Absolution Creek (37 page)

T
hey drove away from the homestead in the old blue Holden utility, with Sam squashed between Kendal and Harold on the bench seat. The road was shadowed by the line of native trees. Extending out from the base of each gnarled trunk was an expanse of frost-free ground. The remainder of the thinly grassed paddock was glassy with cold. Even the chook house was quiet, the inhabitants fluffed and hidden deep within their roost. A frost layered the house paddock gate, strings of ice hanging like shredded paper from the frame. Sam wondered why Harold persisted in starting so darn early when anyone in their right mind would have been snuggled in bed with a cuppa.

The radio was playing a Dean Martin song, ‘Pour the Wine’. It had been a while since his last drink – a single rum and milk with Cora and Meg to mark six weeks on the property – and despite the early hour Sam swallowed. Cora had quickly got a whiff of his sneaky drinking and hidden her stash, which left Sam to keeping a bottle in the bedroom. It was an easier alternative, except when you ran out and the fortnightly trip to town was a few days away.

Harold switched the radio off, wound down the window and began whistling. Already the customary silence that marked the start to their days irked Sam. On average Harold needed a good ten minutes before he could construct a complete sentence. This early morning reticence was usually complemented by coughing, whistling and . . . there it was: the worst smell in the world. Sam reckoned Harold could power his own vehicle with the amount of methane he produced. Harold wound his window up. Like clockwork Kendal wound his down.

The utility moved along the pot-holed road at a slow pace. It seemed every few hundred yards they were stopping for something: cows, kangaroos, wallabies, sheep, even birds. As usual nothing seemed to be particularly interested in getting out of their way. It was as if the ute was part of the bushland; a pale blue inhabitant in a winter grey world. Kangaroos in particular were in the nasty habit of jumping directly in front of them, like crazed kamikaze animals. Why Harold just didn’t put his hand on the horn Sam couldn’t understand. This sort of driving wouldn’t cut it in the city. People had places to be. Harold wound his window down again. The blast of cold air from both sides knocked Sam breathless. Ahead the road was physically barred by two Hereford bulls camped in the middle of it.

‘They like the warmth of the road,’ Harold explained as the utility bumped off the track to avoid the animals.

They turned right to drive along a fence line as the sun struggled over the horizon. In the distance came the sound of a sharp crack, then another. Sam jumped. ‘What in the name of Moses was that?’

Harold shifted down a gear. ‘That’d be your boss.’

‘My boss?’

‘Yeah,’ Kendal drawled, ‘the one and only Cora Hamilton.’

‘She goes out shooting of a morning,’ Harold revealed.

‘Of a morning. Half the night more like it,’ Kendal corrected. ‘Mad as a cut snake that one.’

‘Kendal.’

‘Well she does, Uncle. She gets up when the rest of us normal people are still in bed, saddles that poor horse of hers and takes off into the bush. It’s just not natural.’

Sam knew Cora was a bit of a night owl. He’d heard her stalking the house on numerous occasions and she was never around at breakfast, which didn’t bother him. However, midnight rides were out of his comfort zone. ‘Why does she get up so early?’

‘Ask some of the locals – they’ve got some interesting takes on that.’ Kendal flicked a dried piece of snot out the window.

Ahead a white mound of earth came into view. Harold drove straight towards it, picking a track through a stand of stringy saplings, and headed straight up the degraded incline. The sides of the dam were deeply cracked. They breached the top of the bank, and Harold slowly drove down the other side. Sitting in the middle seat, Sam was flung from one set of shoulders to another as the utility navigated the deeply eroded bank. The dam had been fenced in. A muddy pool of water filled a tiny section of it, and a number of carcasses – ragged flaps of protruding bone and dark hide – straddled the remains of the water hole.

‘Well, bugger it.’

Sam quickly saw the cause of Harold’s annoyance. A live emu struggled feebly, caught in the fence. Feet away a calf had not been so lucky.

‘Must ’ave ducked in through that broken wire.’ As Harold spoke a cow appeared from amid the prickly briar bush on the other side. ‘One of the bulls got in with some of the old girls before the joining date. There’s a handful of young’uns that have dropped in the last week. Too damn early to be calving, probably froze to death.’

