Fresh Fields (28 page)

Alf wasn't snappish all the time. When it was just himself and his offsiders he didn't mind having a brief chat. Cooks and their helpers shared a code of mysteries, and even a fill-in dishwasher had a tiny share of the specialness of that. It was people outside the code—the flippant, the ignorant, the unappreciative—that Alf couldn't abide. The youth asked him how he'd gotten started as a cook. Alf asked the youth about his family and why he wasn't with them.

Camp cooks were very well paid and Alf's caravan was a beauty. It looked like a gigantic silver bullet, and he had a big-finned Pontiac car to pull it. As soon as he'd cooked his last crumb and morsel for the day, he'd go into his caravan, pull the curtains down all the way around, and not be seen or heard till morning. The youth learnt from Kurt, the dishwasher he'd filled in for, that Alf spent every night getting stupefied on vodka. He drank vodka, Kurt said, because it didn't leave a smell on you next day. Every morning he'd look hollow-eyed and shaky, but by the time he'd got breakfast rolling he'd be okay and snapping that the only thing on the menu was Like-it-or-lump-it.

The other caravans weren't nearly as flash, but they looked very cosy and comfortable in the evenings when they had their lights on and you saw the blokes sitting inside them, making themselves cups of tea from electric jugs or lounging on bunks with their hands behind their heads and cigarette smoke curling lazily up.

How the youth wished he had a caravan, with his own electric jug, his own bunk, his own tidy cupboards, and spaces for his magazines. How self-contained he'd be. He could sit on the step in the evening. That seemed one of the best things about a caravan. You could sit on the step and enjoy the fresh air and chat with passers-by, and maybe invite them in for a cuppa if you felt like company. On the other hand you could just go back inside and close the door and draw the curtains and be safe in your space with your own belongings.

He lay on his bed in the evenings trying to ease the ache in his arm and shoulder. He realised he was lucky to have the room to himself, and that it was the next best thing to having a caravan. He could turn the light off if he felt like resting his eyes or dozing, or just wanted to listen to Keith singing the songs of the downtrodden, or he could switch it on if he wanted to look at the White Book or reread parts of
Year of Decision
. If he felt like it he could lift himself on his good elbow and look through the small window above his bed. He could see the campfire with the men around it and the lighted caravans further over—and Simon and Patrick there.

Simon and Patrick had made friends with a bloke named Errol who owned the nicest of the caravans, aside from Alf's. They spent their evenings in Errol's van with a radio playing hit-parade songs. The radio got louder each night until it started to drown Keith out when he sang. Blokes would yell out to Errol to turn it down and he would adjust it a bit, but it would soon creep up louder again. Whenever anyone called to Errol about the radio Simon and Patrick would make impatient eye-rolling faces through the window, or to each other. It wasn't very fair to Keith, the youth felt. Quite bad manners, really. But then he supposed Simon and Patrick and Errol had a right to do what they wanted, just as much as Keith or anyone else did. The youth didn't know whose side he should be on. If it hadn't been for Keith he would never have heard “Deportee” or known who Woody Guthrie was. Keith had opened up a whole new world for him. But Simon and Patrick were a new world too, and in some ways an even more interesting one. He wondered what it was like to have a relationship like theirs, to be such close friends that you can talk and giggle endlessly between yourselves, to be so in tune that you can finish one another's sentences. He wondered what it was like to be at uni together and understand
sar-tra
and
nee-cha
and
hi-digger
, and to automatically know what “peons” were and how to turn the idea of “peons” into jokes and wisecracks.

