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  CROW’S

  BREATH

  JOHN

  KINSELLA

  CROW’S BREATH

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  Copyright © John Kinsella 2015

  First Published 2015

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the

  purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the

  Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written

  permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover image: www.kipscottphoto.com

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Australia

  Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

  A cataloguing entry for this title is available from the

  National Library of Australia: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-0-9953594-0-6 (e-book)

  To Tracy, as always

  The author wishes to acknowledge

  the traditional owners and

  custodians of the land he writes

  CONTENTS

  The Eagle

  The Plough Star and the Fence

  Farm Scenes

  The Receptionist

  The Water Carrier: A Report

  Shame

  On Display

  The Little Flower of Forest Pool

  Metronome

  A Particular Friendship

  Crow’s Breath

  Monitor

  Sleeper

  The Tip

  Abacus

  Shine Your Light on me

  Statue

  Feeding the Dogs

  Binoculars

  The Thin Veil

  Need of Assistance

  In Necrospect

  Golden Gloves

  The New Machinery Shed/The New Pastoral

  Formal Attire, or Benighted

  Five Bucks for Gas

  Dirty Snow

  THE EAGLE

  The school bus was a few minutes early, so he thought, I’ll just stand here by the side of the road and wait. But his mum had never before not been waiting for him, even when the bus was early. The bus driver had asked if he’d be okay, and the boy had said, Yes, Mum won’t be long. She must have been detained. Detained. He was eight and used words like that. The bus driver was familiar with the boy and his family. He was the only passenger who spoke in such a – formal way. Okay, son, but don’t stand close to the edge of the road and just stay put until your mum turns up. I’m sure she won’t be long. The boy felt a lump rise higher in his throat with each grinding gear change, and he fixed on schoolfellows waving sarcastically as the orange school bus vanished further up the hill and around a curve, through the bush.

  For a moment he forgot his anxiety, if such a thing can truly be forgotten, and explored his surroundings with his eyes. Everything looked different under these conditions of – freedom. A good feeling worked along with the bad. He considered the sheep in the paddock opposite; he searched the breakaway and the bush for signs of roos, and watched magpies and small songbirds singing out their territories. The smallest birds puffed up, their song large and echoing through the valley. He loved the place and knew all the animals, but he found himself reaching out for his mother’s hand, and since it wasn’t there, pulled his hand back to his side and shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the backpack which was starting to sag and make his back ache. He crouched down to reduce the burden and began to study some red ants. Meat ants. He loved all ants.

  He counted a hundred and twenty-three ants in the vicinity of the ‘empire’ near the bus stop. Other kids occasionally caught the bus at this stop. They were usually driven the twenty k’s into town by parents who worked at the bank or the school. But on the days when they did catch the bus, he grew distraught watching them stamp on the ants, stirring up a craze of retribution among the surviving soldiers. Stop! Stop! he’d cry, but the kids would just laugh. They were older than him. Sometimes his mother waiting in the car on the opposite side of the road would call out, Kids, that’s mean. Leave those creatures alone. They’re not creatures, they’d reply, they’re just ants!

  Still no sign of Mum. He looked up to the bush and imagined the paddocks of home beyond. He could walk it, if he had to; he was sure he could. He would stay off the road because it was harvest, and grain trucks came thundering along. They were worst returning from the bins, unladen, driven fast and carelessly, trailers fishtailing on the gravel. He guessed at least ten minutes had passed, maybe more. Something was wrong. Maybe Mum had had an accident and needed help. Dad was a long way away and wouldn’t know. He’d have to get home.

  He set off, walking in the drainage ditch. The odd broken beer bottle glinted in the sun, which even at this time of the afternoon was hot and damaging. He pulled at his hat, hitched his backpack, and moved three or four metres before stopping, petrified, staring up ahead.

  It was one of the two great wedge-tailed eagles that patrolled the skies of this valley. He’d not seen either of them for ages, though he looked out for them every day. They were massive and magnificent. They would soar before dropping in ever-widening spirals and then narrow to a point before one of them dropped down to lift a monitor or a rabbit from its secret place. They grew out of his earliest memories. But he’d never been this close to one. Maybe two or three times his height above and in front of him, hanging there, looking over the hook of its beak, black and brown feathers of its wings like hands, knife-like talons down. The boy had heard stories of eagles taking lambs and his mum’s voice was in his ear, a voice from that morning, Did my little lamb enjoy his breakfast? Yes, Mum, it was exquisite. Exquisite. Well, I am glad to hear that, my darling. When Dad was away Mum always spoke to him like that.

  But he also remembered his dad telling him farmers just said that because they wanted the eagles killed, but eagles were protected. It’s true, he’d said, they do sometimes take newborn lambs, but not often, and not the big lambs. And these are rare, majestic creatures that look over all of us. Respect them, son, respect them. And the boy did. He was in awe.

  Yet now he was afraid, quickly calculating his size in relation to a lamb’s. What was the difference between a newborn lamb and a big lamb … a fully grown lamb like himself? Was there any such thing as a fully grown lamb? This conundrum had him transfixed between fear and wonder and his aloneness became something different.

