Shearers' Motel (26 page)

The parts of the handpiece were fitted together now. The thing was just a lump of metal disconnected from the drive shaft. It had no more lightning in it to be disciplined and channelled. Rocco seemed to weigh it in his hand before slipping it away into its coarse pouch. An old Maori lady had once told Rocco never to touch a handpiece, it was like a disease, it would never let him go. Well, he had touched the handpiece, felt the lightning, embraced the fire, and here he was, tied to the shed life but dreaming of using the handpiece to break through into a better kind of existence if he could.

Winners were presented with thermoses by the Wool Corporation. Finalists received cheques. There were speeches but the crowd started drifting away. Even the commentator got a prize. People ambled outside, carrying the image of the shed inside themselves.

Just one person was unhappy: Alastair. It was amazing — he sulked and scowled, smoking his cigarette down to
the butt and grinding it out with his leather heel as he stood in impatient isolation. Rocco had let him down. He should realise that. All the money and effort and travel time devoted to the competition seemed wasted on Rocco tonight. Alastair's point (it seemed) was that if Rocco had lost by just a few seconds then he was no more than a shearer, just another bloody shearer, and he would rather throw him into a car right now, if he could, and drag him cross-country and drop him at a shed somewhere for a morning start, than have this weekend drag on further.

Empty beer cans and hamburger wrappings drifted along in the night breeze. The word went around about which pub would be the centre of action now. There were sure to be fights. ‘The guys have got their blood up and they're slapping on the war paint,' said Jules with a grin. Arnie wanted to know which motel Louella was in. He was so drunk he kept crashing into people and into walls: wave a hand in front of his eyes, no reaction — he was blind. Rocco, Bradshaw, Harold, Jules and Bertram Junior phoned through to their motel and booked a late-night dinner to be sent to their room. They invited Cookie along, their shout. It would be steak with all the trimmings — garlic bread, French fries, ice cream. They would ask Louella to join them.

But he went back to his hotel and took a six-pack up to his room. It was all right for someone to want to be alone. He rested the beer on the windowledge, opened one and looked out at the night. He remembered how when he started cooking he had wanted to be taken on as a stranger on terms that had nothing to do with the life he had left behind. What had he learned? To sit around more, to work harder, to keep at the job, to be goodhearted. They weren't such small things. And he'd made friends. As for the rest of life, if anything had changed, it meant living with the contradictions.

He had decided to load the truck for the last time after they finished at Lilypad and head home without seeking another shed. When he hinted this to Harold, Harold
pursed his lips, nodded slowly, and said, ‘You just please yourself, Cookie'. The unfazed reaction meant that Harold already had another cook in mind. There was no doubting it. Cookie liked that. It fitted what he knew. He had wanted to be a firstcomer, living through other lives. What he had learned was that even his own experience was not his own in the end.

Maybe this cook that Harold had in mind wouldn't be as economical as he was, or as thorough, and wouldn't make bread, do boil-ups, never say no to any suggestion, butcher his own meat, keep a clean kitchen, or have a reliable old truck to carry stores and even shearing gear on to the next shed. Maybe he wouldn't even be much of a cook. But there would be a connection to the enterprise stronger than he had at that time, even if it couldn't be guessed at, and Harold, at this point, would be the only one knowing what it was.

‘What's his name?' he asked.

‘Whose?'

‘Your new cook's.'

Harold looked innocently surprised at the question, then broke into a grin. ‘Actually it's a she. It's that old Hazel from Break-O-Day. I'm giving her a trial and if she works out she'll come back with us and cook permanent.'

 

He could see the glass walls of the shearers' motel at the end of the street. Shadows moved around in there. Cars came and went in the driveway, clunking on speed humps. Out to sea, the coastal scud separated to show a few bright stars riding along. The glass walls of the motel rippled in the night, and he heard laughter, peals of it taking off, hoots and bellows, high pitched hoo-whees and low, bubbling chuckles. It didn't matter what the laughter was about, it could have been about anything at all, or nothing — laughter dissolving the barriers between inside and outside, shed life and all life. He could imagine Rocco throwing himself back on a bed, Harold heaving in a chair, Bradshaw beating a wall with his hand, ‘Stop it! Stop it!', Jules giggling into his fist, Bertram Junior staring,
refusing to crack a smile, making it all the funnier; and Louella leaning against the door with her arms folded, looking unwillingly affected and saying in a flat, disparaging tone of voice, ‘You guys are really somethin', you know that?'

