Fresh Fields

by Peter Kocan

  The youth shook his head.

  “To hear my parents talk, you’d think I was asking to go and be a whore in the streets of Babylon!”

  The youth was embarrassed by the word “whore.” For a long time, he’d believed that a whore was a whale or a porpoise or something like that. He’d read a story about the old sailing days and one of the characters had said that something was “whiter than a whore’s belly.” The youth had got a picture in his mind of some kind of sea creature swimming beside the ship and turning over and showing a pale underside. But later he’d seen the word in other places and knew it didn’t mean any sort of sea creature. He wanted to ask Meredith exactly what it did mean, but he could hardly speak for the constricted feeling in his throat. Meredith had got a pace ahead of him as they walked and he couldn’t take his eyes off her bare legs and her bottom and her straight back and shoulders and the back of her neck. She had a lovely strong way of walking. The youth was having to hurry to keep up.

  “That’s enough,” she said, halting so suddenly that he almost ran into her. “We can go back now.”

  “Can we stop for a minute?” he asked. “My feet are hurting.”

  “Let’s sit up there,” Meredith said, pointing to a rise with a giant tree-stump on it. The youth was fearful of the long grass they had to wade through, but Meredith strode ahead.

  From the rise you looked down on a broad sweep of wheatfields going away to low hills in the distance. Behind where they sat were the irrigation ditch and the line of poplars. The fresh breeze rippled the grass all around.

  “How old are you?” Meredith asked.

  “Fourteen,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Just wondered,” she said. “Have you got any sisters?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You haven’t mixed with girls much, have you?”

  “Not all that much.”

  “Except your hairdresser friend; Milly, was it?”

  “Polly. It wasn’t anything really.”

  “Do you mean you made her up and there wasn’t any Polly?”

  “No, there was a Polly.”

  “Okay, I believe you, even if you are a dud.”

  “A what?”

  “A dud. Dad said to Mum that you’re a dud and they’ll probably have to let you go.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “If it’s any consolation, they think I’m a dud of a daughter. So we’re duds together.”

  “I don’t think you’re a dud.”

  “I don’t think you are either.”

  “I suppose I should get back. Your dad’ll be getting angry.”

  “No, he won’t. He’s in his humble phase at the moment. That’s when he’s regarding me as a heavy burden put on him by the Lord and he thinks he should be long-suffering about it. I took you away so he won’t go crook at you. Anyway, what does it matter? He reckons you’re a dead loss in any case.”

  They stayed up on the rise watching the grass rippling and the clouds going across the sky. Meredith lay back on the stump with her hands under her head and closed her eyes. The youth did the same.

  They were side by side like that when Mr. Blackett came up behind them, clearing his throat.

  “Ah, there you are. I was starting to think you’d run off.”

  “No such luck,” murmured Meredith without opening her eyes.

  MR. BLACKETT was working a lot in the machine shed, fiddling with the dismantled irrigation pump and other things. The youth hovered around trying to look useful, but knowing he wasn’t being any real help.

  Mr. Blackett tried to get him to talk about Meredith and the youth responded as politely as he could without saying anything.

  “You and Meredith get on pretty well.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The two of you find a lot to talk about?”

  “Not all that much.”

  “She confides in you, I dare say?”

  “Not really.”

  “She’s the apple of our eye, you know, that girl.”

  “Mmmm.”

  Then Mr. Blackett would look sort of mournful as though he was on the verge of saying something else but thought better of it. Ever since Meredith had told him about being a dud, the youth had been expecting the sack to come at any time.

  “It’s obvious that you have no interest in this work, and no aptitude for it,” said Mr. Blackett after he had raised the subject of Meredith again and the youth had answered in the usual way. The youth assumed this was the sack about to happen. But Mr. Blackett went on.

  “Well, not everyone is mechanically minded. What sort of work do you like? What were you mostly doing at the last place?”

  The youth told him about chopping the tussock.

  “Ah well, you could do much the same thing here. We don’t have serrated tussock. The noxious weed in these parts is Paxton’s Pea. If you like you can start cutting it tomorrow, going along the fence lines and other places where we can’t plough it out. That would be a useful job. It does need seeing to.”

  NEXT MORNING the youth equipped himself with a hoe and went off along the fence line. He felt as though he’d been let out of prison. It was a cool and windy day, just what he liked best, and the knowledge that he’d be left to himself for hours was like a tonic.

  Paxton’s Pea was a prickly weed with small purple flowers. It grew in clusters of stalks that came up to waist height and the first dense patch of it was about half a mile from the homestead paddock. Paxton’s Pea could give you a nasty scratch. You had to wield the hoe from slightly side on and try to chop under the base of the cluster without brushing your hands against the prickles. After a quarter of an hour the youth had the hang of it and there was a swathe of chopped green and purple on the ground. But the backs of his hands were scratched and bleeding. He didn’t mind. “First blood,” he said aloud. “First blood in the battle.”

