Demons (21 page)

Gus went back to the house. Dale wandered over to the carousel to watch the other
cows being milked, then moved to the doorway at the far end of the shed and looked
out across the farm. Cass stopped milking for a moment and watched him. The machinery
hummed. She lifted her milky hands to her face, smelled them, then rubbed the milk
into her skin. She closed her eyes and kept rubbing. It was like at the bathroom
mirror in the morning except here there weren’t the usual smells of soap and product
but milk, grass, cowshit, cowhide, concrete. Cass rubbed until she felt the milk
going in then opened her eyes and stared down at the bucket.

Gus came back with a big glass jar, the kind you might buy olives or pickles in.
He stood next to Cass and unscrewed the lid. Give us the bucket, he said, you can
take it home in this, it’ll last a while if you keep it in the fridge. Cass handed
up the bucket, Gus put the jar on the ground and poured the milk into it. Cass got
up off the milk crate and, before moving away, wiped her hands a couple of times
on Bess’s side. The hide was warm and seemed to shiver. Dale? she said. Gus screwed
the lid on the jar.

Outside the sky had darkened, a few pink clouds and a soft glow in the west. Cass
was carrying the jar. Thank you, she said. She slid into the passenger seat and Gus
closed the door. Cass wound down the window. That was lovely, she said. No problems,
said Gus. Thanks, said Dale, leaning down and looking across. Safe driving, said
Gus. The tyres crunched on the gravel. Dale flicked the lights on. Cass turned to
watch Gus walking back towards the milking shed and then, when she couldn’t turn
any more, she swung around and looked out the front where the headlights were throwing
a tunnel of white onto the darkening road.

Shit, said Marshall. What’s going to happen? said Megan.
Something’s
going to happen,
said Hannah. Good stuff, said Evan. All right, said Adam: so.

The following Sunday afternoon, just as the cows were heading up the hill, Gus saw
Cass and Dale’s Chevrolet making its way along the drive. We hope you don’t mind,
said Cass, getting out, but it was so wonderful, last week, we haven’t stopped talking
about it. Can Dale have a go this time? Sure, said Gus, come in. They went inside
while Gus got the first of the herd into the carousel then, like before, led Bess
with a hand on her neck towards them. She seemed to know what was required and stopped
still without twitching. The bucket’s over there, said Gus, you know what to do.
Let me get the rest of these up. He crossed to the door on the far side and went
out where the cows were gathering; Cass and Dale could hear him whistling to the
dog and the clump and clatter of the cows’ hooves. Bess didn’t move. Cass kicked
the milk crate over then went and got the bucket. She put it down under Bess’s udder
and laid a hand on her side. All right, she said, relax. If you’re relaxed, she’s
relaxed, and if she’s relaxed she’ll do it for you. Dale wiped his hands on his jeans
and started milking.

After a while Gus came over to see how they were getting on. Good on you, he said.
Then he and Cass watched while Dale pulled down on the teats and the milk fired into
the bucket.

Next Sunday, when the car pulled up in the yard, it was only Dale who got out. Cass’s
not feeling well, he said, but I thought I’d come anyway. Gus hesitated this time
before he led him into the shed. Stay here, said Dale, when Gus started to walk away,
I want to make sure I’m doing it right. Gus stood and watched while Dale pulled down
on the teats. Bess shuffled on the concrete; Dale adjusted the bucket. Then the pulling
resumed. Dale looked up at Gus who, shifting and distracted, said he needed to go
and deal with the cows.

The next Sunday Cass was feeling better and they both took it in turns to milk Bess.
While Cass was milking Dale cornered Gus. Did he make a living? Had he thought about
running other animals? A vineyard? Did he have a wife? Kids? Gus answered each one
but after a while he began to feel uncomfortable, he had a lot of things to do, he
said, and while he appreciated their visits and their interest in the farm he was
actually a very busy man, running the whole thing on his own, working seven days
a week.

The next Sunday they made an offer. They didn’t go straight into it. After talking
about it during the week they agreed they would have to play their cards carefully
if they weren’t to lose Gus’s friendship. They arrived a bit earlier, around lunchtime.
Dale started by saying they were sorry for having already taken up so much of Gus’s
valuable time—as nine-to-five city people their Sunday was a day of rest and they
hadn’t yet grasped that for a farmer Sunday is like any other day and that there
is always work to be done. So, said Dale, as you can see, we haven’t come winery-hopping
but have put on our work clothes and are here to help out: you only have to tell
us what to do.