Then he pictured Rocco and Harold standing at the motel window looking at the stars, talking about future plans — everything having fallen quiet over the motel — the central base town where their families could live; the two-year plan; the five-year plan; the plan for life; the six-seater plane Bradshaw would pilot, once he had done his training, carrying the A-team everywhere, getting them back to their families every weekend. There would be no more arguments with contractors who would rather have someone else take the risk if anything new was to be tried, and pick it up later if it worked; no more confrontations with difficult growers either. They would choose their own clients. Harold would be the manager and they would be supreme, scoring the best-shearing, top-money sheep all year round, working the prestige sheds all over Australia. They would establish a flock of clear-pointed Romneys near a large provincial town somewhere, and build a demonstration shed within easy drive of an airport where journalists and TV teams could fly in to see them break world records. They would carry a kind of inner shed around with them — not just the one everyone had, but an actual inner shed: an invention of Rocco's (it really existed), an air-conditioned tent suspended by ropes from the rafters and entirely enclosing the shearing board. They had all sorts of ideas to make the harvesting side of the industry more bearable for individuals, and more compatible with family life. They just needed to make the right moves at the right time, and never stop believing in the possibilities.

The moon rose on Lilypad Station dragging up a stack of Foster's as high as the ceiling, the slabs dumped on the tabletop in the mess-room there, and Lenny announcing: ‘Every last one of these will be drunk before morning. Understand? It's Cookie's last shed, let's make it one to remember.'

Women emerged from the showers with damp combed hair and soft smiles. Louella and Rosie and the ones who would come along later were all getting ready. Barb, whose ute had overturned on a dirt road somewhere; Hazel, who was in work again, thanks to Harold; also Georgina, Harold's wife, she was going to love this event, she was there, and their kids.

‘Double around behind the shearing shed,' visitors were told. ‘Through two double gates, zig-zag past the stockhorse stables, look for the glow of the woodstove, the angled-in cars, the washing on the line, the drift of smoke.'

Aftershave splashed on Cal, Sparky, Packard, Boland, Willie-boy. They ambled in shiny-cheeked, subdued and ready for a cool one, thirsty for a quiet one to start the night rolling. Not all of them were working this shed, not
all of them were in work of any kind, but this was their night.

Get here, Davo, don't muck around, Cookie thought. If the men who crucified your dog come over you'll have backing.

Get here, Quinn, get up from your barstool, mate, a man like you can't have the shit beaten out of him for ever.

 

In a corner near the fireplace were Iain Smoky McNeill and the Warrego River Boys. Smoky bent over the strings of a steel guitar. A few raw chords and the night was changed.

‘Come on, Kiwi boys, this is where it's happening,' he laughed.

When he sent his dark fingers driving down the strings, the feeling was there would never be an end to the depth of where people might go that night.

Ah, Cookie, et's too bad. They'll never have another shed for yer after thes one
. He stood at the stove and looked across the room, and found Louella's eyes fixed on his.

He pricked two legs of mutton in the pot, testing them. The juices ran clear. Packard, wearing a black T-shirt and a red bandana around his neck, tipped in a garbage bag of milk thistle and watercress, and pressed them down with a potato masher. On the top he loaded white, lumpy dumplings, and weighted the cauldron lid with a rock.

 

Now it was later. Drunk's time closest to dream. Sharon had come — he forgot how it was that she'd got there. Smoky McNeill played violently, his knees apart, his shoes unlaced and splitting open as if from the weight of his playing.

Lenny and Sharon were dancing, and Lenny murmured in her ear, ‘What are we going to do about this thing, now that it's happened between us?' and she threw back her head and laughed.

Sparky walked among the dancers, holding a Foster's
crushed in his fist, muttering words to himself, looking at this couple, then at that one, wanting to touch them. Music streamed through the gauze door, zinged out over the paddocks, and returned trailing moonlight as beautiful as the light on a leaping fish, to lodge alive in the strings again, to kick and travel.

Hey, Cookie
, Sparky touched his arm with pale knuckles,
Hey, Cookie
, he warned in his gravelly, husky voice,
Look who's dancing with your missus, look at the way he's holding her, that's Lenny, mate, Lenny, what are you going to do about it?

He danced with Hazel, slim, almost anorexic. He felt he was abandoning her when he didn't know her really, a tense forty-year-old with a tight single plait she kept flipping back over her shoulder when they swung around. He caught her with a hand to her back, feeling her fine backbone through her silk shirt, wondering if she would change if she smiled.

Sparky was over at the stove, where Packard had his back turned spooning out plates of the boil-up, and then carving the meat. Sparky whispered in Packard's ear, gesturing in the direction of the dancers.