  He felt more cheerful than at any time since he had come to the Blacketts’. It was so good knowing what your work was, knowing that you had a talent for it, and being left alone to do it at your own pace, thinking your own thoughts and being able to speak those thoughts out loud to yourself when you wanted to hear what they sounded like.

  A lot of the thoughts were about Meredith. He imagined talking love talk with her. He didn’t exactly know what love talk was, but he supposed it was like in movies when the two people tell each other things like, “I can’t live without you” or “I’d die if you went away.” The youth murmured these things to himself and they sounded about right.

  These thoughts about Meredith led to other thoughts. Thinking about Meredith’s unhappiness, the way she was trapped by circumstances, made him think of King Harold and his people trapped in their time and being so brave, almost winning through in spite of the odds and only going down in the end. That was the thing about Meredith, the youth realised. She was brave. You could sense that in the way she looked you in the eye without wavering, and in the strong way she walked, and the firm way she spoke. He imagined himself and Meredith as two of King Harold’s people, a house-carl and a shield-maiden. They had survived Hastings and escaped to the forest. They would be outlaws in the greenwood and harry the Normans. They’d be dressed like Robin Hood, and have lots of snug hideaways, and sleep in each other’s arms with the rustle of leaves around them. Other loyal people would join them, and they would love and defend each other to the very end. The youth thought again about the love talk. It didn’t seem so appropriate now. It was a bit soppy.

  No, they would not say things like that to each other, or perhaps would only say such things now and then. Mostly they would talk like fellow warriors, planning their raids or tending each other’s slight wounds. They would cling together in desperate relief after every action. The danger of thei
r lives would make every minute together sheer joy. But then he thought of Meredith really getting hurt, getting slashed with swords or hit with battle-axes, and it was too distressing. No, she wouldn’t do that sort of fighting. She would be a brilliant archer and pick off Normans at a distance. And she would have deep knowledge of herbs and potions, and about the phases of the moon, and about ways of setting spies to find out the enemy’s doings. That’s the kind of warrior she would be—graceful and smart and able to avoid getting any hurt worse than a scratch. And there would be lots of times when there wouldn’t be any action. They would have their life in their favourite forest glade, with fruit to eat and the music of lutes or harps and a twinkling campfire to sit at with their companions, laughing and cuddling and being happy together.

  The youth cut Paxton’s Pea every day. It left him exhausted by the evening, but it was a good exhaustion, especially the feeling of being daydreamed out, of having imagined his way through everything that had occurred to him. In the evening after the meal, he would go straight back to his garage room and turn the radio on to the hit parade and sit outside and watch the evening sky with its huge play of colours and cloud patterns. Most evenings Meredith came out and sat there too. They listened to the music and watched the sky and did not say anything much. A couple of times Greg tried to join them, but Meredith told him to get lost. The first time he tried to argue, but Meredith got more hostile and said she’d beat him to a pulp if he didn’t piss off. Mrs. Blackett put her head out the door to ask Meredith if anything was the matter. Meredith called back sharply that nothing was the matter except that a person wasn’t allowed to have a minute’s peace around here. Mr. Blackett came out a bit later to go to the shed for something. He looked across at them and made a gesture as though to say, sorry to intrude, and he hurried back inside as soon as he came out of the shed.

  “They think we’re having a deep and meaningful talk,” Meredith said. “So they’re tiptoeing around to show me how understanding they are.”

  “We can have a deep and meaningful talk if you want to,” said the youth.

  “Christ no!” Meredith retorted.

  “That’s okay,” said the youth. He’d been wondering whether to tell her of his vision of the two of them in the forest, dressed in green and harrying the Normans. He was relieved that she’d answered in such a definite way. It was a risky thing, telling your daydreams to someone, especially someone who was in them.

  “I shouldn’t do that,” said Meredith after a moment.

  “Do what?”

  “Make the Lord’s name a profanation.”

  “What’s a profanation?”

  “A swear word. I disagree with a lot of what my parents believe—well, most of it, actually—but I don’t believe in insulting the Lord. Their Lord, I mean.”

  “No,” he agreed. “It’s probably best not to.”

  “But Christ!” she snorted. “The way they behave! The way they control me all the time! You see it, don’t you?”

  “Them controlling you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not all that much. But then I’m not sure what to look out for.”

  She was taken aback. “They do it in their own special way,” she explained. “Or they get other people to do it. Like Pastor Eccles.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The church pastor, in town. They used to get him to give me little talks for spiritual guidance. It was so awful. This little buck-toothed man, you wouldn’t believe how buck-toothed he is. It’s like being talked to by a big rabbit or beaver or something. He won’t speak to me now.”

  “Why not?”

  “He asked one day where I would seek succour when the Lord’s face was turned from me. I said I’d ask Beelzebub. I shouldn’t have said it, but I was really angry.”

  “No-one is religious in my family,” said the youth.

  “That’s why you keep so calm. You aren’t being hounded all the time about the state of your soul and whether you’ll be ready to go before the Throne of Judgement at the drop of a hat.”

  The youth felt amazed by the bit about him being calm.

  “Do I seem calm?”