Gus was taken aback by this offer, naturally, but he couldn’t send them away. He
thanked them and gave them some simple chores, like cleaning out the old shed. Cass
and Dale made two piles, one big, one small, the first with things that in their
opinion had no imaginable use, the second with things that looked like junk but which
Gus might like to keep. The light turned, the sky faded to pink, the insects came
out, the birds started roosting, the cows pushed their way into the yard while the
dog swept the ground behind them. Cass and Dale stopped and poured themselves a cup
of tea from their thermos and took a biscuit each from the bag. Gus came over. Well!
he said. Behind them one of the cows was bellowing. All three realised it was Bess.

Cass did the milking this time while Dale talked. He let Gus understand that he and
Cass had fallen in love not just with Bess and the milking but the whole thing, the
farm, the lifestyle and everything that went with it; they had, furthermore, come
to see Gus as a friend. This was the basis of their offer, which by any measure,
said Dale, was over-generous. He quoted a figure. We want to buy the farm from you,
he said. This offer is for everything: land, house, sheds, machinery, livestock.
It is generous, Gus, very generous; I don’t think we need to haggle.

A little cog went clunk in Gus’s brain as he listened to Dale and thought back on
nearly two months of Sunday visits from this sweet but strange city couple. They’d
been massaging him, getting him ready, for this. No, he said, stepping back, not
daring to look up. I’m sorry, this is my life, I’m a farmer, it’s my family’s land,
I’m staying, no offence, thanks, but no.

All three went quiet. The cows mooed and clattered, the machinery hummed and clicked.

Sorry, said Gus.

Undeterred by the farmer’s rejection of their offer, Cass and Dale came back the
following Sunday and offered more. This time Gus really was creeped out, not least
by the fact that in order to sweeten things Cass had brought as a gift a freshly
baked carrot cake in a tin with a red ribbon around it. Gus took it from her—he even
ate a slice that evening after dinner—but again shook his head. When Dale—something
white-hot brewing in him—upped the offer on the spot by another hundred thousand,
Gus backed away. Please, he said, I told you, I don’t want to sell.

The following Sunday Gus retreated into the milking shed when he saw the car coming
up the drive. He wasn’t well. He’d woken the previous Monday feeling awful, struggled
to get the milking done, vomited all day, then struggled again through the evening
milking and had gone to bed early, pale and sweating. It was the same on Tuesday
too. When the car pulled up in the yard he came out of the milking shed waving his
arms and shouting: No, no, not today, not any more, I can’t do it, please! Cass stayed
in the passenger seat; Dale stood behind the driver’s door. We’ve had a think, he
shouted back, we’re going to raise the offer by a third! We will give you three million
dollars for the property which is
twice
its market value! Gus waved his arms again
and violently shook his head. It was almost like he was trying to dislodge the three
million dollar offer, the couple, and the last two months of Sundays from it.
No,
please!
he said, and he walked back inside.

I suppose I don’t need to tell you, said Adam, that Cass and Dale were the kind of
people who were used to getting what they wanted. They’d already tried to poison
Gus. There was arsenic in the carrot cake, Cass had bought it over the net, but now
that he’d refused their three million dollar offer they would need to take further
steps. Later that Sunday, after dark, they drove back out to the farm and parked
on the verge. Cass kept lookout; Dale approached on foot. When the dog came towards
him, ears up, he called quietly to it and took the little plastic container of meat
from his jacket. The dog wolfed it down. Dale continued on up to the house. The back
door was unlocked. Gus was snoring. Dale checked all the windows were closed then
turned the taps on the gas stove up full. He crept back down the driveway in the
moonlight. The dog followed him for a while, sniffing, hoping for more food, and
Dale had to shoo it away. It stood at the gate and watched the Chevrolet, lights
out, drive slowly back to the main road.

Gus woke up feeling awful, but very much alive. He threw open all the windows and
doors. It seemed nothing could kill him. When Cass and Dale pulled up on the side
of the road at the bottom of the hill (they’d both taken the day off work), they
watched what should have been a dead body backing the tractor out of the shed and
driving it around the other side of the hill to work on the fences there. They watched,
too, when the tractor returned and Gus walked up to the house for lunch. Later he
backed his ute out and drove it down the driveway past them, then off along the road
into town. Of course he knew they were watching, they knew he knew, but neither of
them flinched. That night Dale poured a can of petrol onto the bushes below Gus’s
bedroom window. When the dog came to greet him it got poisoned meat. But Gus was
awake. Very awake. He got the extinguisher to the fire before it had even scorched
the paint. He found his dog next morning, white froth around its mouth, and buried
it under the persimmon tree down the side.

