dry the dishes and put them away. Then they’d sit around the kitchen for an hour or so, with the fire going in the big old stove and the radio on quietly in the background. Gladys would knit and Clem would fiddle with some bit of mechanism that needed taking apart, or maybe he’d sew a bit of saddle gear or something. The kettle would be simmering and Gladys and Clem would chat quietly. Now and then they’d bring the youth into the conversation by explaining something—like how Dave Dawson, who ran the general store in Burrawah, was the son of Charlie Dawson, whose brother Stan hadn’t been the full quid. So the thing about it was that you never mentioned old Stan in front of Dave Dawson, because he was sensitive about having an uncle who was a bit off.

  “Mind you, though,” said Gladys, “old Stan was the only one o’ the Dawsons that anybody ever liked.”

  After they’d had enough tea the youth would say goodnight and go over to the shearers’ quarters. Being outside in the cold air would brace him and he would not want to go to bed just then, so he’d wrap a blanket round his shoulders and sit on the verandah and look at the night sky. Dolly would come and put her head on his knee and get some patting. Then she’d lie beside his chair and keep him company till he went inside.

  THE DAYS were cold but mostly fine, with an occasional whooshing surge of rain across the landscape. The sky was full of great tumbling banks of cloud, and the sun kept coming out from behind them to light up the land in flashes of gold.

  The work they’d been doing—feeding, milking, repairing odds and ends, getting firewood—was what Clem called “pottering.”

  “Bit of a holiday for us,” he’d say, “seein’ as we’re just potterin’.” Or he would get up from breakfast and walk across to the door with his spurs jingling, put his hat on at the angle he liked and drawl: “Ah well, we might go and do a bit o’ potterin’, if ya like.”

  One day Clem wanted to ride out to one of the furthest paddocks to check on the sheep. The paddocks all had names, and this one was called “Pies.” At breakfast Clem had said to Gladys that he wanted to “see the sheep in Pies” and the youth had got a mental picture of rows of enormous meat pies made out of the Dunkeld flock.

  They rode away from the house, past the shearing shed and along the ridge to the first gate, which led to the far reaches of the property. They had their overcoats on, and Clem had a saddlebag with sandwiches and a billy for making tea. Dolly was with them, and one of Clem’s dogs, a kelpie called Tess. Tess was so thrilled to be off the chain and going somewhere that she was out of her mind for a minute or two at the start. But she calmed down and trotted along with Dolly at the heels of Clem’s horse.

  After the first gate they descended a long track into a gully, then went along beside a swift-running creek and then up another slope. The ground was rough and strewn with old dead timber and full of rabbit holes. They settled into single file, with Clem in front, the two dogs behind him and the youth at the rear. He was getting the hang of keeping old Gypsy going along at a steady pace.

  Here and there they met bands of sheep that scattered at their approach. Tess got a bit crazed again and went streaking off to turn them on one flank or the other. Then, not hearing any shouted instructions from Clem, she’d stop and look back with ears pricked and every hair alert, as though asking: What should I do? What should I do? What? What? Huh? What? Getting no response, and seeing Clem riding on, she’d sprint
back and fall into step with Dolly at the horse’s heels.

  They went down into another gully and followed another creek for a while. The air was damp and the vegetation lush, and everything smelt somehow more green. It was like another world down in the deep gullies, exhilarating but so dank and cold that you felt you should not stay too long lest it seep into you. On the opposite bank of the creek was a fence. It was ramshackle and covered here and there with undergrowth.

  “That’s Wondina,” Clem called over his shoulder and waved a hand at the fence. “Angus Izzard’s place.”

  It was hard to hear him over the sound of the rushing water.

  They came to strands of wire so loose they were dangling near the ground. Clem dismounted, crossed the creek on some protruding rocks and began to adjust the wire with the pliers he carried. The youth dismounted to ease his backside, and stood patting the mare’s neck and looking into the undergrowth. This was a place for sprites or fairies, he thought, or the ghosts of swagmen, or maybe pygmy head-hunters with poison darts. At any rate, it was a long way from the Miami Guesthouse.