Tide (16 page)

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 into 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.