Cal danced with Rosie, clunking in his boots, and when the music intensified he leaned back and locked his hips, closed his eyes tightly and almost screamed.

 

He kicked open the rusty cast-iron door and took out a swelling golden pie, shook it free from the dish onto a serving platter and left it to cool. From the side oven, with its red hot walls, he took rising rolls and bread loaves, spinning them around, putting them back again in new positions so they wouldn't burn.

Sparky ran around throwing stones on the roof and crowing like a rooster.

An iridescent Commodore sedan clean of mud and fast-food wrappers and empty rattling Fanta cans condensed along a wave of light and sashayed down the S-bends of the Lilypad Station drive.

Doors flew open and shadowy figures poured out.

It was Bertram Junior and Tina his girlfriend, and Davo and Barb, Davo clasping Cookie's hand briefly and looking past him into the wedge of golden light pouring from the mess-room, where Barb moved ahead of him. She waved and he followed her, they danced closely together and they disappeared before he could even speak to them. Bertram Junior put his arm around Tina, ‘Shall we dance?'

Stones rained down again.

Bertram Junior looked back over his shoulder. ‘Someone do something about that Sparky there, he's a disgrace.'

Another car arrived. It was Quinn and a young woman. They went out into the dark and he didn't see them.

Bertram Junior stood at the stove and spooned boil-up to his lips and rolled his eyes. ‘Where's the pork bones, Cookie?' he said flatly. ‘There has to be pork bones or it ain't a proper boil-up.'

 

The room was littered with empty cans and the floor stained with spilt beer. Bits of pie and squashed bread were trodden into the boards, along with slices of slimy meat and cigarette butts. Harold sat at the end of the table where he had sat most of the night, enjoying himself hugely, laughing at the doings of drunks, getting somehow drunk himself in the joy of it all, Georgina tucked into his side, their children sleepy eyed, not wanting to miss anything, at one in the morning lying under the table on their sides and on their stomachs, watching the shuffle of feet going past.

Whenever he caught Harold's eye he nodded rhythmically, good party, strange night, all the old team's here, Cookie my friend, and then some, ain't it something — allowing his eyes to slide back to the guitar playing again, the lazy country chords dripping with memory as Smoky and the Boys kept playing at this late, late hour.

He kept looking for Quinn, wondering where he'd got to. His eyes moved through the dancers where a pale light
played along the back wall. It was a light that seemed to be reflected from water, or to come up through water, although there wasn't any water. He saw a pretty young woman standing against the wall. She had long black hair tied back in a red ribbon, a pale face and freckles, and sleepy blue eyes. She wore a print cotton dress with a square neck, and it went down to just above her bare knees. In her arms she held a bunch of flowers, capeweed mixed with dandelions and purple alfalfa blooms. She had been outside in the moonlit paddocks collecting weeds. He put his beer down and moved towards her. He seemed to know her, who she was and why she had come, but he just went past her and she wasn't looking at him.

Quinn said, ‘She's a local.'

He went outside into the high clear moonlight. He saw Sharon and Lenny in close conversation over against the tankstand. They nodded at him but they didn't want him to join them, and he didn't want to join them. There was a dull thudding sound coming from around the corner. Sparky was on the ground and Cal was kicking him, arms folded, putting the boot in. Cal saw Cookie, stared, put the boot in once more, then walked off. Sparky jumped up, looked around in a startled way, blood streaming from his nose, a cut above his eye, then he went into the wash-house where he ran a tap.

 

The moon sank lower, taking him with it. He wandered out into the dewy paddocks and climbed a granite outcrop on a hilltop. In the silence he put his hands to the sides of his head and felt his hangover thump. Dust and haze turned the moon red, tree branches were etched against its face, the mountains and craters showed. The moon passed into the west, sliding away into a glade of red gums by a riverbank somewhere, into a rocky overhang, up stony mazes of gullies, through ranges of Biblical hills — into burnt-out chimney-places and piles of rubble.

Away below, the huts and homestead were plunged in darkness. Stars shone on the roofs of the stockhorse stables. Stars filled the sky.

Only the dogs and Sparky saw him come in. Lenny was sprawled fast asleep in the back of his ute, a smouldering cigarette in the grass below his drooping fingertips, the last can of Foster's held to his chest, a loud snore cutting through the night. He found his cutting boards smashed, his chef's knife broken. Sparky sat propped against a post of the tankstand looking up at the stars, his nose thick as a weeping pear, a plaster across his forehead.

‘They done you proud tonight, Cookie.'