Shearers' Motel (14 page)

For five days he followed back-station tracks, tracing NRMA and South Australian RAA maps in a westerly direction before turning back east, looking forward to the idea of working with Bertram Junior again. He was the last minute fill-in choice, but he was adjusted to the idea, even liked it. It was a way of having other people make decisions about his life, to rotate his identity for him. It saved harder thinking. He was the cook in the old yellow truck with the flapping tarp, who was also someone else: the cook with the small beady-eyed dog at the passenger window and the notebook in his lap, the cook with a family back east wondering if he would still be the same person when he returned (and somehow hoping he wouldn't be).

 

Through sand drifts and unseasonable forty-degree heat the low-slung, baldy-tyred, rusting and oil-spraying truck kept going. It was more than twenty years old, a mobile rust bucket, a bomb. People he met said it was hopeless for this country, that it pissed too low on the ground, that it would have its guts ripped out one day hitting a rock, slamming into a pothole, fishtailing into eternity. They
told him that the unusual heat was a sign of unsettled weather ahead, and his truck would get bogged.

He listened to weather reports on the staticky truck radio. There was rain in Queensland, but that was far to the northeast of where he was. He drove across the South Australian border back into saltbush country, heading for a line of rocky ranges where he had an ideal campsite in mind. Hazel and Packard had camped there between sheds. It was off a side track and up a rocky, winding road. There was an abandoned homestead there, a ruin, and beautiful permanent water in an underground cistern. The place was elevated and you could see across the whole world from there, said Hazel.

In the back of his truck he carried a roll-out mattress and bedding, two spare wheels, a shovel, a jerry can of petrol, oil, spare water, fan belts, jumper leads, wooden blocks, a tow chain, and a pneumatic jack. This was in addition to cooking utensils and boxes of leftover shearing stores that Harold had given him to take to his brother when they finished at Gograndli — potatoes, onions, and a twenty kilogram bag of baker's flour that would see him through.

He felt that the truck was part of him. They were shedding parts of themselves, slowing down, engaged in a mutual routine of loosening old expectations in the knowledge that eventually there would be a final disappearance. Sadie looked on, finding the idea of disintegration incomprehensible. There was something he didn't know — a strength Sadie had, a sense of belonging to herself. He needed that and lacked it. He always belonged where he was headed, never where he was. Sadie was always happy where she was, not looking for changes all the time. It was there in her trust, in her savage needs, in the daring flash of her eyes, in her compaction of energy.

 

The hills he was aiming for kept separating from the horizon in cigar-shaped mirages. Like quicksilver they changed in colour from smoky blue to leaden grey, floating upwards, smearing into the emptiness of the sky.
Finally they settled and enlarged ahead: it was like heading into Palestine or Sinai, dry, rocky, and with flocks of wild goats moving through the distance like cloud-shadows.

The rattling truck sent up a column of dust that drifted back over him when he stopped to get a cold drink from the Esky in the back. One minute everything about the hills was magnified and distorted. Then the hills changed, seeming grim, low, depressing. A cairn of gibbers marked the turn-off point across a claypan, where a pair of faint wheel-tracks ran.

Saltbush smacked the underside of the chassis and he knew that if it rained in this country he wouldn't get out for weeks.

The approach to the old homestead was flat, and then was blocked by a tumble of smooth grey rocks. There was a gap between them where a white-trunked, delicately-leafed gum tree caught the afternoon sun. A crushed-gravel track slanted into shadows and then reappeared higher up, following a dry creekbed that gushed from the hills in a tongue of stones. Roadmakers must have used the place as a quarry years ago, or maybe there had been a mine there. The track climbed only six metres or so but seemed to go higher because of the flatness that spread out beneath. Sharp quartzy gravel spat from under the truck's tyres.

A few hundred metres along and the ruined homestead was a pile of rubble and a stark, burnt-out chimney-place. The view back the way he had come was breathtaking — the stippled patterning of dry shrubs on the red plain amalgamating to a smooth fabric of land, millions of acres stretching out in all directions, and no sign of habitation anywhere. The late afternoon light created a dusty golden haze. It was possible, he thought, to detect the curvature of the earth. The silence was broken by the chatter of finches in a fig tree among the rocks, and by the screech of a hawk.