And there was something else, too, something the youth couldn't get entirely clear to himself. Watching Simon and Patrick, he'd notice how one of them might tousle the other one's hair, or how one might drape his arm casually around the other's neck, or how one might rest his hand on the other's knee when they sat side by side. This behaviour wasn't like horseplay. It was more delicate than that. Most people probably didn't even notice it, the youth thought, but he did. The odd thing was that whenever he became aware of those gestures or touches or glances, he felt a flutter of yearning. Sometimes the yearning made him want to get the White Book out and gaze desperately at Sweetheart. Other times it made him want to make friends with Simon and Patrick somehow, and be around them. And there were times when it was a mixture of the two. They were the oddest times. He would see some gesture of Simon or Patrick's—a walk, a turn of the head, a lift of the hand—and he would imagine Sweetheart doing it and feel all choked and stirred and tingling. And the more he had the Tunnel of Love dream, the more his thoughts of Sweetheart had a dark and scary side that also now applied to Simon and Patrick. In the dream now he often had a sense that Simon and Patrick were in the grotto with the spider (“They aren't
with
it!”) making jokes about how succulent peons were if you could get at the marrow of their bones. He knew that Diestl despised Simon and Patrick even more than he did Sweetheart. It was all very confusing. Sometimes he felt brimming with love for Sweetheart, and other times he could hardly bear to bring her to mind. Sometimes he found Simon and Patrick so fascinating he couldn't take his eyes off them, and then the next minute he'd relish the thought of them being hoiked off the place on the toe of Denny's boot.

 

THE YOUTH'S
shoulder and arm were so sore and stiff one Friday that he could hardly move them. He'd got through the previous few days of work only by controlling the hoe with his left hand a lot of the time. This put new strain on the left hand and arm and they became almost as sore as the other side. Denny noticed how awkward his movements were and asked him what was wrong. The youth replied that it was just an old football injury that he occasionally had trouble with, but that a weekend's rest would set it right. He tried to sound cheery, as though it wasn't any big deal, as though he'd be going like steam shortly. Denny was giving him a long estimating look and the youth could hear how much his own voice sounded the way Long John's had. Denny didn't push it. The youth thought that perhaps a weekend of rest really might help. On the other hand, he knew, a break from the routine might give his body a chance to seize up more.
One time a man would've breezed along these rows like a two year old . . .

Long John was still at the base hospital in Weegun. Alf, who had known him slightly from years before, had paid him one or two visits.

“He's tryin' to keep cheerful,” Alf reported. “He says to give all the fellas his regards, and tell 'em not to do anythin' he wouldn't do.”

“Well, that gives us a fair amount of leeway,” the youth answered. That was what you were supposed to answer whenever anyone said not to do anything they wouldn't do. The youth felt they owed it to him to make the proper reply, to make it sound as though they were a bunch of pals who went out on the town every night, and were just waiting for their sick mate to return for more mad escapades.

“So what's actually wrong with him?” he asked.

“There's problems with the stump of his leg,” Alf said. “But they're more concerned about his ticker now, accordin' to the nurse I spoke to.”

The youth wondered whether
he
should've paid a visit, being the former room-mate and everything. Perhaps he'd left it too late and now wouldn't be welcome. And what would they talk about? The youth could say that the fellas all sent their regards, but after that it'd just be awkward, probably.

 

THE NEXT
evening he went across to where Simon and Patrick were sitting on the step of Errol's caravan. He had rehearsed his words.

“I was wondering if you might have something to read,” he said.

“
Read
?” said Simon, as though he wasn't sure what the word meant.

“Yeah. I've finished the book I brought with me, and I thought you might have something I could borrow.”

Simon turned to Patrick. “
Do
we have any reading material to lend to the needy?”

“I've really no idea,” said Patrick.

“I dare say one could go and look,” said Simon.

“I dare say one could, if one was inclined to.”

“And is one inclined to?”

“It might depend on the inducement offered.”

“Yes, it might.”

The youth kept an appreciative smile on his lips, to show how amused he was.

“Why are you bent like the Hunchback of Notre Dame?” Patrick demanded.

“Sore shoulder,” said the youth, trying to ignore the pain when he straightened up.

“How sad,” said Simon.

“How poignant,” said Patrick.

“Just a bird with a broken wing,” said Simon in a sing-song voice.