  The eagle made a strange harsh-soft sound. He’d heard this before, though rarely and only faintly, at a distance. But so close it was like a sad and angry and curious cry all in one. The boy made the same sound back and the eagle, drifting there, repeated it, then slowly swept his wings and lifted away.

  The car pulled up, windows down, and his mother called, My little lamb! I am so, so sorry I’m late. Are you okay? Come on, jump in. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I am so sorry.

  The boy gathered himself, dropped his backpack from his shoulders, opened the back door, swung the bag in and followed it onto the seat. I was walking home, Mum, like you said I should do if you didn’t turn up. I would have got the spare key from under the rock and gone inside and rung Auntie.

  You’re a sensible boy. You’re my smart, sensible boy. There was an accident and the road was blocked on the other side of town. It was so upsetting. The policeman let me through in the end even though no one else was allowed through. I explained about my poor little lamb being left on the side of the road with no one to collect him.

  It’s okay, Mum. I waited then I started to w
alk. Just like you always told me to do.

  But you look distressed. Did anything happen?

  No, Mum, nothing at all. I’m just tired. It was a hard day at school. Sorry, but I didn’t eat all my lunch.

  Well, I won’t tell you off in the circumstances, but you know you’ve got to eat your lunch. You’ll get weak and sick. I suppose you took two bites and went straight to the library again?

  Yes, sorry, Mum. It won’t happen again. Really, it won’t.

  I believe you, my lamb. I want you to grow big and strong like your dad. Now, let’s get home and have some afternoon tea. Then you can play until dinner. I’ve got your favourite.

  THE PLOUGH STAR AND THE FENCE

  The stars overwhelmed him. He’d been so long in a place of crushing weight and darkness, a black hole swallowing all the light, that he now felt he’d been freed and nothing would ever be bad again. He looked over his shoulder into the spotlight illuminating damp dust, and checked that the guide wheel of the disc plough was running in the furrow made by the castor wheel in the previously ploughed row, and then looked back to the stars. The tractor rocked beneath him, its pneumatic seat covered in an oily hessian sack absorbing some of the impact. The huge dual rear wheels threw up clouds of soil which thumped into the mudguards and added to the confusion of engine, cut and movement. But up through the floodlit vision of unploughed and ploughed field, there were the stars. He could only recognise two constellations – the Saucepan, or Orion’s Belt, and the Southern Cross – but the rest filled him with a hunger to know and name. His old thirst for knowledge was back.

  When his best mate’s father, Serge, had suggested he head up to their farm to do some ploughing, he’d filed it away where he filed away most things, other than drugs: in the can’t-do, won’t-do, not-interested place. Scratching his chin, his face, his arms, his chest, he’d said, Nah, mate, I’m not suited to that kind of work.

  Then what are you suited to? Serge had asked. Not much, he’d laughed. Normally his mate Jess would laugh along with him, but he hadn’t. Jess’d stopped laughing along, months and months back, when he got straight. Now Jess wouldn’t even lend him twenty bucks when things were tough, and they were always tough. In fact, he’d only seen this so-called best mate twice in three months: not that Jess was avoiding him, rather that he avoided Jess. Best stick with those who understand, and the only ones who understand are those using; not those who once used, but those who were hanging or stoned.

  But things weren’t good. His own family had cut him off after he sold the complete contents of their houses when they were over east. And his girlfriend had OD’d and dropped dead on him. There’d be an inquest about that, but he hadn’t injected her or even scored the dope that killed her. She’d been earning enough to keep them both high, but that was gone now. He’d resorted to petty dealing and ‘doing favours’ for those further up the food chain. When he could manage it, he’d sometimes driven girls from his dead girlfriend’s agency to clients, and waited outside in the car to make sure it all went smoothly. But once, he’d got so stoned that he missed a girl being beaten to a pulp, and the agency didn’t want much to do with him. It was a long way from his uni days: studying for Honours, writing a dissertation on ‘Satan and Redemption in Paradise Lost’.

  He had no idea how to handle a plough. He’d scarcely been out of the city. It’s not hard, his mate had chimed in, you just keep it straight and learn how to figure-eight the corners of the paddock. We’d put you on nightshift, Serge had said. We start when the rains come – I reckon in four or five weeks. Get off the shit and come up. Free board and lodging, and I’ll pay you a hundred bucks cash a day. It’s not much, but it’s better than the crap you’re doing.

  Being a person of extremes, and with the world and the law closing in on him in so many ways – a small bust and a failed deal in the same week, the cops and a dealer after his blood – he went cold turkey. He’d done it before, but it hadn’t lasted. It’s not the way if you’re serious, the counsellors had often told him. Come in to the drug unit and do it under supervision. And take up the program in the months, or even years, that follow. We’ll see you through to good health. You make the decisions, you do the work, and we’ll be there. But that wasn’t his way.

