Locust summer, p.6
Locust Summer, page 6
‘You’ll get what you’re contracted for. We’re here to work.’ Sterlo looked at me. ‘We’re all here to work and get the job done.’
I walked away from the group, picked up a stick and started scratching letters into the dirt by the edge of a paddock. An old habit from older seasons, where I’d taken every moment available to shirk work and look beyond the farm gate to the world outside. Try to hate it as I might, I couldn’t shake my admiration for it. The pure assault of the working day and the clear, simple task to sweat and push, the soil holding the ghosts of thousands of days filled with sore muscles and stiff backs. As much as I wanted the work to stop, I wanted it to burn.
We started up again at seven as the sun disappeared. The high beams of the headers reached out into the wheat making the ranks into stark decoupage. Sterlo didn’t say anything on the CB. There was no need. Murphy and Williamson drove their machines with precise fury, and John and I served them like gun bearers. Strip. Offload. Dump the grain at the bunker. Fuel up. Repeat. The temperature cooled down as the waxing moon took over the sky, a blank of indigo blue with an immense halo around the bright light.
When Mum drove up to the laager with a surprise dinner, we’d been at it four extra hours. She called us in over the CB, parked her station wagon under the shade tree and served roast lamb, gravy, vegies and fresh baked bread off the station wagon’s tailgate. Hunger is the best sauce. She could have served tinned spaghetti for all we cared. But the food was utter heaven, every mouthful enjoyed in total silence.
‘Thanks for making dinner, Justine,’ Sterlo said to her, as formal and polite as he could manage while she served up his plate. ‘Could you cut me the burnt bit at the end? Best part.’
‘It’s my pleasure, Sterlo. And would you like some greens?’
‘Of course. Got to keep my health up. We’re nearly halfway done on this side of the highway.’
Mum heaped beans and broccoli onto his plate. ‘This will help you see in the dark then.’ She added a slice of bread. ‘This will go nicely with the wine.’ She turned to me. ‘There’s a couple of bottles of Côtes du Rhône on the front seat. Don’t let the name fool you though. It’s plonk.’
When all was served Mum packed her things up and drove off home to take care of Dad again, the headlights of her station wagon burrowing through the black tracks on the way back to the homestead.
We sat in the fold-out chairs with the moon brightening the paddocks around us. Mum left instructions for me to take the dirty dishes home and make sure there were no food scraps around. Wild dogs had been spotted in the district, and they’d linger longer if there were something to cadge.
‘Lovely lamb, nice and rare,’ Sterlo said, and let go a belch. ‘I’ve still got to sort those sheep out.’
‘Still?’ Murphy wiggled his cup of wine. ‘It’s been days. They’ll be well done by now.’
Sterlo changed the subject. ‘Good work today, boys,’ he thundered. ‘We’re ahead. Even if there’s a ban, this late work will put us in a good position.’
The rest of the night passed in warm routine. We’d broken the back of the job – there was no need to push too hard. When knock-off was called Sterlo asked me to drive him home, admitting when the others were out of earshot that he had refilled his wine cup several times too many, and polished off the second bottle, and was in no fit state to drive. Not that it mattered all that much. We were in the country. I’d driven home so pissed once that I had to cover one eye so I could see double instead of quad. The local cops would sooner escort you home than throw you in the drunk tank. I wondered what Detective Lovestone would think.
‘She’s a good woman, your mum,’ Sterlo slurred, rolling down the window. ‘Doing the best she can. I get it. I really do.’
I murmured yes, and flicked on the high beams as we turned onto the highway, moths swarming as if pulled by magnets, flashing galaxies that kept pace even as I accelerated.
‘Different place after dark,’ I said, switching topics. ‘Will we go late every night?’
‘The forecast is for more heat. I’m being prudent.’
‘I know –’
‘Tight timeframe. It gets done or the crops rot. There’s no negotiating with it.’
We reached Septimus town and I turned off the main drag into a side street pale with streetlights. Sterlo’s place was a disappointing weatherboard home with a dead front lawn.
