Anyway, I’ll see ya.
My sister’s name is Beck; she’s seven.
She don’t talk much.
Not like me.
See ya.
This quiet land
It’s nothing more than an irrigation channel
dug across the plains,
but George, despite his eye on the harvest
and its price,
years before built a hardwood landing
to dive off into the cool water.
Annabel and I spend every afternoon
after picking
lying on the wet timber,
listening to the frogs
and watching the dragonflies skim across the surface.
What can I say?
When we know George is in town
or too busy hosing down the tractor,
we strip naked and worship the late breeze
blowing ripples across the channel.
A beer or two and I’m set for life.
A beer or two and Annabel’s lips
and her arm resting on my stomach,
and I hope to never leave
the late afternoon
of tired muscles, channel water
and this quiet land.
The shed
Me and Annabel are sitting against the shed.
In the sun.
Sunday. No work.
I’m dreaming of a month of Sundays.
We’ve been working for two weeks.
Our hands are starting to heal
from the first week of learning
to snap the stem of each apple
as we plucked it.
Yes, ‘pluck’, that’s what George says.
George loves his apples so much
he can’t bear to just pick them.
He plucks them quick, yet soft,
places them in his bag
and when it’s full
leans over the bin and releases the latch.
He fills four, sometimes five bins a day.
That first week Annabel and I averaged three together,
from 7am to 5pm. Climbing ladders with the bag
half-full,
swinging in front, pulling your neck forward.
I cursed my luck for running out of petrol.
The second week was easier.
George gave us the heavy trees, loaded down
until the weight broke the branches.
We filled four bins a day. By Friday, it was five.
Twenty dollars a bin.
George says we’re alright.
So alright, last night he came into the shed
with a dozen bottles of beer.
I like the sun when I’m tired.
I lay down,
close my eyes and think of
anything but apples.
Craig on his mum
Mum ran away from us
the night Beck vomited all over the dinner.
She didn’t take much
except the blind cat and all our money.
Well, that’s what Dad said.
Beck vomited all over everyone’s dinner.
It was unreal. I don’t know if that’s why Mum left,
but she left,
and for weeks I kept thinking she was hiding
somewhere on the farm –
in the shed,
or camping down by the channel –
and I kept hoping she’d just
come walking back into the kitchen;
but that hasn’t happened.
I’m learning to cook now.
So is Beck.
We get our own breakfast and lunch,
and sometimes we cook dinner –
you know, spaghetti and some sauce
from a jar.
Emma can cook, pretty good too.
I miss Mum sometimes,
and I know Beck does too,
but Beck hasn’t vomited since.
Not at the dinner table or anywhere,
and Mum might come back one day.
Dad says she won’t.
He doesn’t say much about her,
which is funny because they
must have been pretty friendly,
don’t you reckon,
to get married and all.
I’m not getting married.
I’m not having kids who vomit all over the dinner.
But I might run away from here
when I’m older.
I might even go look for Mum.
My dad says ...
My dad says you’re good workers.
He says you’re the best he’s had in years.
He says he doesn’t care what you do in our shed,
as long as you keep working the same.
He said that last night at dinner.
I asked him what you do in our shed
and Emma laughed.
She hasn’t laughed in a while
and then she says,
‘Yeah, Dad, tell Craig what they’re doing.’
But Dad doesn’t.
He tells Beck not to eat so fast,
probably scared of her vomiting again.
He tells me to mind my own business,
but Dad tells me that at least once a day,
so it’s nothing new.
And that’s why I’m here now.
So you tell me, okay?
What do you do in our shed here?
Beck talks
My brother Craig,
he thinks he knows everything,
but
he doesn’t know who let the dog
wee in his football boots …
I know.
Screwed
I got screwed.
That’s how I got pregnant.
Screwed.
If you want to know, I’ll tell you.
The truth.
Not what I told Dad:
My boyfriend, Dad.
The one I made up.
The one who had to leave town with his parents
on account of his father’s work.
What a load of bull.
What boyfriend?
We live twenty kilometres from town.
The school bus is our only link.
School buses don’t take you anywhere after 3pm.
So one Friday I arrange to stay
at my friend Jenny’s place –
the Friday her parents are away –
and we have a party.
All of Year 10.
