She gave a squeal and ran out into the downpour, her body immediately wet and shivering. Then she stood beside him with her hands out, her tongue licking at the rain.
‘I hope Barney doesn’t decide this is a good day to visit,’ she yelled. And then, together, they began screaming at a god that didn’t exist: ‘Come on! Send her down, Hughie!’
Dimple began to run around on the wet lawn, the water spurting up from under his feet. She followed him, and they screamed like children and caught each other in an embrace.
Nine
It rained most of the night, on and off, a magic spell that made them happy in each other’s company. Dimple ate well, and they snuggled in like campers saved from being washed away.
In the morning, Dimple woke to the rare pleasure of a damp garden, wet roads, and soggy paddocks. ‘It’s a start,’ he kept saying to himself. ‘It’s a start, at least.’ It was dangerous to be too positive, but stupid to be not positive at all. He had checked the rain gauge and walked the paddocks before Ruthie even got out of bed. The summer grasses had already sat up and pushed out little spires that couldn’t possibly have grown overnight.
At the back door, he could hear her making an orange juice at the bench. The squishing was louder than he expected. The sound made him feel good, because it meant this was a home, a place where people did things for each other. There was love, he guessed he meant, not just money.
‘So, what do you think?’ she asked him as he came through the doorway.
‘It’s a start,’ he said, knowing she would know that’s what he would say. ‘We’ll need another good fall at least. Depends on the heat, too.’
She drank from her newly made tea. A rain like this made it feel like everything was wet and would stay wet for a long time. But it was never true.
Dimple sat in the office pretending to do bookwork, but really looking at pictures of the latest spray rigs, planting equipment, and drones. All of it was out of his reach, for the moment. Maybe for a long time.
By mid-morning, the sun was out, hot and vengeful, lifting the moisture. In the humidity, Dimple wanted to drag the moisture back and push it into the ground. But you could only accept the weather, not make demands of it.
He noticed there were Indian mynas hopping around in the hay that the cows had walked over and not eaten. Two weeks ago, there had only been three of the awful pest birds, the ‘cane toad of the sky’. Now there were at least ten of them, and he didn’t know how that had happened. All the birds were adults, so they hadn’t reproduced. Somehow the word had gone out. Soon there would be hundreds of them. The metaphor seemed too obvious. He needed to get some shells for the 12-gauge.
Dimple went to the sheds and tidied up, and then made sure the spray rig was ready to go. Even if there wasn’t enough moisture to sow, there was enough to germinate weeds, and weeds stole moisture, so they had to be removed. Normally, young Rick Hatch drove the spray rig and then the tractor at planting time, but they had put him off and promised him a job as soon as it rained properly. He’d taken a job in the mines. It was better pay but a worse job, he’d said when Dimple saw him in the street. Rick was back in town visiting his family, and Dimple was lucky to have caught him. It would be a long time before he returned, if he ever did.
There would be others. Maybe not as competent or reliable, but that was the least of Dimple’s worries. And, anyway, it wasn’t a day for worry. He needed to make the most of the break from the relentless dry weather of the drought.
Ruthie faced up to the accounts that Dimple had avoided. There were the local rural-supply houses that needed to be paid; one for the seed they’d bought that hadn’t been planted yet, and one for the fertiliser they hadn’t used. Time was running out. If they didn’t plant on this rainfall, it might have to be the next. And if not then, they would have missed two crops — a significant part of their income. The bank manager would not be happy.
There was the tax reporting to work through as well. She would have liked to be in the garden appreciating the way the plants expressed their sudden pleasure at the rain. No amount of watering could do what rain did. But that would have to be her reward when she’d made some progress on the paperwork.
At lunch the next day, Dimple said, ‘I’m going to go for a walk out into the cropping country this afternoon and see what moisture is there. If you want to come?’ The question was guarded. The rain was good, but neither of them expected it to solve all their problems.
‘I will.’
He and Ruthie drove from the sheds down across the grass paddock to the edge of their flat cropping country. They parked, got out, and walked through the gate into the fallow.
The soil was sticky, with moisture in places, but most of it had dried to a soft, light consistency that made the walking a pleasure. The large cracks that had appeared in the ground had been filled by the expanding soil. Dimple carried a long metal probe over his shoulder, and Ruthie could hear him humming. A pale, orange nankeen kestrel watched them from the fence line, perhaps wondering if they might disturb something edible — a mouse, a rat, a rabbit — that would be forced to show itself.
Ruthie knew the paddock was around 150 hectares, not particularly large, but it felt enormous, as if their land extended as far as the eye could see. The sight of Barney’s tanks in the far corner put a stop to this fantasy, but still they seemed to be a very long way away.
