Girl & the Ghost-Grey Mare

by Rachael Treasure

  ‘I’d like to wank bulls off,’ Casey said dryly, ‘but no, my boss won’t let me. The collection team use an electric anal probe instead. Shock the little swimmers out.’

  ‘Coorrr! No way!’ both men called out, impressed.

  It was the same every time. At this point Casey knew she’d have to steer her conversation away from semen, otherwise things turned gross and weird with men.

  ‘Casey Brown’s my name,’ she said, delivering her saving line and acting all bloky and beery. ‘I’m actually named after a tractor.’ This provided them with even more mirth. ‘Yep. Named after the 1978 Case 885 David Brown tractor. Dad’s a bit of a tractor tragic. It’s genetic.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Mr Hair-funk.

  She leant her elbows on the bar, just as she’d done for the past two years of Friday night drinks in the city, not caring if the blokes were listening any more. ‘You see, David Brown Tractors became affiliates with Case International in 1972, so by the time I was born in ’78 Dad had a brand-new Case David Brown tractor and a baby girl instead of a boy. When he came into the hospital and told Mum he wanted to name me after a tractor, she was all for it.’ Another sip of beer for timing effect.

  ‘You see, before she married Dad, Mum’s name was Alice Charmers.’ She wiped the back of hand across her mouth, dragging beer with it just to let them know that she was definitely one of the boys. The city men never got that bit. The bit about Alice Charmers. But it was true. It was the reason her mum and dad had got together in the first place – Casey’s dad loved all tractors, including the elegant long-chassis Allis Chalmers tractor.

  The moment Alice Charmers, the daughter of a diesel mechanic, met David Brown the dairy farmer, the tractor-factor connection had sparked between them. The love engine had cranked over, roared then settled down to idle well ever since, as all good diesels do. Casey always cringed when her mother retold the story.

  ‘Your father said to me, “If I show you my power take off, will you show me your grease nipples?” ’ Then Alice Brown (nee Charmers) would giggle wickedly and her pink cheeks would turn pinker, recalling the day as if it were only last week.

  ‘I’m third in line with the tractor names,’ Casey said to her line-up of bar flies. ‘It’s a dynasty thing. My grandfather was named Fergus Brown after the first David Brown/Ferguson tractor in ’36. Dad came along in ’56 and so they named him David after their new David Brown 25D. And here’s me … Case Brown if I was a boy, but I turned out a girl so I got the extra Y – if you’ll pardon the pun. Casey Davida Brown. Oh, we Browns are big on the tractor factor.’

  The men laughed again but inside Casey felt herself cry. Even if she scored the sophisticated, intellectual man of her dreams, how could she ever take them home and be taken seriously?

  Before newcomers even got to the Browns’ little weatherboard farm house on the windswept and treeless soldier settlement block, Casey knew her family would appear a bit kooky. The oddness started at the gates leading into the farm, where a replica model of an Allis Chalmers served as a mailbox. Things seemed normal enough when driving past the electric fences, irrigation channels and black and white milkers grazing the green pasture, until you arrived at the house. Her dad had painted the house the exact same orange and white as the immaculate ’78 Case David Brown tractor that was parked in pride of place in the skillion shed next door. On the front lawn, tractor windmills spun in technicolour whirls above gnomes driving tractors, and on the doormat a green tractor cartoon shouted, ‘Come in if you think my tractor’s sexy!’

  Casey imagined her father greeting Mr Accountant, Mr Property Developer or Mr Barrister at the door wearing his favourite T-shirt, the one her mother had bought him last Christmas. Emblazoned across her father’s XXL chest would be the words: ‘I like my girls like I like my tractor … dirty with a big set of front weights.’ Next he would usher them in to meet Alice Brown (nee Charmers) who, with a beaming smile and bright red cheeks to match her hair, would offer them a cup of tea in a tractor mug, poured from a tractor teapot sporting a tractor tea cosy, and stirred by a tractor spoon that came with the tractor creamer and matching sugar bowl. Above them the tractor clock would tick towards the end of Casey’s short-lived relationship as her father told one bad joke after the next … about tractors.