A big party. A loud party.
And I drink too much,
even dance a bit, just to show myself I can.
I’m drinking away
the twenty kilometres of loneliness out here.
I’m drinking away
the exam results that don’t take me anywhere.
I’m drinking away
my clothes that smell of this farm.
I’m drinking away
apples, apple pie, baked apples, apple juice,
apple jam, for God’s sake.
Then I pass out,
feeling pretty good really.
I pass out on Jenny’s lounge.
In the morning I wake on her parents’ bed,
with no clothes on.
I got screwed.
I got pregnant.
And I didn’t even get to enjoy
becoming this big and ugly.
And nobody in Year 10 knows a thing.
Nobody, that is,
except one person.
School photos
I’ve been going through my school photos.
Every one since Year 5.
I’m making a list of each boy’s features:
big nose, blond hair, freckles, ears that stick out.
I’ve got twenty-one boys from Year 10
going back for years.
What a bunch of uglies.
And watching them get uglier every year
are all my girlfrien
ds –
the girls who didn’t see anything at Jenny’s party.
None of them wear glasses,
so maybe they were just blind drunk.
Blind drunk. Or too scared to remember anything.
Twenty-one boys. Twenty-one prospective fathers.
Ten with blond hair.
Ten with dark hair.
And nerdy Phillip Montain with
red hair, freckles and … surely not!
It may take years of comparing their features
with that of my baby,
but when I do
and I know,
well,
someone’s going to get screwed
and, this time,
it won’t be me.
Colours
It’s the sky I love.
Annabel and I sunbathe
on the hardwood landing of the channel.
I spend hours lost
in the deep summer blue
that goes forever.
I remember being a kid,
me and Dad climbing
onto our roof and looking up.
I’d dream we were flying
and all summer
I’d never want to land.
Annabel and I imagine
animals in the clouds, like kids do,
as a distant jet
writes across the sky
longer than history
and I lay back,
remember being a kid again,
lost in the innocent colours
of childhood.
Annabel and babies
I think about babies:
my baby, when and if;
Emma’s baby, twenty kilometres from town,
no dad, but lots of apple mush for food;
Jack and me with a baby.
I’m not serious,
I’m just thinking,
passing this Saturday while Jack works
on our car that goes nowhere, but goes nowhere well.
When I left school and got into uni
I thought my life was made.
Uni, job, money, Jack, travel, house,
Jack, more travel
and still Jack.
Jack was the constant.
Then one weekend he says
he’s quitting.
He wants to drive, anywhere,
as long as it’s away from uni and home.
He wants me to come.
That night my room seemed so small,
like a kid’s room full of toys and stuff,
and none of it meant anything.
I picked up my textbooks
and tried reading them
and I realised for five years
I’d been reading books that didn’t make sense,
and now, I had four more years of it.
I went downstairs and told Mum and Dad.
It’s one Sunday they won’t forget.
Dad raved, Mum cried.
Then Dad asked, Why?
And all I could answer was:
because I’m too young to decorate a home;
because textbooks have really bad covers;
because I don’t want to wear neat clothes
and wake every morning at 7.30am;
because Jack and I have never been wrong yet;
and because I want a year for myself, not my future.
So, late Sunday, we did a deal.
My dad, the solicitor, bargained
a year off, a deferment,
then back to the books.
I agreed. What else could I do?
And now
I’m thinking about babies –
Emma’s baby,
Jack and my baby.
Growing in my mind, if not in my womb.
The dew-wet grass
The best time is early morning
with the dew-wet grass,
the hills shouldered in mist,
everything quiet.
Annabel and I climb each ladder,
pick a cold apple
and crunch away.
The juice so sharp and tart
it hurts my teeth.
We sit like this,
watching the crows in the fir trees,
the silver-eyes darting among the fruit,
listening for George’s tractor
with the empty bins rattling,
calling to be filled.
Annabel, the mist, a farm apple, the birds
and an orchard waking up.
Lucky Emma
Sometimes
I feel like someone
who’s won the smallest prize in the lottery,
but lost the ticket.
I think of all the Year 10 boys.
Mark Spencer with his long hair,
black Silverchair T-shirt,
leaning back in his chair
playing air-guitar all through Maths.
Peter Borovski and his love affair with himself.