  He’d been ploughing that night for about five hours when the ground started getting tougher to work. He dropped the gear range to get through boggy low ground. There was a lot of moisture in the clear night air. Low on fuel, he lifted the discs and brought the tractor to rest near the ute. He fuelled the tractor with diesel, and greased the plough and the tractor in the way he’d been shown. He was a sharp, quick learner when he was straight. His mind was wandering, thinking about scoring. He wasn’t even hanging out. His mind was full of the stars.

  With the tractor motor off, he sat by hurricane lamplight and ate his sandwiches with diesel hands. Serge’s missus had made them and they bulged with goodness. She’d taken a shine to him. She didn’t say much, but she gave him a look that said, I’d be proud to have you as my son. And he and her son had a past … and a future. He munched, and listened to the night. In the distance over the paddocks, through lines of she-oaks planted as windbreaks, he could see the house lights, and hear the generator that fed them. He was alone, but close as well. He turned back to the stars.

  One in particular fascinated him: high overhead, a reddish bright light that seemed to pulse. It was mesmerising, up there in the firmament, at the heart of the heavens. He thought, I must get a star chart. It’d be nice to be able to identify it. In the meantime, I’ll give it a name, I’ll call it the Plough Star. Watching over me.

  He started the tractor again and shifted into gear, steel pedals clunking against metal floor. It was a good but oldish tractor. The radio didn’t work, and it was noisy and even dusty inside the supposedly sealed cab, but that was okay. He worked the boggy ground in that corner of the paddock and found it impossible to get even close to getting it right. But he reassured himself that in the end he’d do a figure of eight and finish off the ‘missed bits’, and see the whole paddock ploughed out.

  He’d finished off three corners of the now ploughed paddock. It was the early hours and the ground was getting heavier. It was time to knock off. Serge would pick up the tractor in the morning and start on the next paddock, which was a few miles away.

  Funny at that hour of the morning. The stars were shifting faster than they should, and he was tired and a little strung out. His body was telling his mind something it couldn’t process. He missed his girlfriend. He was sorry she was dead. She shouldn’t have died. He‘d known she was shooting more than she should: it was a strong batch. She’d got it from one of her clients, who wasn’t a user: rather, he dangled it in front of girls with habits to help facilitate their ‘understanding’. He was one of those with ‘special requirements’. It’s a world of euphemisms. It was strong shit. He’d been chasing the dragon; she’d mainlined it. He’d nodded during her shutting down, her … suffocation. A bit of his abandoned dissertation came to him, or Milton himself:

  O for that warning voice, which he who saw

  The Apocalypse heard cry in heaven aloud,

  Then when the dragon, put to second rout,

  Came furious down to be revenged on men,

  ‘Woe to the inhabitants on Earth!’…

  He’d never been religious. In fact, he argued that only unbelievers could try to contemplate what Milton had to say. Some of his mates had survived the scene by finding God. Some of them stayed stoned and danced around at Potter’s House dos.

  He went into the last corner, the dual wheels sticky in the heavy soil. Intently, he looked out into the night sky and searched for the Plough Star. But he couldn’t find it. He arched out over the steering wheel, which he was pulling hard left to complete the curve of the right-angle corner, eyes rolling back in his head. He caught sight of the red pulse just as the far-right rear wheel caught the barbed-wire fence, crushing a star picket and yet riding up onto it so the tr
actor turned hard in on itself, and the plough rode up on the inside duals. He hit the brake and the clutch and stopped the juggernaut before it completely jack-knifed. The whole lot was perched at forty-five degrees, ready to buckle.

  *

  You’re lucky to be alive, mate, said Serge. There was no anger, no irritation in the older man’s voice. I’ll go down and sort it out. Might need to call up my neighbour. Helped him out once, maybe twenty years ago, when he did the same thing. Did you finish the paddock? Good, good. Okay to go back into the saddle tomorrow night? Good, good. Oh, my boy is coming up from the city tomorrow and he asked if there’s anything you need?

  A star chart, thanks.

  What?

  And a book on the southern skies?

  Ah, yes. Amazing out there, isn’t it. They distract you a little …?

  Yeah, they did. But it won’t happen again. There was one star that caught my attention …

  What did it look like? Where was it? If you point it out tonight I could probably identify it.

  Nah, nah. Need to find out for myself. Really, I just want to see what others have called it. I already have a name for it and it works. It works.

  FARM SCENES

  I paint farm scenes, he told the young lady from the regional newspaper. It was more than he could bear, really, but it was good publicity and work had been scarce.

  No, no, I’ve been here for over thirty years now. I’m not a recent arrival! The woman was clearly a new arrival herself, maybe from a journalism course at one of the city universities. I’ve painted hundreds of farmhouses, barns, paddocks, fences … farm animals.

  I take my paints and easel out to my patrons’ properties. They pay me to paint their places. I paint en plein air. I paint in the open air, weather permitting. I finish things off in my studio here. But sometimes I just paint what I see around me; samples are in the window. Tourists buy them.