‘Hypothermia,’ Kendal agreed.

On their approach the cow bolted back into the bush. ‘Beats me why they come here when there’s a bore drain not half a mile on.’ Harold stopped the vehicle near the edge of the dam. ‘There’s rope in the back. You boys pull that dead calf out and I’ll put the old runner out of his misery.’ Harold fetched his 22-calibre rifle from behind the bench seat, loaded the magazine and let off a single shot. The emu dropped like a stone.

Sam tossed a coin. ‘Heads for staying dry.’ The metal landed with a thud in the dirt. Swearing roughly, Kendal took his boots off and walked straight into the dam to loop the rope around the calf’s neck. ‘Righto.’ Together he and Sam pulled on the rope until the ooze of the mud loosened its hold and freed the stiff body. They dragged the calf up the embankment, leaving it to the crows. Kendal poured water on his feet and hands from a bottle, shook himself like a dog and redressed. ‘Unreal,’ he muttered. ‘Here I am, the unpaid worker, and I’m the one covered in mud and shit.’

Sam sniggered.

Kendal picked dried mud from the backs of his hand. ‘You’re only here cause of your missus.’

‘That’s enough,’ Harold ordered. He cut the wire trapping the emu with pliers, and the bird slumped heavily. ‘Get the gear out of the back and get to it.’

Sam began rummaging around in the tool box. Next to it, Harold’s foam esky was tied up with an old leather belt, and a large thermos was strapped on top. Sam’s own lunchbox was rattling around on the dash, minus the thermos. Distracted by whining children, half-cooked eggs and a wife who’d let the wood stove dwindle to nothingness, he’d left it on the kitchen table. His head was pounding; he really needed a drink.

‘Well, come on, then,’ Kendal called. ‘Have you found the pliers?’

Sam gritted his teeth. ‘Here, catch.’ The metal pliers spiralled through the air to land with a thud at Kendal’s feet.

‘Hey, they could have hit me!’

Harold looked up from where he was repairing the wire spinner. Although the fence was well past its prime he grudgingly admitted that some of the wire could be reused, just as Cora suspected. No doubt she’d been out in the dark, spotlight in hand, to make sure. Kendal was busy sniping at the short lengths of wire that held the barb to the tops of the upright iron posts while Sam was testing the strength of the posts with his own weight. Harold lifted the wire spinner as a loud ‘coo-ee’ echoed through the scrub. A mob of pigs rushed out of the tangle of undergrowth. Close on their heels came a half-dozen trotting cows and a handful of bounding kangaroos. The menagerie converged up the dam bank towards the startled men. Harold waited patiently by the utility, Sam raced for a tree and Kendal was caught between the fence and an irate cow. The pigs and remaining cows soon scattered, leaving Kendal with nowhere to go. The trembling cow put her head down and charged. Kendal dived over the fence and rolled awkwardly into boggy silt.

‘Nice one.’ Sam let out a bellow of laughter that set Harold chuckling as the cow trotted away.

Kendal dragged himself out of the mud, reaching the dry bank on his hands and knees. When he finally stood he found Cora staring at him, a grin on her face and a freshly shot bush turkey hanging across her thigh.

‘Women in the city pay a fortune for that sort of skin treatment.’

Kendal grunted at Cora as he trudged towards the utility, and grunted again at his uncle, who was perched on the bonnet having a cuppa.

Sam was still laughing. He was stretched out against a box tree, oblivious to the nest of ants at his feet, until they started nibbling. ‘Ouch, ouch, ouch.’

‘Ants,’ Cora commented dryly as she flicked Horse’s reins. ‘We’ve got three types out here, Sam: the white ones, which will eat your house; the black ones, which will eat your food; and the green ones, which will eat you alive.’ She nudged Horse closer to where Sam was flicking frantically at his clothing. ‘Those would be the green variety.’

‘They sting,’ Sam complained.

‘Cheer up,’ Cora replied, giving Harold a wink, ‘there’s turkey for dinner.’

‘Pull up a stump.’ Harold gestured to Sam and Kendal as Cora trotted away whistling. ‘Do you want to go home and get changed?’ he asked between mouthfuls of a cheese, onion and pickle sandwich.