‘Hey, Peter, who you sleeping with tonight?
You’re kidding. Yourself again?
What I’d give for your luck.
And confidence. And stupidity.’
Luke Banfield, who once this year talked to a girl,
yeah, once. He asked her if she’d seen his basketball.
I was that lucky girl.
Or maybe, just maybe,
Steve Dimitri, one of the few fifteen-year-olds I know
who can eat with his mouth closed,
who doesn’t know how to play basketball,
who doesn’t look at the ground when talking to a girl
and who doesn’t vomit after three drinks.
He vomits after five drinks …
Actually, I take back what I said.
I feel like someone
who’s won the smallest prize in the lottery,
found the ticket
and has to collect the winnings,
even though
she doesn’t want them.
Emma
I wish I had a boyfriend like you.
Someone who wanted to be with me
all the time.
It’s true.
I watch you two in the orchard.
Every ten minutes he stops picking
to look where you are.
Sometimes you see him, sometimes not,
but he’s there, checking you out.
He’s not my physical type, mind,
but
I’d love to have someone like that.
And someone to sleep with.
What’s that like?
Every night. Does he hold you?
Does he snore?
Does he kiss you before sleep?
God! I’ve been watching too many soap operas,
but I’d like to know.
The only person I’ve slept with
is bloody Craig when he was scared one night.
He spent all night dropping silent bombers
under the blankets. What a brother!
Yeah, I’d like a boyfriend,
but I don’t like my chances at the moment.
You’re a lucky girl,
you know that?
Annabel
It hurt,
listening to Emma talk like that.
It’s like some bad dream:
pregnant
and she didn’t even have sex.
Well, not really.
It’s not the Immaculate Conception though.
I like her.
She’s up-front.
She’s taking it better than I would.
I’d buy a gun and shoot all twenty-one boys, on suspicion.
And then Jack and I come along,
making love every night in her shed,
and she notices stuff about Jack
I’ve stopped noticing.
She makes me grateful.
I’m going to drive into town later
and buy Jack something:
a CD, o
r a new shirt maybe.
I might buy Emma
a dress, normal-size,
for after the baby.
A new dress to show the world
on her one trip to town every month.
Her one trip to town, for groceries.
Emma and her mum
Mum and I were cooking
the Sunday before she left.
She stopped blending and sifting,
she looked out the window
at the day
and I remember it was hot
with not a breath of wind.
Craig and Beck were outside
fighting over whose turn it was
to ride the bike.
Mum looked out, past them,
past the sagging fence
and the tree line,
and she said,
‘A farm takes a lot out of you,
sometimes too much.’
I thought she was just complaining,
or dreaming,
so I didn’t question her.
And that night
Beck vomited all over the Sunday dinner.
That was our last meal together.
When I think of Mum and what she did
I get stiff in this chair.
And I look out the same window,
past the same fence, over the same tree line,
and I touch my stomach
and I whisper,
‘I won’t ever leave you.
I won’t ever …’
Lucky
George thinks we’re mad.
Emma thinks we’re mad.
Craig and Beck think it’s cool,
sleeping on a bed of hay bales
five metres from the ground,
a thin foam mattress
to cover the hay
and blankets, lots of them,
piled up high.
Annabel and I climb
the hay-bale stairs
and feel like King and Queen.
Sometimes we hear the possums
scurrying across the roof
and the birds nesting
in the rusted gutters,
and late at night
when the farm sleeps
I hear Annabel’s breathing,
a distant owl, and the
slow rhythm of the
windvane on the farmhouse roof.
George and Emma are wrong.
We’re not mad, we’re lucky.
George
George talks about the weather,
he talks about apples;
sometimes, when he’s in a good mood,
he talks about his kids.
This is one of those times:
lunch in the orchard,
packed sandwiches and a thermos of tea,
Annabel and I sit against the tractor,
George squats in the shade of a tree
and talks.
‘Good kids, all of them.
Sure, Craig never shuts up,
but what ten-year-old does?
And he’s strong.
He helps out around the place.
He’ll try and lift anything.
Poor kid will have a hernia before he’s a teenager!
And Beck’s sweet. She always calls me Dadda.
And I feel like a real dad when I read to her at night.
A Place Like This Page 2