  Then there’d be the hurdle of getting the imagined visiting boyfriend through the night. Casey’s bedroom was right next door to the calf shed. There the poddys bellowed for their mums or a feed, or both, around the clock, and poured liquid dung out their tiny puckered orifices, the stench of which seeped through the paintsealed windows next to Casey’s single bed. She imagined having to encourage her groggy new lover to get out of bed (or at least out of the trundle bed beside her bed) at five for the Sunday morning milking. A very disagreeable situation when Mr Barrister, Mr Accountant or Mr Property Developer was used to sleeping in till ten on Sundays, reading the weekend papers and heading to a cafe cluster in a trendy inner-city suburb for a brunch of eggs Benedict.

  Casey sighed.

  ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ she said to Mr Faux-blondie at the pub, ‘but I’ve got a big day tomorrow watching the judging for Cow of the Year at the City Showgrounds.’

  This set the men spluttering again as they echoed, ‘Cow of the Year! You are joking, right?’

  She turned to Suzie.

  ‘I’m getting a cab home.’

  ‘But …’

  As Casey pushed through the crowd she heard the men say to Suzie, ‘Is your friend for real? She’s so funny!’

  At home in her flat, Casey pulled on the cow-print PJs her mum had sent her and pulled the doona over her head. A doona her mother had bought her … one with cows on it. ‘So you don’t miss the girls too much,’ she had written on the card.

  As she drifted off to sleep Casey wondered when something was going to happen in her life. When would the world turn and her engine be cranked over by love? She scrunched her eyes tight and with as much determination as Dorothy clacking her bejewelled red slippers, said, ‘Please make it be tomorrow. Please make it be tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe I should head back to the country,’ Casey said to Suzie the next morning as she watched the parade of dairy cows sail like a fleet of ships onto the imitation grass of the indoor show ring. ‘People in the city don’t “get” me.’

  Suzie looked at her over a fuzz of pink fairy floss, oblivious to the stares she was attracting in her tiny pink shorts and fake cowgirl boots of the same hot pink, worn in honour of Casey’s country culture. Suzie was mightily hungover and a bit stiff in her hips from her one-night stand.

  ‘What do you mean people don’t get you? No one gets you. I don’t get you.’

  ‘What’s not to get?’ Casey said, irritated now. Suzie waved her fairy floss to encompass the scene before her.

  ‘This! This cow biz. It’s freaky.’

  ‘Freaky? This is where your milk comes from. It’s a multimillion-dollar industry. And incredibly complex.’

  ‘It’s weird. The people are weird. You’re weird. Don’t get me wrong, Casey, you’re nice and everything, but … weird. I mean, look at you. It’s your day off and here we are looking at bloody cows! You wouldn’t catch me reading up on the law on the weekend, unless it was in bed with the senior partner.’

  ‘Yes, but I should be married with children, shouldn’t I? I’m getting old! Almost past it for breeding —’ she stopped mid-sentence as she surveyed the third cow in the line up. ‘I like number eleven. Showtime bloodlines, by the look, and perfect udder and teats. Nice bone too. But really, Suze, there are no men here for me.’

  ‘No men! A city this size, there are men everywhere. And you’re not old.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. You’re still in your twenties.’

  ‘But what are you looking for? You told me the last place you want to be is back home on your farm pulling tits twice a day for the rest of your life. But you don’t want what’s out there in the pubs, and you don’t want what’s here.’
Suzie was waving her fairy floss to emphasise her point.

  Casey shook her head.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Can we just not talk about it? They’re about to judge the interbreed to decide Cow of the Year.’

  Suzie rolled her eyes and stifled a sick burp as Casey turned to devour the sight of a delicious caramel and cream Guernsey as she paraded behind a leggy Holstein.

  ‘She’s a magnificent breed type,’ Casey said.

  Suzie ran her eyes over the parade of cattle handlers who, unlike the cows, varied greatly in shape and size, but were all dressed in the same uniform of white shirt and white trousers.

  ‘Someone should tell them if you wear all white, you ought to wear a beige g-string underneath. You can see their undies,’ Suzie whispered loudly. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Shush!’

  ‘God, Casey! This is so boring. Can we go?’

  ‘Shush!’

  The cows and handlers came nearer to the girls, who had taken front-row positions at the ring to watch the cows battle it out.