  “Yes, incredibly,” said Meredith. “That’s why you have a beneficial effect on me, I suppose.”

  The youth couldn’t speak for a minute or two. He felt so full of amazement and gratitude. No-one had ever told him before that he was beneficial.

  “How do I seem calm?” he asked after a while.

  “Oh, I don’t know, you just do,” Meredith said. A song she liked had just come on the radio and she started singing along with it. It was called “Honey Bunny.” The youth hadn’t especially liked it before, but Meredith’s liking it made it seem the finest song in the world. She looked across at him in the last of the sunset light.

  “It’s as though you’re always thinking of something else, something really big and interesting, and so you’re not bothered too much by what’s happening around you. As my father said, ‘One never has his full attention.’”

  “He said that?”

  “His exact quote. Except that it isn’t completely right, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so, because I think I have your full attention sometimes.”

  The youth stared past her.

  “Isn’t that true?”

  The youth said nothing.

  “I know you like looking at me when you think I don’t know.”

  The youth kept staring past her.

  “You don’t have to admit it if you don’t want to,” she said. “I know how much you keep your feelings to yourself. I don’t mind you being keen on me. I mean, assuming you are. We’re the wrong ages for each other, of course. You’d need to be older, but if we were the right ages we might have got together. I mean, if it turned out that way and neither of us was tangled up with someone else.”

  The youth said nothing. He was so full of feelings that he could hardly breathe. After a while Meredith got up to go inside. As she went past him she touched him lightly on the arm.

  “It’s alright,” she said softly. “Don’t get anxious about it.”

  “I’m famous for being calm,” said the youth. “Haven’t you heard?”

  HAVING SOMEONE in your life made springtime happen. That was the phrase that came to mind. Meredith made springtime happen, the way Romeo and Juliet must have done for each other. Meredith had studied Romeo and Juliet at school and gave the youth an outline of it. She liked it because it showed the star-crossed lovers refusing to be controlled by their parents. The youth wanted to find out more about the idea of being “star-crossed.” It had struck him deeply when Meredith remarked, “I think we’re all star-crossed in some way.” It made sense of a lot of things.

  Each Sunday morning the Blacketts had asked him whether he’d like to go to town with them, but he hadn’t taken up the offer. He was nervous about Meredith’s invitation to Con’s cafe. It was one thing to be with her on the property, but another thing in town. There might be other people at Con’s—friends of hers, people she knew from school. Then again, Meredith had only mentioned Con’s that one time and the youth wondered if she had changed her mind. It could all be horribly embarrassing, either way. He wished he could go to town by himself and quietly reconnoitre, the way Diestl would. The youth hadn’t thought about Diestl for a while. The thing with Meredith had replaced Diestl for him, at least on the property.

  The next Sunday he accepted the offer to go to town. It was very quiet in the car. The youth was on the far side of the back seat from Meredith, with Greg and the toddler between them. She stared out the window and did not speak. They got to town and slowed at a corner.

  “Will this do you, sweetie?” Mr. Blackett asked Meredith. Meredith nodded yes and got out. The youth assumed she was going to spend the church time at Con’s. He looked at her for a sign tha
t he should come too, but there was none.

  “Bye, darling,” said Mrs. Blackett. “See you in a while.”

  Mr. Blackett was looking at the youth in the rear-view mirror, as if to see whether he intended to go with Meredith, but Meredith was already walking away. They drove along the street and came to a church with groups of people out the front. They parked and got out of the car. The youth didn’t know what he was supposed to do. It must have shown on his face.

  “Would you like to come and worship with us?” Mrs. Blackett asked. “You’d be very welcome.”

  The youth mumbled that he felt like a stroll and would see them later. He walked quickly off in no particular direction. He looked back and saw them turning the corner to where the church was and greeting another family that was heading that way. He didn’t know how long the church thing took and what time he should come back. He half-thought to return and ask them but didn’t want to face them again just now.

  The streets of the town were very quiet. The railway tracks ran past nearby. He reckoned the station was along to the right and he knew the main street was near the station. He began to notice things and think about them, the way he did. He came to some old stone buildings with narrow doors. He paused in front of one and looked at the details of the windowsills and the doorknobs, and the marks on the woodwork. He reflected on all the people who must have gone in and out over the hundred years or so that the building had been there. There was a folk song about this town. The youth had heard it sung. It told how a bushranger was shot on the outskirts. He had been on his way to visit his sweetheart, who was the shanty-keeper’s daughter, but a jealous rival had tipped off the troopers and they laid an ambush. The song said the bushranger had stood his ground, returning fire, but had been riddled with a hundred bullets. There was more to the song but the bit about the hundred bullets had stayed in the youth’s mind. He felt tears welling up. How sad everything was. As the tears ran down his face, he thought of all those across the ages who’d gone down under the weight of their enemies, but whose memory lived on. In our tears, thought the youth. They live on in our tears. It seemed a tremendous insight. Yes, the heroes live in the deep moments of our tears. He walked on, hardly seeing where he was going. He could have walked for hours, the way he often did when his heart was full.