“They like their peons hale and hearty, you know,” said Patrick. “They'll send you the way of old Pegleg if you don't watch out.”

The youth kept smiling, to show he was on their level.

Errol came along then. He'd been at the ablutions block, showering, and was wearing a white flannel dressing-gown and carrying a plastic bag with shampoo and soap in it. His dark hair was wet and tousled.

“Hello,” said Errol to the youth. “What a nice surprise to see
you
here.” He sounded very sincere and the youth felt a pang of gratitude. Errol stood with one hand on his hip and the other smoothing his wet hair. “We'd been hoping that you weren't going to stay utterly aloof from absolutely everyone,” he said, looking straight at the youth and giving him a smile.

The way Errol was standing, the way he smoothed his wet hair with a little fluttery motion of his fingers, made the youth think of Sweetheart. He was getting the choky feeling. Simon and Patrick were now looking at him as though they suddenly found him interesting.

“He's looking for something to read,” Simon told Errol. “Do you have anything for him?”

“In the
reading
department, that is,” Patrick added.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Errol said, waving them off the steps so that he could enter. “Let me see what I've got.” He fished about in the caravan and came up with a battered paperback.

“Thanks,” said the youth. “I'll return it in a couple of days.”

“Oh, we're leaving,” said Errol, “so keep it.”

“How do you mean, leaving?”

“Leaving here. Leaving the job. I'd only planned to stay three weeks anyway, and these two are fed up to their little back teeth. So it's the Yellow Brick Road for all three of us.”

“When are you going?”

“Oh, in the morning sometime.”

“That's a shame.”

“The shame is that we didn't get to know
you
sooner,” said Errol. “Such a lost opportunity.” He touched the youth very lightly on the arm. “You really shouldn't be such a loner, you know, going about all closed up the way you do.”

“Is that what I do?” asked the youth, hoping Errol would say more. It was fascinating to hear how you seemed to others.

“Sweetie, you might as well carry a placard saying ‘
PRIVATE PERSON—KEEP OUT
.'”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. And apart from it not being the best thing for yourself, it makes it awfully frustrating for people who can see your, um,
possibilities
, let's call them.”

“Where are you heading?” the youth asked, absently. He was trying to register the idea of having possibilities.

“Back to where one has civilised asphalt under one's feet.”

“And a
life
!” cried Simon.

“And not a cotton plant in sight,” added Patrick. “Or a cowboy hat.”

“Now let's not be judgemental,” Simon said. “A cowboy hat can have its charms—not to mention leather chaps and a lasso—but just not here!”

“It'll be sad to see you go,” said the youth.

“You could come with us, if you want,” said Patrick.

“What do you think, Errol?” Simon asked.

Errol gave the youth a long look before he spoke. “Yes, think about coming with us. If nothing else it's a free ride back to the land of the living.”

The youth left them and went back round the campfire to his room. There were murmurs of conversation still going on, but Keith was strumming his guitar with increasing firmness, getting focused, putting himself into a mood to sing. The youth understood that Keith sang on emotion. It was only when he got stirred up that his shyness fell away and he began to surge on the power of songs like “Deportee.” Right now his face was shadowed and flickery from the glow of the fire. It made him look like more than just a normal bloke. He looked like the spirit of Anger and Pity, preparing to speak.

 

KEITH WAS
in his best-ever form that night and the youth lay listening for a long time with tears on his face and his heart thumping. The songs made you feel sad and angry and brave all at once. They made you feel that you were in touch with the spirit of all the people in the world, and that you loved them all as your brothers and sisters. You loved them not because they were necessarily good or nice, but because they were all going through the same hard mill. The details might vary, but the mill was the same one in every time and place—for King Harold, and for Harry Dale the Drover, for the friends like dry leaves at Los Gatos, for Gus Gordler's wife caught in a hail of bullets like the Bushranger a hundred years back, and for Long John lying alone a few miles away with a raw stump and a bad ticker.