  ‘Christ! Look at the size of those tits!’ Suzie almost screeched. Casey was well used to the appearance of show cows, but it did make her eyes water seeing the pink skin over the Holstein’s udder stretched taut like a drum. Underneath, fat veins ran in ridges over the udder surface and the teats stuck out at seemingly unnatural angles, spraying fine jets of white milk onto the plastic imitation-grass carpet. The cow had to swing her hind legs out around her bulging udder as she walked. The handler, a tubby man with sideburns, tugged gently on the cow’s shiny leather halter to make her stand correctly in the line-up before the judge.

  Next lumbered the Brown Swiss, her pretty dark eyes looking calmly at the mass of people sitting high in the stands. Casey knew her as the veteran champion cow, Donnyvale Talula Kitty. Daughter of Riversbend Sunset Glimmer and sired by Fairbrook Starfizz Northernlights. The queen of the show ring. The cow put her ears forward and walked as elegantly as she could, despite her bulging udder. A fur stole would not have looked out of place on the ladylike creature. Casey felt a buzz run through the crowd as Kitty took her position next to the Holstein.

  ‘Check out the bag on her! She’s bound to win best vessel too!’ Casey said, enraptured by the animal.

  With her eyes so firmly on the cow it took her a while to realise Suzie was elbowing her in the ribs.

  ‘What?’ she hissed.

  ‘Check out the guy with the brown cow.’

  ‘The Brown Swiss.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s a Brown Swiss and she’s magnificent.’

  ‘No! Check out the handler. He’s a bit of all right.’

  Casey tore her eyes away from the cow and saw the youngish man was not too shabby.

  ‘He does have nice arms.’

  ‘And a nice cleft,’ Suzie whispered.

  ‘Huh?’

  Suzie indicated a vertical line on her chin with a ruby-red nail. ‘Cleft. Sexy.’

  Casey nodded, just as a Jersey cow with an impossibly golden coat, exquisite dark points and a gleaming black nose drifted into the place beside the Brown Swiss. The handler, a bald man with silver-rimmed glasses, looked as red as a beetroot from the stress of the occasion. The judge, distinguished in tweed with an overdone pants crease, stepped forward and in a surprisingly loud voice boomed, ‘Could handler Ken Worth with Brown Swiss number seven step forward, please.’

  Casey’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘What?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Give me the program!’ She snatched the show schedule from Suzie’s grasp and began to run her index finger down the list of handlers.

  And there it was in black and white in the Brown Swiss section. Ken Worth! She gasped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Him … that man. His name is Ken Worth!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s a truck name. A Kenworth is a truck.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s that whole name connection! It’s a sign! It’s a meant-to-be kind of thing.’ Casey grabbed at Suzie’s arm, ‘We have to meet him.’

  ‘But he’s a tit puller.’

  ‘But he’s named after a truck.’

  ‘Yes. A truck, Casey. Not a tractor. That’s a tractor-truck factor not a tractor-tractor factor. Still, he could do for a truck-fuck.’

  ‘You’re taking the piss out of me. You always take the piss.’

  Suzie looked at her with a crinkled-up nose as if she’d just smelt something horrible. Casey, normally so placid, felt her cheeks burn with fury.

  ‘I’m tired of it, Suzie. Since when is it a crime to be passionate about something? What’s the harm in being passionate about cows? These girls supply not just us with milk, but the whole world. I know the dairy industry is flawed and we have changes to make. Many changes, but —’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Casey. You’re just uptight because you need a root. Same as those poor cows you deal with who only ever see a canister instead of a real bull. Really!’

  Casey shook her head sadly. ‘I know you’ve tried, Suzie, but it’s useless. I’m useless. At least, I am around here. I’ve suddenly realised I’ve been ashamed of a way of life, and I shouldn’t be. I’ve been ashamed of my own mum and dad. But mostly, I’ve been ashamed of myself.’

  ‘Look, this isn’t Dr Phil. It’s a cow show. Can you save your epiphanies for the pub, please? I need the hair of the dog … now. Let’s go. Tonight, I promise, we’ll find you a fella.’