Sadie barked wildly. The hawk launched an attack, swooping, letting down its talons while Sadie ran about
yapping, and then, at the last moment, cracking its wings open, angling its neck back as it went past, showing a glistening hooded eye as it beat its way up to a roost on the rockface.

Sadie trembled and he picked her up and carried her around under his arm. He set her down in the ruined chimney-place.

 

As a birthday present when he was seven his parents had given him a book with a drawing of a burnt-out chimney-place. Broken mortar, crumbling bricks, old stone blocks just like this one. He still had the book somewhere at home.
Little Round Stairway
was the story of a girl named Piettra who was brought up by gypsies when her family home was destroyed in a bushfire and she was orphaned. After wandering with Piettra in their care for some time the gypsies returned to the house-site where only the brick chimney was left standing. Piettra, who hated sleeping in a bed with a tangle of gypsy children, persuaded the Gypsy Father to set up a curtain-flap and camp bed in the chimney-place. There she lived while practising tightrope walking in a gypsy circus.

The drawing of the burnt-out chimney had a deep fascination for him. In the empty South Australian hills a spell was cast: he smelt the cold ashes and rubbed the rotting mortar of the stones between his fingertips, and heard the wind moaning in the fig tree. He stood inside the ruined space, with Sadie between his feet sniffing around for marsupial mice. He debated dragging his swag across and setting up for the night in the fireplace. Sadie seemed to like the idea. But the chimney smelt of stale piss. It had broken glass in it. And there were rats — elongated rodents with long banded tails. Sadie pounded after one across the clearing, somersaulted onto it, broke its spine and ripped its head off.

Behind the old house a natural depression in the rock held water. This explained why the house was there. It was an almost rectangular natural cistern. Grooves chipped in the rock directed water down from rainstorms, and
collapsed guttering led from the old house. The cistern was covered with a galvanised iron lid, and had a trap-door at the side, through which he lowered his billy on a piece of string.

He went back to the truck and cleared a mattress-space between his gear and his shearing supplies. As the sky paled and darkened, he reclined on his bedroll eating Scotch Buy cheese, drinking red wine, smoking a cigarette, and watching the stars come out. Sadie curled at his toes.

Later he built a fire and watched the dance of shadows. A mournful night wind smacked the embers and smoke whisked around in abrupt, crazy patterns. He felt as if he had set up residence in the sky. If there was anyone down on the plain they would see his fire and think it was a low star. He kept thinking about the absence of company and wanted the desolation to fill with people. In the book the barefooted girl had returned at night with an armful of weeds and wildflowers.

The stark, crumbling chimney cut a black hole in the sky. White fire of other worlds marked its edges. He found himself looking back the other way in his feelings. People who seemed too solid in the crowded life of the sheds enlivened his thinking. They were shadows dancing behind the bricks and stones, beckoning the man to come, or stay — they didn't care, it was up to him. If he wanted life that was where it was, on past the chimney-place. The girl in the book had never settled for good there. It was just that it was all that was left of her childhood home. She had only gone back there to find her way out again.

Away to the north, white explosions of lightning moved along the horizon and sank from view. Over in that direction, about four hundred kilometres away, was the next shed.

From a distance it didn't seem like much. Closer, it was a triangular, cone-headed, expansive roof of black. It shot spears of lightning from its centre. It broke open.

He hadn't heard about any rain on the truck radio, had only seen lightning fading from the campsite. Here it had turned around, days later, and shown its face. Dry road with dust-whirls at the edge, followed by a wall of silver sheeting down. Centimetres separating them. The truck punching through. Couldn't see anything but blur. Executed a U-turn. Went back to a roadhouse and called the station from there. ‘Not raining. Just a few drops. The boys are shearing. Come via Wilcannia.'

