Tide Page 11

  Come off it, boss, we’ve just knocked off.

  Well, you can do some overtime. No excuses on this one. We could lose the lot if it’s not done pronto. I’m going to get the rest of the crew onto it as well.

  Including shithead, Sook, from the weighbridge?

  Yeah, including the shithead. And don’t call him Sook when you’re up on the stack: no room for distractions up there. He gets pretty hot under the collar when you call him that.

  Might be smart with the figures, boss, but he’s a lazy bugger. He won’t be much use. Mind you, he does get stirred up. Might get so hot under the collar he’d set fire to the stack. And we wouldn’t want that.

  Yeah, boys, he is a wanker, but we need him. Get on with him at least until the job’s finished. These student weighbridge officers are always the same. Think they’re a cut above. But anyway, forget about it … I’m not trying to stir you up.

  Not trying to be incendiary, boss?

  Get to it, boys. I’ll buy the first round at the pub tonight when the job’s done.

  They sent Sook to the top in his boots and laughed as his boots filled with grain and he slipped about, sinking and sliding at once. A gust of wind caught the tarp he was securing and almost threw him off, but Sook’s filled boots anchored him and he fell on the tarp, squeezing air out through the gaps in the grain.

  Get a grip, ya bludger, one of the old fellas yelled. Sook glowered at him, but worked hard to secure the tarp, fighting his boots, which he eventually tore off and threw in an arc over the heads of those below, out onto the asphalt.

  Silly bastard’s got the idea now.

  Yeah, but you know, no boots no work. He’s in contraven-tion!

  Hey, Sook, you’re not allowed to take your boots off.

  Sook looked at others on neighbouring stacks, tarping against the wind. No boots. It was more dangerous up there with boots than without.

  Fuck off! Why don’t one of you pricks come up here and help!

  You should have had boots on, said the super, dressing the wound on Sook’s foot. He’d hit the steel side hard, sliding down the tarp, and cut it. It’ll need stitches, mate, you should know that. You’ll have to drive into town with one of the boys from the hut.

  They’re pricks.

  Yeah, well, you’ve got no choice. If you don’t, you need not come back to work tomorrow.

  It’s going to be a hell of a storm. At least my stack was secured properly. Tarps interleaved, snug.

  Why do you always put things in such a smart way? That’s why the boys ha— find you annoying.

  You call me Sook as well, behind my back.

  Never have, mate. Watch your lip.

  Why don’t you drive me to the doctor’s?

  Gotta be on deck, mate – gotta be here if there’s a disaster.

  By the time Sook and Chook got underway, storm clouds were heavy and nearby. They both looked at the tarped stacks and thought what they thought secretly and securely. Chook looked pissed off at having to drive such a shithead anyway, and had a nasty expression on his face that encompassed everything. If he’d been drunk, he would have given Sook a thumping. It was Chook who cut teeth into his soapbox and chomped at Sook’s balls as he lathered his hair in the shower. It was Chook who urinated in Sook’s water bottle. It was Chook who threw a dugite, half-alive or half-dead (who’s to tell, mate?), in Sook’s sleeping bag. It was Chook who dragged Sook from his sleeping bag, yelling, He’s having a wank, he’s having a wank. Chook had a strong antipathetical interest in Sook. One day Sook had said, What is it with you? Are you infatuated with me? That sent Chook right off the deep end: he’d pulled his army-issue rifle out of the closet and threatened to shoot Sook in the head.

  Blood was soaking through the bandage. It was dripping onto the floor in diffuse, thick blots.

  Fuck ya. Don’t bleed on my floor.

  I’ll clean it up. Nothing I can do about it. Feeling a bit woozy, actually.

  You’re such a loser. You dickhead uni students, same every year. Think you’ll go country for a month or two. Makes me spew.

  You better slow down. Can hardly see a thing in this rain.

  Chook was about to say bugger off, but as hailstones pelted down, lightning forked on the fringes of sight, and the wind threw the ute across the road, he slowed and pulled over beneath some trees. Fuck, this is something.