‘Ever thought about getting your own land, Sterlo?’ I asked, not able to help it.
‘All the damn time, mate. But these days you either inherit it or buy it for top dollar. I’m in neither run of luck.’ He opened his door and lolled out of the cab. ‘My wife had land. She was canny enough to keep it. That’s fair enough. It was hers. And it’s not like your place pays the big bucks.’ He shut the door and leaned inside the window, lowering his alcohol-tinged voice. ‘I don’t need to own, mate. I just need to belong. I figured that out a while ago. You need to understand that. I don’t need things on paper.’
He bade me goodnight and told me to pick him up in the morning. I watched him pass through the front door, the inside as empty as my flat in Scarborough. I shoved the ute back down the highway, accelerating till the moths couldn’t keep up with the headlight beams.
11
‘Righto!’ I slid my hand inside Sterlo’s bedroom and flicked on the light. He was sitting on the bed, dressed for work, a cup of coffee in each hand. The weirdest thing I had seen in a long time.
‘You’re as predictable as your father was,’ he said, bedsprings rocking in time with his mirth. ‘No way you can get the jump on me.’ The bastard laughed all the way to the laager, slurping coffee and tuning the ute’s battered old radio with his free hand. ‘You can’t get the ABC on this thing? Radio National? Anything?’
‘Sometimes. But it’s pretty faint. If you go to FM.’
‘I’m not listening to that shit. Least the ABC has the decency to play the classics and shut up.’
This was a revelation. ‘I figured you for a talkback man. Calling up and giving the city folk a piece of your mind.’ A road train came over a rise and I had to splay a hand over my face to shield its makeup-mirror lights. ‘Someone’s bringing grain in already. Really ahead of the timetable.’
Sterlo hit the dashboard and the radio warmed up with something jangly. ‘T. Rex. Now this is how it’s done.’ The volume knob went round and round and the tune took over the mute grey scenery, drumbeat and guitar driving us along.
Sterlo rolled down his window and whooped at the rising dawn. Headers started up in fields on both sides of the road. Utes and trucks ran the maze of roads and tracks to deliver workers to their start positions. The whole web of activity that made the district hum and surge for a few weeks a year made a festival that played all day and late into the night.
‘Forecast is for slightly cooler weather today. They must have changed their minds.’ He leaned out the window, gulping the air and stretching as though it were laudanum. ‘You’ve got to let it consume you. Harvest is a crazy time.’ I didn’t imagine I would, but the sentiment was tempting. I knew how to bury myself in work. Only this wasn’t the job I could slump into. Sterlo seemed to sense my thoughts.
‘You can knock off early today. We went pretty late last night, so if you need to help your mother, just go.’ He switched off the radio just as the song worked to its climax. ‘Did you speak to her? About the farm?’
‘Haven’t had the chance.’
Before he could say more, the laager swung into view with Williamson, Murphy and John sitting on the fold-out chairs, warming their hands around mugs. ‘How did you sleep, mate?’ Murphy called. Sterlo slammed the passenger door and took his place in the circle.
‘Just heavenly. I dreamed that we finished the harvest in record time and went to the Terminus where they had Guinness on tap.’
‘You really were dreaming,’ Williamson said, and cracked up.
‘It was a nice thought. But you’re right. We’ll have to make do with good old Swan Lager.’ He switched a thumb at me. ‘This idiot tried to get the jump on me this morning. Wake me up for work. Tell ’em what happened, Rowan.’
‘Tell them yourself. I’m still traumatised.’
Sterlo relished it. ‘He came to wake me up but I was sat there in the dark all dressed for work when he switched on the light. Tell you what boys, he near jumped a foot in the air when he saw me.’
‘I’ve just never seen you so clean before, Sterlo.’
The others laughed. Sterlo didn’t, and sat down on his folding chair to lead the discussion of the working day. As we ran through the timetable, a thick scatter of white cockatoos twisted over the paddocks.
‘Rain coming,’ John said, and wouldn’t tell when.