At the start of the Menindee road there was a sign:
Road Closed to Menindee
. He made a mental note that he wasn't going to Menindee. Claggy fresh tyre-tracks ahead of him. Followed a small white Suzuki ute that grew smaller and smaller.
Wait for me, you bastard
. Started to slide. At twelve k's planed across into road gutter. Used coolabah branches and a hessian bag to inch up about half a metre. Got on the road again. Made another ten k's skating and planing and swearing hard. Ploughed to a standstill.

Switched off the engine, let the dog out for a run, waited.

Away in the distance a squeal and a hum. It was a Daihatsu four-wheel-drive driven by a grader driver who'd abandoned his grader and headed for home. ‘What's this little bloke — a Jack Russell?' Crawled under the truck and hooked up the tow chain. Swung the truck round and started pulling it back towards town. A match-box towing a turtle. Went about two k's. The Daihatsu engine died and it slithered sideways. ‘Water in the electricals.' Handed the grader driver his can of WD40. ‘It's on me.' The grader driver under there like a mud wrestler. No hope.

The river about two hundred metres away across a dismal floodplain. Far up the road an optical illusion involving roos. They seemed to be pounding on the spot as though they were on pogo sticks.

Now came a beautiful sight in the other direction: an electric blue Commodore emerging from the grey drizzle. It danced and spun, executing three hundred and sixty degree turns and then speeding forth again, before spinning another routine back the other way. It only needed music. The style was Bertram Junior's.

‘Cookie,' Bertram Junior said, hanging from the driver-side window, his face like the moon, his eyes dark pools of speculation. ‘We've got ourselves a few troubles, eh. We put the presser on as cook. Because we'd gone so crook about the previous cook not washing. Every time we come out of the shed, there was the presser coming out of the shower. He must have had twenty showers a day, and never got any cooking done. So I put her on.' Bertram Junior introduced his girlfriend, Tina. He'd met her on a station where she was a governess, and had taken her to the sheds, where she had become a rouseabout, and briefly a cook. She loved the life.

‘Except I've had it up to here with cooking,' Tina said. She'd given up on Bertram Junior as a boss over his putting her on after the presser; they'd fought; he'd injured her dog, a foxy, while making a point — slammed
the animal to the ground. Now, as her boyfriend, he'd made up and was showing notable consideration. He'd remembered a cook who said he'd go anywhere, any time. Here he was.

‘Meet Cookie.'

Another vehicle appeared, a white Hi-Lux twin cab driven by Willie-boy. Four vehicles in a line now, all with their headlights shining in the grey drizzle. Willie-boy grabbed the cook's black Akubra, which Sadie had chewed, and decided it was his. He scooped up Sadie, who was growling at the limping foxy, and carried her around. ‘I'm cultivating the cowboy look,' said Willie-boy, screwing on the hat tighter. Two months had passed since they'd last seen each other. Nobody said anything about which sheds they'd been at, or the times they'd had. It was as if no time had passed at all. Everything was concentrated into the coming of the rain.

‘I sensed a great deal of reluctance in my brother's voice when I asked him if you could be my cook,' said Bertram Junior. ‘Now it don't look like you'll be anyone's cook in this weather. They say it's coming down from Queensland and there's more where it come from.'

‘I rang from Little Topar. I can't believe I got told to come on.'

‘Sure. But it wasn't raining then.'

‘It was only two hours ago.'

‘A lot's happened in them two hours, is all I can say,' said Bertram Junior. ‘Just after you called, it started pissing on us. We've got a shedful of lambs left to finish and the rest have got frogs jumping out of them.'

‘Lots of possibilities and no choices,' said Willie-boy.

‘Where are you off to now?'

‘We come to rescue you,' smiled Bertram Junior. He turned around and looked back up the road. ‘Here's someone in a Suzuki.' He placed his hands on his hips and looked at the bog jam, now numbering five vehicles as the white Suzuki became the tail-ender. ‘Eat your heart out, Albie Mangels.'

It was the vehicle he had seen before. The driver, a
purple-faced grazier, inched past the row and tied a towline to the grader driver's Daihatsu. ‘He's a Scotchman, he's been out here since he was eleven and he looks like a bloody Scotchman — near pickled.' The Hi-Lux hooked onto the yellow truck. Bertram Junior in the Commodore positioned himself in the middle, and a five-car convoy began whirling through the mud. The Suzuki and the Daihatsu disappeared with his WD40. All he could do was hold the wheel straight, and sit steady while the truck sashayed from one side of the road to the other. Sadie looked back from the rear window of the Hi-Lux, yawning luxuriously.