  Reckon the stacks’ll hold up … Chook?

  Don’t call me that. Only my mates call me that – I’ve warned you before.

  Sorry, Chook.

  I’m telling you mate, you can fucking get out if you say it again.

  Chook Chook Chook Chook Chook.

  Chook raised his fist then stopped, looked at Sook’s bleeding mess of bandage and foot, and said, Fuck, we’re like babies.

  Yeah, we are, laughed Sook.

  Chook slumped back into his seat, took out his rollies, stuck a paper to his lip, gathered some tobacco, took the paper in his palm, loaded the tobacco, rolled, licked, and stuck the completed cigarette behind his ear. Want one?

  Yeah, ta.

  Chook rolled another, handed Sook the freshly rolled cigarette, then took the one behind his ear, lit it with his Bic, and did the same for Sook. They rolled their windows down an inch, but the gale threw everything through the letterboxes, so they quickly closed them.

  Maybe just one open a fraction. Stop the draught.

  Yep.

  They smoked as the storm battered the car, unharvested crops broken up like television static around them, and Sook’s blood pooled on the rubber mat.

  The stack you tarped was pretty good. It’ll be fine, said Chook. Not sure about the one I did with Frank and Gazza. We were too busy laughing at you making a clown of yourself.

  Yeah, I was being a clown. I wanted to do my best. I wanted to seem like I knew how to do it, but was watching you guys out of one eye so I could get the gist, and my other eye was on what I was supposed to be doing. A juggling trick.

  You know that the girls (being barmaids) in the pub are gonna make a real fuss over you when you hobble in with your injury? They love blokes with wounds.

  Nah, they can’t stand me. They think I’ve got germs from studying medicine.

  I told them that. I told ’em you got pox from sticking it in a dead whore.

  That’s real low, mate.

  I’m a … what do you call it … misogynist. Well, not really. I don’t hate women. I just love fucking them. Not talking with them if it’s not going to yield a fuck.

  Yield a fuck, now there’s an expression.

  Actually, I love my sisters and my mum. Never said anything out of place to them.

  I believe you. Reckon we could try for the doctor’s now. It’s clearing.

  Okay. It’s bloody smoky in here!

  The tarps held. All of them. Now that Chook was Sook’s friend, everybody put up with Sook. Jenny, a barmaid, offered Sook a fuck, and Sook, with Chook goading him on, went upstairs and lost his virginity in a welter of alcohol and perfume. Jenny then supplied every detail to Chook, who shared it with the rest of the blokes on the bin. You’re a legend now, Sook. Sook wore his nickname with aplomb. It was a double-edged sword, and not that bad in a place that had Chook, Gazza, Blue, Stretch, Pud and Snake. Those without nicknames were nonentities, soon forgotten with the vagaries of seasonal employment.

  Sook’s foot, with its six stitches, healed well, and, perched in the weighbridge, he left his boots off without anyone saying much at all. His crutches provided many an evening’s entertainment, especially for Chook.

  When Chook asked his new best mate to come shooting, they reached a point of no return. Sook didn’t like guns, didn’t like hunting; he was a vegetarian. Probably it was his vegetarianism that had made things dysfunctional in the hut in the first place. Chook and the others cooked only meat and eggs. They ate only meat and eggs.

  Nah, sorry, mate, rather not.

  Come on!

  Nah.

  You’re not gonna turn in
to a sulky up-yourself bastard like you used to be?

  Nah.

  Then come on.

  When Sook finally said yes, he knew he’d lost a part of himself forever. He was drowning in wheat.

  Okay, boys, let’s get these tarped. They say this blow is going to be worse than the last one. Sook, you know what you’re doing but for God’s sake don’t cut your foot again. Chook, you look after the far stack.

  Sook’s foot was right as rain. Stitches long out. The season had ended for most, but a few of the guys lingered on into the new year for the stray loads still coming in. Plenty had been lost or degraded by the earlier storm, but this was a big receival point for the district. Sook had thought of signing off just before Christmas but Chook had made a song and dance about it and persuaded him to stay on. Sook could do with the money, and he’d become addicted to the pub, the mercy fucks, the guns, the grain. He hated his old self and his new self. There seemed nowhere else he should be.