When they were roughly halfway out into the paddock, Dimple stopped, took the probe from his shoulder, and pushed it into the soil. He put his foot on it and forced it in deep. Then he withdrew it, and they both looked at the results at the end of the metal rod. They wanted the moisture to have found its way down deep into the topsoil. If it had, there’d be soil stuck and smeared down the length of the rod. Dimple held it between them, and rubbed his hand along it. Where it had been in contact with the part just below the surface of the soil, it was sticky for his hand’s length. After that, the soil fell away, dusty and dry. They didn’t look at each other.
‘Might be too early?’ she asked. ‘Maybe the moisture hasn’t had time to penetrate?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, looking out across the paddock. ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe.’ He put the probe over his shoulder. ‘Come on, then. Let’s take our boundless optimism and head back.’
The sky was a beautiful blue in ways they didn’t want to think about. They trudged back across the cultivation, listening to butcherbirds show off.
‘Do you think they’ll kill the river?’
‘Big River?’
‘Yes. Wally Oliver’s river.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be anyone stopping them, does there?’
‘Not that I’ve read or heard.’
‘Do you think that’s what we do, as a people?’
‘Wreck things?’
‘Wreck things to build things: temporary things, things that build wealth for just a few generations?’
‘I think we’ve covered the same ground, haven’t we?’
‘That’s a dad joke, isn’t it?’ She pointed at the ground they were covering.
‘No. I thought I was being deep. We’ve crossed different territory to come to similar conclusions.’
‘I don’t know what conclusions I’ve come to. I always thought we were the good people, the real people. But now, when I actually pay attention, I see we’re not at all. We make it our business to forget anything that doesn’t agree with our good story.’
Dimple didn’t reply. He couldn’t think of a positive rejoinder, and he was aware the negative was too powerful in him.
As they walked out of the farming country back onto the grazing paddocks, he noticed a bearded dragon hugging the top of a fence post. The lizard’s sides were turning yellow. Dimple pointed, and when she saw it, Ruthie was delighted. Watching her looking so pleased made him think he would always like bearded dragons.
‘He’s chan
ging colour because of the heat, isn’t he? To keep cool. Fabulous.’
It was a thing Dimple had only recently discovered, observing it on a dragon he had nearly run over in the paddock. In that case, it was stress that had caused the colour change. He had looked it up, and found that the research on this talent of the bearded dragon was relatively recent. A university down south somewhere had been running lab tests and had drawn underwhelming conclusions. For how many thousands of years would the First People have known something like this? And yet now it was ‘discovered’?
Dimple and Ruthie walked back to the ute, not talking except to observe small changes in the landscape.
Together, they ran the mob of cows into the yard and drafted off a small number that were poorer and appeared to be doing it tougher than the rest. They let the larger mob out of the yards into the paddock, and waited for the calves of the drafted cows to return. Later that evening, when the calves were matched up, they put the little group into a small paddock that had some fresh grass and access to as much hay as they wanted.
‘How long are we planning to keep feeding these cows? The whole mob, I mean,’ Ruthie asked as they shut the gate.
‘As long as it takes.’
‘What if the dry goes on for several more months?’
‘You know the strategy: once you make the decision to feed, you have to stick with it. If you chop and change, you lose both ways.’
She did know this, but she liked to hear him say it. ‘There has to be a point where you cut and run, doesn’t there?’
They’d had this conversation many times, but she felt like having it again.
‘Eventually, we’ll run out of money and have to sell them: probably into a bad market. That’s a fair way off, and I guess we would make sure we sold before things got really bad — before the cows were too weak to get on a truck. That sort of thing.’
‘When is that point, though?’
‘How long’s a drought? You don’t know until it’s over. This one might last another year, another two years.’
‘I mean, when do we know we don’t have enough money to keep them going?’
He was quiet. They got into the ute together. ‘Maybe I’d better set a mark: when our reserves get to a certain level, the cows have to go.’
‘Seems like a good plan.’
He knew Ruthie wasn’t just questioning his planning. She was drawing parallels so that he might understand something. He wasn’t sure what it was, and he refused to ask. She would have to spell it out for him. Which he knew she would.
He checked the forecast from several different sites. They agreed in an inconclusive manner. The consensus was that there was a chance of another reasonable fall in about ten days. Dimple knew that any further than four days out, they were just guessing; he’d heard a weatherman admit it. But it felt better than a forecast for weeks of dry days. The long-term forecasts suggested, in the vaguest way, that there was no big break coming. There would be rain every now and then, maybe even an occasional good fall, but not enough to properly turn things around.
That night he said to Ruthie, ‘I think we ought to take the offer.’
‘You’re rushing it, Dimple. Don’t do it because of me.’
‘It’s not because of you. Not all of it, anyway.’
‘I was frightened of dying. We can work through this. I just need the opportunity to get away and do some different things, that’s all. When this drought is gone, I’ll be able to do that.’
‘I don’t have faith anymore. I don’t believe things are going to get better. It’s not worth the struggle.’ He was unnervingly resolute.
‘You’re just having a low. It happens with drought. You know that. Give yourself some time. We’ve had some rain. Maybe it’s the start of better things.’ She might have plucked the words from a self-help site. She had always been proud of being real — unaffected and undramatic — but now even the words sounded stolen.