On Wednesday Dale, without Cass, drove the Chevrolet brazenly up the drive. Gus was
in the milking shed with his shotgun. Dale called out: Gus, please, we’re sorry!
Gus, are you there? Listen, please, we need to talk! Gus stood at the door with the
weapon ready. It was strange, thought Dale, with no dog around to sniff your ankles.
Gus, please, he said, that’s not necessary, I’m here to talk, I need to explain.
Please. Gus lowered the gun, but kept his finger ready.

I don’t want to talk to you, he said, I’ve got nothing to say; I’m not selling the
farm, I’ve made that clear, you’ll need to kill me, I know you’ve tried. No-one has
the right to make me go. I don’t care about your money, you can wave it around all
you like. It might work for your city friends but it doesn’t work for me.

Dale could hear the cows mooing in the shed. He thought about Bess, his hands on
her teats, and felt a hot, anxious sensation. He thought about Cass and how much
he loved her. Please Gus, he said, you’ve got no idea, I know what all this means
to you—he gestured to the rolling green hills—but you’ve got to understand what we’ve
been through. We’re not here because we want to annoy you, or upset you, or even
hurt you. We’re here because we’re lost, we’re desperate, Gus, we’re bereft. We had
a kid, a beautiful little child, but he had stuff wrong with him, everything was
wrong with him for God’s sake, he choked on his own tongue. We tried to have another—we
tried and tried and tried—but it didn’t work. Our lives were wrong—while everything
looked right on the surface, there was a great river of wrongness underneath. Then
we came here. A moment of chance. We never planned to own a farm, to be farmers,
to milk cows, make cheese, grow vegetables, fruit. But we’ve realised there is nothing
else that will heal the deep wound. We want to live a simple life, like you. We believe
simplicity will save us.

Gus looked at him almost condescendingly, took his finger off the trigger and let
the shotgun hang. You people think you’re so important, don’t you? he said—like your
problems are the only problems anybody ever had. Did you ever stop to ask did I have
problems? Did I have a wife? A kid? Was I happy? Yes, all three. Once.

I don’t give a fuck, said Dale. My life is worse than yours—look! Dale gestured again
to the rolling green hills so Gus would not mistake what he meant. Yes, said Gus,
and when I die it will go to my daughter-in-law and her kids, not you. Dale felt
that anxious sensation under his skin again but this time it was cold, not hot. Gus
must have sensed it, and he raised the gun a little. There was a huge, tortured bellow
from one of the cows in the shed. Instinctively, Gus turned towards it. Dale moved
fast to the clutter of junk and put his hand on a piece of pipe. Gus still had the
shotgun hanging. Dale flew at him from behind and bashed him across the head. Gus
fell, moaned, and struggled for a moment to get up. But Dale bashed him again. He
bashed him twenty, maybe thirty times. When he was sure he wasn’t moving he dragged
the body around the side and hid it under a sheet of iron. Then he went back and
hosed down the blood.

It was not until a week later when a local farmer was driving past and saw Gus’s
cows bustling and moaning outside the milking shed that the alarm was raised. The
farmer went up for a look and Dale came out to greet him. He was dressed in new gumboots,
workpants and a checked flannel shirt. He explained to the farmer how Gus had retired—Dale
and his wife, Cass, owned the farm now. They were still learning the ropes, of course,
said Dale, smiling, but they’d be on top of it soon. He looked flushed. The farmer
went away.

The next day a local cop, Senior Constable Matthews, came to visit and found Dale
dragging a dead cow with a tractor and chain to a spot over on the far paddock where
four other corpses already lay. They died, said Dale, without further explanation.
Matthews started asking questions—way too many questions for Dale’s liking—and then
wondered aloud if he might perhaps see the contract of sale? I didn’t know it was
on the market, he said. Cass was watching from up at the house. Dale tried to look
Matthews in the eye but it didn’t really work. He said he didn’t have the contract
of sale on him right now but would have a look for it this evening and was happy
for him to come back tomorrow.