Murphy’s rig seized up at four, something to do with chaff getting into the engine box. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch it, so Sterlo and John gave Williamson’s header a lookover to make sure at least one of the crucial machines was ready for action next day. I drove back to the homestead and checked in on Mum and Dad – packing and sleeping like usual – and dialled the Chambers’ place on the kitchen phone, flicking the rotary through a number long memorised. Mrs Chambers answered, and I asked her how the dogs were. Fine enough. When I asked to speak to Alison, the old girl hit me with a zinger.
‘She’s just writing a letter to her boyfriend.’ A pause. ‘I’ll see if she can come.’ The long wait drew sweat to my brow thicker than the sheen of the working day.
Boyfriend. The word stabbed its two syllables over and over. That had been me. Years before. Right the way through the first few years of high school and the senior years I did as a boarder in the city. When Albert died, I stayed away. And we withered. Of course she’d moved on. Seeing her, touching her, tasting her, I knew I hadn’t.
‘What do you want?’ Alison said, terse as a hangover.
‘Want to go for a walk?’ The best I could think of.
We met at the creek in twilight and walked along the dry bed, meandering toward Septimus and the railway line that slid into the loading dock for the grain silos.
‘Your brother’s helping with the harvest then?’ I asked, remembering what she’d told me.
‘Yeah. He got some time off the rigs. He’s earning pretty ridiculous money. Says it’s all danger pay.’
‘He’s saving up to take over one day then?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Yeah. That was ours too.’
‘I know.’ She touched my arm. ‘At least I guessed it was.’
The sand squeaked under our shoes, suggesting a layer of water below the hardened armour of dried earth. The bankside trees whispered in the wind, and it felt good to be out of sight, deep in a furrow with the sky for shelter. Albert and I used to play at soldiers in the creek, pretending it was a trench that we’d defend side by side, lying on our bellies at the angled lip of earth to aim toy guns into the ranks of wheat.
‘How’s your work going?’ Alison smiled. ‘You remember how everything works?’
‘Of course. I could do it blindfolded. It’s not that hard you know.’
‘I know. They kept me from it for years. Then I learned in a day and do it better than all the blokes.’
‘What do you do in Walpole then?’
‘Go back in time.’ She punched me on the shoulder. ‘I work at the school. Study. Cook and clean and run errands. Watch some telly. Read.’
‘What do you read?’
‘Nothing you’d approve of. I still have that book you tried to get me into. What was it? East of somewhere.’
‘East of Eden. It’s about farming. Well, kind of.’
‘You can have it back. It’s dreary. I’ll post it to you.’
‘It’s a classic. Keep it. You might enjoy it one day.’
She sighed. ‘I want to go back to uni. Finish my degree.’
‘What did you study again?’
‘Business. Same as Darren. He was senior year when I started.’
Darren. What a stupid name. ‘Can you do it externally?’
‘No. There’s a campus in Bunbury. I could go back and forth.’
‘And what will you do when you get the piece of paper?’
She punched me again. ‘I’ll be your boss.’
The creek angled up and ended at a landfill bridge that took the highway and the railway, with a stormwater pipe at the bottom of the span to protect these arteries from getting washed away in a downpour. We felt a rumble, deep and steady, relentless. A freight train. As we scrambled to the top of the banks, the front engine popped up from the lip of the flat horizon and grew and grew till a metal snake was clicking past over the bridge, ten cars, twenty, thirty, fifty, empty box cars on their way to the Terminus for loading with grain, then all the way back again to the port at Geraldton for loading onto a bulk carrier that would sail to Asia or the Middle East or Europe. While the final carriage passed I pulled Alison close and kissed her, both of us in plain sight of the fields and the town and the main road.
‘Stop it.’ She broke away. ‘Just stop it.’
She walked off. The squeal of train brakes ground my mind to powder.
‘Wait,’ I called above the din, but she kept walking, her silhouette receding in the dark. My heartbeat surged as I went over what happened, the signs I thought she’d given, the meaning I had interpreted to draw her in. The train faded from view, and the silence that followed took all the steam out of me.