Dimple didn’t notice he was turned in on himself. ‘I don’t see how. They say it’s getting hotter, which means we’ll need more rain than we’ve ever had, and we seem to be getting less.’
‘We can manage our way around that.’
‘Yes, we can. But do we want to?’
Ruthie didn’t know the answer to the question.
‘You see. One year ago, you would have scolded me for being so pathetic. Being on the land is a challenge, you would have said. Rise to the challenge. But now you say nothing.’
‘I can’t imagine us living in town.’
‘You were the one pushing for it.’
‘I know.’ She bit at her lip. ‘Maybe we could lease the farm out?’
‘It wouldn’t provide enough income. Besides, we’ve got a very good offer on the table. If we’re going to go, now is the time. We won’t get a better deal.’
‘You sure it’s genuine?’
‘No. But he says it is.’
Dimple paused. It had all come out more easily than he had expected, and hearing the words, he still believed it was the right thing to do. ‘So I want to follow up on it, find out if they’re for real, and then take them up on it.’
‘I think it’s a bad idea.’
‘I think it’s too late to say that. You’ve been behind it from the beginning.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘So have I.’
‘You’re not doing this to spite me, are you? Because of what I said, because of the phone number?’
Dimple sighed. ‘No. This is way too big for that. I love this place. I don’t want to leave here. I never want to live anywhere else. But I think if we stay, I’ll just be indulging myself and I’ll end up sacrificing everything.’
‘I tell you what — how about you find out if they’re genuine? Get something in writing? Then come back to me, and we’ll see where we stand. How about that? It might not even be real. It might be some nasty trick.’
‘I’ll tell them we’re keen, to see how serious they are.’
‘Don’t rush anything, and don’t give them the impression that we want to move quickly.’
‘All right. Agreed.’
Ruthie went to the bedroom and shut the door. She did not want to live anywhere else, either. This was the house where the boys had grown up, where she had created a garden. This was the farm where they had done so much as a couple and as a family. How could she have thought of leaving?’
She folded and unfolded her hands, staring at the worn carpet. But he was right. She knew he was right. Tough decisions had to be made. You couldn’t just hope they’d go away and that everything would turn out for the best. She stood and pushed her hands down by her sides. It would lead to new beginnings, and she was certain they needed that. Or was he playing some sort of game of brinkmanship — threatening to sell up in the hope that she would crumble and recant?
Ten
Now the farm was green everywhere. Every plant that could sprout or grow had done so, but only a little bit. There was not enough length in the grass for the large tongues and mouths of the cows to grip it. But it felt better to look out and see green. A week of summer weather would ruin that, so he knew he had to enjoy it while he could. The city media would not understand. The city would not understand. They would think the drought that was heralding climate change was over. Crisis averted. But he couldn’t blame them. It was impossible to think it could be bone dry tomorrow when it was soaking today; baking hot tomorrow when it was freezing today. It seemed like it was beyond human imagination. Even he had to force himself to face it.
While Ruthie was in town, Dimple went into the house and rang Ken Lidcombe, the agent from Burraga. He told Ken that he wanted to ‘progress’ the deal, because he thought this made him sound like he did deals every day. Ken told him he would like to do a property inspection, and then they could talk details. Dimple replied that they
could come whenever it suited them, as long as they gave him a bit of notice.
After Ken had thanked him and said they would organise a date and time, Dimple said, ‘I’m working on the presumption that the starting point is double the price our local valuer puts on our place.’
‘If that’s the offer Mr Oliver made, then that’s our guiding figure.’
‘Guiding?’
‘We have to be sure that your property is as good as Mr Oliver has been led to believe. If everything is as it is supposed to be, then the figure will stand.’
After the call, Dimple wondered what Ken’s words meant. But now that he had shown his intent, there was no rush. None of it mattered until there was something on paper. It seemed more likely than not, which would mean he would have enough money to buy a small farm near town and maybe live off the interest or half the interest, depending on how things worked out with Ruthie. That way, he could keep his dogs and a handful of cows without the worry. It seemed a small, weak choice, but a pleasant one, and he couldn’t think of a better alternative. But there had to be enough money.
Forced by unthinking habit, he checked the weather forecast. Out of nowhere, the meterologists had decided a big front was coming through, bringing big falls. It was still ten days away, so he ignored it as much as he could, knowing he would be checking its progress every day, pretending to himself he wasn’t taking it seriously.
And so the agent came — yet another man with his name and his company’s logo on his pocket. Ken Lidcombe was as clean as any man Dimple had ever seen, and as quiet and considerate as a funeral director. He stepped out of his shiny ute, shook Dimple’s hand, and then looked around in a manner that suggested his mission was solemn and maybe painful. ‘We regret to inform you …’ Dimple could hear him saying, except he wasn’t saying it.
Small Mercies Page 13