‘No.’ Kendal took a slurp of tea. ‘Only half of me’s wet.’

‘Suit yourself. Forget your thermos?’ Harold asked, passing Sam the lid off his. ‘Happens.’

Sam took the tea appreciatively and bit into Meg’s butter and Vegemite saos.

Harold pointed a knobbly finger at him. ‘A man will die out here if that’s all she’s feeding you.’

‘Don’t usually eat much.’

‘You will,’ Harold assured him, gulping down his tea. ‘Right, back to it then.’

Sam looked at his half-drunk tea and partially eaten biscuit. Kendal dropped his mug in the esky, tied the strap around the lid and moved to follow his uncle.

Sam took another sip of the scalding tea, and decided Harold had to have a mouth lined with asbestos to drink that quickly.

‘Well, come on then,’ Kendal said gruffly. ‘This ain’t the city now.’

Considering Harold had managed to put off this fencing job for quite a few weeks, Sam couldn’t understand why, to use Cora’s phrase, they needed to go at it like a bull at a gate.

He settled back on the log and, looking at Kendal over the rim of the thermos lid, took a long slow sip.

It was near dark when Meg heard the utility idling outside. Wiping her hands on a tea towel she poured two glasses of milk for the twins and watched as they squashed their peas with the backs of their forks. Jill, a fast if messy eater, was already halfway through her roast turkey, while Penny was in the middle of transporting mushy peas from one side of her plate to the other.

‘Eat up, Penny.’

The back door slammed. ‘You look exhausted,’ Meg observed as Sam slumped into a kitchen chair. She turned off the radio. She’d scream if another weather report came on.

‘Buggered more like it,’ he admitted. ‘How’re my girls?’

‘Good, good, though Cora’s bush turkey isn’t going down so well. It’s a bit tough.’

‘I’m not surprised. Who knows how long it hung from her saddle.’

‘Yeah well, at least I didn’t have to pluck it.’

‘Finished!’ Jill held her plate up proudly.

‘Finished!’ Penny drank down the rest of her milk.

‘Go, the both of you,’ Meg said. ‘Clean your teeth and go to the toilet, you little ragamuffins.’

Penny shook her head. ‘But we can’t go out there by ourselves. The bogeyman will get us.’

The outside toilet was not something the girls had taken to. Actually, neither had Meg. The dash in the dark or on a frosty morning was made worse by the continual checking for spiders under the wooden seat. ‘Use your potty then.’ Meg waggled her finger. ‘But only number ones, not a number two.’ The twins scooted out of the kitchen. There was the clanging of doors and screeches as they ran along the cold walkway out to the veranda and their bedroom.

‘Well, one thing about it, this place agrees with the girls,’ Sam commented.

Meg cleared the twins’ plates. ‘So, how are you getting on with Harold and Kendal? Any better?’

Sam flipped open the door to the wood fire and warmed his hands. He was red from windburn and his lips were dry and cracked. ‘Put it this way, I’m regretting popping old Jeffo one in the nose. Gee, that seems like a lifetime ago now.’

‘That bad?’

‘Seems to me Kendal still isn’t being paid. Can’t blame him for being annoyed about that.’

Meg figured Sam had got a drink from somewhere and he’d had just enough to be amenable.

‘How are things going with –?’ He nodded towards the dining room. Cora would be reading in front of the fire, a relatively new arrangement now the kitchen was no longer her domain.

‘Fine, although she tells me I’ve ruined her news hour, now that the kitchen has been overrun with children at 6 pm.’

Sam yawned. ‘I had a couple over at Harold’s place. I think he must be working on the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” mandate. Anyway –’ he lit a cigarette, cocked his head sideways ‘– you don’t know where her stash is I suppose?’

‘No,’ Meg lied. She’d mistakenly thought he was cutting back.

‘Just checking.’ Sam’s work coat concealed half a bottle of whiskey, thanks to Kendal. ‘You know she rides in the middle of the night – goes out hunting wild pigs. She’s different.’

Meg lowered her voice. ‘The people in Stringybark Point certainly take a wide berth when they see her. It’s like they’re scared of her, and there’re some wild stories doing the rounds too.’