At the twelve-kilometre mark a decrepit wooden bridge hung over a shallow gully. He hadn't noticed it the first time past. The road took a soft-edged sidetrack around the bridge. The truck slithered across the road, sank into the edges, stopped short, the tow-chain twanged tight, the Hi-Lux jerked backwards, and nothing more could be done. The one-tonner was bogged up to the chassis. It seemed to be trying to bury itself.

‘I'll hang round,' he said.

‘What we'll do,' said Bertram Junior, ‘is go into town, leave the Commodore in the lock-up yard there, pick up some stores, change a few videos, and be back here in the Hi-Lux say around sunset. We can all sleep at the station and work out what to do about your truck tomorrow.'

The cook gave Willie-boy fifteen dollars to buy him a six-pack of Coopers. ‘If we don't make it back,' said Bertram Junior, ‘I guess you will be seeing demons, Cookie.'

They drove off with Sadie. A few hundred metres away the brake lights flashed red, the Hi-Lux's side door opened, a small white blob flew out, and Sadie came trotting back to where he waited. She smelt of tobacco smoke, wet dog, black mud. The slithering vehicles disappeared under a racing black cloud. The day darkened to a glassy patch of brightness in the swirling sky, and then even that was gone. He heard a noise like a rushing wind, and torrential rain hammered down. He sat huddled in
the cab of the truck with Sadie, the windows fogged up, the radio playing static, the air thickening.

 

Nobody came back. Every half-hour the rain eased to a drizzle, then intensified again — flood rain, the end-of-everything rain, bog-to-the-centre-of-earth and float-down-the-river rain. At the roadside he made a fire from broken bridge timbers, brewed coffee, and rearranged his gear in the back of the truck to make a sleeping place under the storm-shuddering tonneau cover. He sat under the bridge with water running down the back of his neck, trying to decide if sleeping in the truck was a dangerous idea. The truck shifted deeper after the team disappeared, but now seemed to have stabilised. He would risk it. The black rubberised material stretched over him like a mortuary shroud. Sadie nestled into a cardboard box. At intervals through the night he woke, mistaking the shine of the fire for approaching headlights.

The night was strange, empty of human life. One fox. One plover. One dove. One chorus of magpies. Even a person in gumboots walking down the road would grow stilts of black soil mud and get nowhere. He could not be reached here.

The wild moon in a storm.

The moon on tendrils of cloud.

The moon bowling along the top of the skeleton coolabahs as it waned.

A dry wind howling across the claypan.

Flies. First light at six. Black cockatoos drifting towards the river, contradictory and raucous. Intervals of sunlight. No rain.

Eight twenty-one in the morning: a distant sound that didn't sigh away like the wind, but strengthened and sharpened. It was the Hi-Lux enlarging into view, mud slapping and the whine of low gear, Willie-boy leaning from the passenger window offering him a meat pie resting on a paper bag.

‘Your breakfast for you.'

‘Thanks.'

‘And your hat.'

Nobody said anything about where they had been all night. He didn't ask. It didn't matter. Here they were.

He ate the pie while Bertram Junior and the others dug out the truck, jacked it up, winched it sideways with the Hi-Lux, never saying no it couldn't be done, and taking no notice of the passing of the hours, just looking worried, sometimes, as the sky darkened again, and more rain came in, until finally they got the truck to the crown of the road, hooked it up again, and towed it to town.

He shouted them burgers in a service station cafe. There would be no more work in the Western Division for a while. ‘I'll call you when we get a starting date on Wilga Station,' said Bertram Junior. He went to the phone and called Alastair.

‘It's not raining where he is,' Bertram Junior reported. ‘I told him you'd be camping in the caravan park on your way through.'

‘What made you say that?'

‘It's where you stayed last time,' said Bertram Junior, wide-eyed, as if everything in life obeyed a single rule, and everyone knew it except this cook.