  Though he didn’t need to keep an eye on Chook to see how it was done, he couldn’t help it. He watched the tarps flapping and Chook anchoring them. Experienced. Chook had his boots off and looked gawky and skinny, almost wizened. He was wearing khaki shorts and shirt. Typical work clobber. Strange, thought Sook, I’ve never really thought of him as having a body, as being corporeal. Those legs and arms sticking out. Chook wasn’t much taller than he was, and certainly no stronger. But he was a brawler, and that was the difference. Chook liked a fight and would scrap at the slightest provocation at the pub with people passing through. He had an odd-shaped jaw and a kinked nose, maybe broken in a pub fight or playing sport at school, and never set properly. His hair was an indeterminate brown colour. Sook laughed out loud at how comical it all was.

  The day was hot and muggy. Perfect storm weather. The stacks were almost secured and the wind was rolling over them. Sook thought about the hard yellow grains of different wheat varieties sweating and softening under the plastic tarps. The world’s bread waiting to be made.

  Was Chook falling? Sook had turned away to secure his last line, but in his peripheral vision he caught something. And a shout? The wind was roaring. Probably nothing. Sook concentrated harder on the task at hand – he did a perfect bowline knot. Chook taught me that, he thought.

  Sook had done his time. He had earned his wages of sin.

  SNOW

  You don’t see a lot of snow in wheatbelt Western Australia. This might sound like irony, but I mean what I say. Not much. Not a lot. Rarely. It did snow once not far from Northam when I was a small child. Flurries. I remember people getting frightened, as the crops were green and fresh and vigorous: maybe it’s fallout! We won’t be able to harvest our crops. And by the time they’d worked it out and decided to enjoy the moment, it had passed.

  Until recently, I’d never seen the need to leave home, to travel anywhere outside the great state of Western Australia. It’s a massive place. Takes days to drive from one end to the other, from south to north, west to east. I’ve been up to the borders of South Australia and the Northern Territory, and though it was just a step across, I never bothered, never saw the point. Just to say I had? I am not that insecure.

  I inherited the farm. Not a large farm, but easily able to give me a good living. I’ve never seen the need to marry. If I had, you can bet the place would have been sold long ago, and I would have ended up selling farm machinery in town or down on the edge of the city. And I don’t think I would have been father material. My nephews irritate me, though admittedly that could be to do with their mother loathing me. That’s because though I am younger, I inherited the farm lock, stock, and barrel. Mum and Dad left her ten thousand – all the cash they had – but I got the farm, the house, the plant. She’s always at me for ‘compensation’, demanding I balance the ledger. That’s how she speaks. She married an accountant who still wears short back and sides.

  The farm is a legacy. I like to think I look after the soil. I don’t over-plough, and am happy to make less money for a year or two and cultivate on a fallow system. I am a bit medieval. I loved history at school. But I left when I was fifteen to work for my dad. He didn’t pay me; he said I had to earn what I was going to inherit. That’s your payment, he said, in his torn hat and patched greasies. He barely moved his lips when he spoke, but I always understood him. I make a point of rounding my vowels when I speak – I got that from Mum, who taught drama at Northam High. People would say they were a strange pair, but it pained me to hear it. They weren’t strange at all.

  I was thinking about snow when I decided to travel here. It wasn’t a straightforward thought. I was sitting in the green armchair in the lounge, a mallee root burning hotter than hell in the fireplace, when the television reception suddenly dropped out. That was commonplace when I was a child, for the reception to drop out – the television ran on thirty-two volts supplied by our own generator and there was a booster attached to an aerial five times the height of the house. I used to yell out, Mum! Mum! The snow’s come on the television! And she’d come in and jiggle with the booster and either bring the picture back into a vague kind of focus, or shut the television down and say, Sorry, it’s the climatic conditions or maybe sunspots playing up. She always said this with a dramatic flourish because she was a dramatic woman.