  ‘No, Suzie. Tonight I’m packing. I’m going home. Home to milk cows with my mum and dad. And if it means wearing overalls for the rest of my life and living alone, then I don’t care. At least I’ll be understood … part of my own herd.’ As Casey delivered her tirade in frenzied whispers she was suddenly surprised by a scream from the show ring. Followed by shouts. Then cows scattered everywhere. At the epicenter of the ruckus was Mr Bald Handler. With blind fury he’d leapt on Ken Worth’s back and was pummelling him from behind.

  ‘Get that spineless cheating mongrel!’ a woman handler with a bad yellow perm screamed. Ken Worth was fast falling backwards, taking his regal cow with him. His attacker, attached to his back, was roaring like an enraged lion.

  ‘Get off me!’ Ken Worth shouted.

  Men rushed to drag the bald man from Ken. His Brown Swiss, now in a state of panic, swung her broad body around, knocking over a bench seat full of showgoers. Photographers from the rural papers leapt into the ring, snapping pictures. Flashes lit up the pavilion, startling the cattle even more. The crowd rumbled with shock as more handlers joined in the punch-up. Casey watched in disbelief while Suzie squealed with delight, shouting, ‘Bring it on, cowboys!’

  There was a momentary lull when the two men were at last separated. But it was short-lived. Bald Man broke free of his restrainers with a Mad Max roar and hurled himself at Ken Worth. The impact was solid. It sent the large man flying. Flying towards Casey.

  On impact, Casey discovered Ken Worth was a beefy man, not all of it muscle. He knocked the air from her lungs, but not before she’d taken in the rather unpleasant scent of his armpits. Her last thought before she hit the deck was, I’m being knocked over by a Ken Worth! As her head hit the concrete of the dairy pavilion, Casey Brown was knocked out cold.

  In the hospital Casey felt the pain of her headache drag her in and out of the here and now. Through blurred vision she could just make out the radiant frizz of her mother’s halo of deep-red curly hair and the shining, smiling round face of her dad.

  ‘Back again, Case,’ he said, gently laying huge hands, ultra soft and soothing from all those years of applying udder cream to his cows’ teats, on her arms.

  ‘We were worried about you. Not like you to sleep in, pet,’ her mum was saying. ‘I’ll go fetch the doctor and he can give you the once-over.’ She winked when she said it.

  Casey tried to think, but all she could remember was Suzie in pink turning red from the lecture Casey had given her. And her resolve
to move back home to the farm.

  ‘What happened? Was I hit by a truck?’

  Her dad laughed softly. ‘Of sorts.’

  He held up a newspaper with a picture of her on an ambulance trolley being wheeled out from the pavilion as a disturbed Guernsey show cow looked on.

  ‘Ken Worth. Not a nice man by all accounts. American. But you and he made the front page.’

  Woman Injured in Teat Cheat’s Tussle! the headline shouted.

  ‘Performance-enhancing drugs for cows had caused the row.’ Her dad paraphrased the article in his slow drawl. ‘Mr Worth had been accused by his dairy industry peers of using a drug from the United States to artificially enhance the size and appearance of an udder, by injecting a foam into the teats. Mr Worth was left lying in the dust after being punched in the face and a woman was taken to hospital, unconscious, after being knocked over in the brawl. The woman remains in a stable condition but has not yet regained consciousness.

  ‘That would be you,’ her father added. ‘But clearly you’ve regained consciousness now.’ He turned the page and there was a picture of Ken Worth with his broken glasses and his head in his hands.

  Casey sighed. She’d thought he was going to be the one. The man to change her life’s path.

  Next thing, she felt the nausea rise and suddenly her mother was back in the room reaching for a pudding bowl from the meal tray that her father had clearly polished off earlier.

  As Casey had her face in the bowl dry retching until her whole body ached, she wondered if her life could get any more tragic.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve been a terrible daughter to you,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Nooo,’ soothed her mother. ‘We’re so proud of you, Case.’

  ‘But I haven’t been proud of you. I’m so sorry. I’ve been judgemental and awful. I want to come home. I want to help you and Dad on the farm.’

  ‘My! You did get a bump on the head,’ her dad said, patting her arm. ‘Don’t you get yourself upset, dear. It does no good. Now where’s that doctor?’