12
Despite the weather bureau’s cooler outlook, the shire blinked and brought in a total harvest ban across the district. It was too hot and too windy to take a chance, and would last two days at least. So while Sterlo and the boys attended to the vehicles and did what they could to look busy, I hung around the homestead, trying to put Alison out of my mind. After breakfast, Mum showed me a clipboard with a list of jobs to do. At the top of my list was ‘inventory the main shed’.
‘I’m taking your father to town for a check-up soon,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you underway. I don’t want you saying I haven’t told you what to do.’
The padlock was rusted with disuse and it took a few goes to get it to unlatch. Together we shoved the door sideways along its rail, opened the shed like an aircraft hangar, and inside we saw a clapped-out header harvester and a tractor that would fetch a good price in an antiques auction. A workbench with a lathe and a vice was set to one side, and a gun safe was bolted to the floor beside.
‘You could get some good prices for the shotguns,’ I said, approaching the gun cabinet, dialling 20-16-9-12, clockwise, counterclockwise, open. A pair of over-and-under Berettas and a pump-action Remington bookended a trio of .22 bolt actions. It was a decent battery for the killing of rabbits, pigs, foxes, wild dogs, galahs and anything else that was edible or annoying.
Mum walked about scribbling notes on her clipboard. She patted the tractor and the header as though they were old horses, and picked up tools scattered across the concrete floor.
‘I might just offer all of this as a job lot. Pick-up only.’ She looked into the gun cabinet. ‘Lord knows if any of them work. Sterlo does all the shooting.’
I pulled one of the Berettas out and hefted it to my shoulder. ‘We could find out.’ I swung it sideways, imagining a clay pigeon darting through the rafters. The trigger clicked dry.
‘Put it away. It’s not a toy.’ She took it from me and broke the action open one-handed. ‘Always check the chamber first. Never assume it’s unloaded.’ The gun snapped back whole inside the cabinet. ‘I’d be happy to give them away to whoever wants them,’ she said.
‘They’re worth a few hundred each, at least. They’re pretty old. That could mean they’re rare or something. I’ll make some calls.’
Mum flicked a page over on the clipboard. ‘Whatever. Just get it done quickly.’ She scribbled a note. ‘I’ve got a meeting next week with an agribusiness group. Seems their price could be right.’
‘How much are they offering?’
She scribbled again. ‘Enough. Best it’s a simple deal. We strip the grain and keep the profits. Empty the house and sell all the assets. Away we go. They just want the land. They can have it with the price they’re paying.’
Now or never. ‘Why can’t we just keep the property and get someone to run it? We’d still get an income from it every year. It would stay in the family.’
Before I could mention Sterlo’s ambition, she backed away a few steps. ‘You suddenly care about the arrangements? Look, Rowan, I get it. When my dad was dying I took care of most of the details, but right at the end my sister started insisting we did things differently. She felt guilty about not doing enough I suppose. Don’t you do the same. Just bring the harvest in and help me pack. That’s all you have to do.’
She strode out, leaving me to clean up Dad’s tools, which were scattered around as if he’d just walked off the job and broken his own rule about a place for everything, and everything in its place. I picked up a hammer and smacked the workbench. I did suddenly care about the arrangements. I did want to do things differently. Mum asked me to come help. I had chucked three weeks of work away to do it. The moment I asked a question, it got thrown back.
I tossed the hammer aside and locked the gun cabinet, twisting the dial till the code was erased. At least that was straightforward.
Later that afternoon Mum came into the kitchen with a bundle of bills and pamphlets and a magazine from a university. She dumped them on the counter, said, ‘I’ll sort them out later,’ and put the kettle on. She handed me a piece of fax paper, folded in half. ‘This was waiting for you at the post office.’ I opened it to find a scrawl of photocopied handwriting that shouted with Holt’s unmistakable accent.
The number you left us had a digit wrong. Fax your story through by Friday. Happy harvesting. Thinking of putting you on the subs desk.
I muttered ‘shit’. Crumpled the paper and put it in the bin. I was a field reporter – on the road, on the pulse. The subs desk was a graveyard for pedants and incompetents.
‘Who was that from?’ Mum asked.