  So there was snow on the television and there was the fire, but the clincher was the newspaper. I turned off the telly and picked up the paper, and a few pages in I read an article that said: After a warm and dry winter a cold snap is expected later this week, with ten to fifteen centimetres of snow expected over much of the south of England. It went on to say how sleds and skates hadn’t even left the cupboard that winter. Mum had been born in England, right down south where they got little snow, even back in times when it seemed to snow more. She was born on a farm. She used to describe the farm to me, and the soil, which was heavier and more fertile than what we have here. She knew I loved soil. She called me her Child of the Soil. Sometimes I dreamed of the dark soil on her childhood farm, but I’d never wanted to go there. Not at all. Mum had encouraged me to keep a passport, though I told her I’d never use it. She’d say, Just in case you change your mind.

  So I went to bed with snow and static and my mother and soil in my head. I fell to sleep half forming and losing thoughts. I didn’t dream snow but I tried to dream snow. I woke knowing I was going somewhere and it wasn’t in Western Australia.

  There was a ticket on the following night’s flight via Singapore. I grabbed it. I packed quickly and drove myself to the airport. Actually, I was no stranger to the airport. Neighbours and friends in town were always asking me to drive them down so they wouldn’t have to put their cars in the long-term car park. I said to them, I don’t mind, but I would want my own car there when I arrived home.

  When we were a few hours out of Heathrow, the voice over the speakers said our landing would be delayed due to bad weather. The snow had started. Not heavy, but making things slow and awkward. I was in the middle of the plane, and I felt there was no reality outside the asylum I’d committed myself to. Give me my own car and a long drive out into the desert. It provides you with all the intimacy and alienation you need at once. The plane was just compression and breathlessness.

  I thought I’d make my way north into the snowier parts. I had nothing booked, but it wasn’t what they call holiday season, so I didn’t envisage problems finding a room. But the snow had set in hard and I had to settle on an airport hotel because transport wasn’t working. Not even the Underground. It was like being in a disaster movie. I was lucky to get a room and I could only book it for one night. But after I’d checked in, I stood in the car park and let the snow cover my sickness. My jet lag. I felt out of my body. I felt like I’d been on the tractor for weeks at a time, feeling every jolt, every clod of earth. I went inside, ate something nondescript in the hotel restaurant, showered and shaved (which I forgot to do before dinner – I live on my own), and then fell into a deep sleep. I woke at nine, and check-out was at
eleven.

  I pulled back the curtains and it was a clear blue sky, but there was snow over the ground. Everywhere. I dressed and went straight down to the front of the hotel where kids were rolling snowmen. I joined them. The odd plane straggled down from the sky, but it was eerily quiet. The snow was quite thick. The kids laughed and I laughed. Their parents were nowhere to be seen in the concrete and steel and glass and snow. We threw snowballs at each other. Just like boondies on the farm when I was a child – though the impact was less (my sister would have cried with snow, never mind boondies). I was a master of snow. I knew all its tricks instinctively. I was inside the television set.

  The day was warming rapidly and the snow was becoming slushy. I had checked out and stored my baggage. I ate a meal in the restaurant and went out and played in the snow. The snowmen were losing their features. The snow is very short, I said, and people looked at me. But I knew what I said made sense. I went into the lobby and asked them to see if there was a spare seat on a Qantas flight back to Perth that evening. They were very accommodating. I managed to adjust my ticket with only a little extra cost, though to tell the truth, if it’d been five times as much I would have paid. But I didn’t let on about that.

  My car was waiting for me in long-term parking. I drove back to the farm with the air-conditioning on full. It’s a good air-conditioner. It can turn summer to winter, and I will always have a head full of snow.

  THE BET

  They were half-friends. Occasionally played together, tolerated each other when forced to sit together, but had never gone round to each other’s homes after school.

  On the day of the inter-school swimming carnival, they both had summer colds and ‘wagging it’ slips from their mothers. It was a small school and they were the only two to stay behind, watched over by the headmaster himself; he had better things to do so he set them doing art all day. They had a classroom to themselves.