Tide (23 page)

An old lady covered in black came out through the front door, yelling at the dog, and then yelled at me in broken English. It was just like in my childhood. I wasn't sure if what I felt was prejudice, or something about being out of place. Strange really, as so many of the people I'd worked for in my wanderings had been Italians. So many apples and pears and oranges picked in their orchards. I got on well enough with them, if keeping my distance. Mind you, they kept their distance from me, too. And it's a truism – if you're a hard worker, the Italian boss will like you well enough. And I am a hard worker. More than once in the past I'd heard it said from one boss to a neighbouring boss, Don't let the hair fool yer, he's a bloody hard worker, and reliable. I've always been proud of that.

So as she yelled at me, I called back, shaking the dog off my boot, Hi, I was told you might be looking for workers. Yeah, yeah! the old woman replied, reaching to grab the dog by the collar. She shouted at it in Italian, and the dog took off for the milking sheds, stopping briefly to look at me over its shoulder and growl. Dogs can always tell something about you you'd rather pretend wasn't true.

Sure enough, Papa installed me in the old house. The old lady – Nonna – Papa's mother – brought me the best food I'd eaten in months. And yes, it was pasta with homegrown tomatoes, olives, the works. And a bottle of wine.

I was ready to go at dawn, though I wasn't called for until later – the cut hay was a little damp from the morning and it's never good to bale with too much moisture in the grass. It was Vince who collected me. I could tell – as the barmaid said, a ‘spunk'. Or what, back at school, would have been called a ‘homo'. He was dapper in his work clothes, and kind of rocked as he walked. Hair rolled in waves. His belt buckle was large, and it gleamed. Astonishingly, he wore braces as well as the belt. Bright blue braces. Slick as. He spoke in a strained Aussie accent: How ya goin', mate … you gonna be helpin' us out over the next couple of weeks …? Lot of balin' to do. Lot of work. When I'm finished, I'm up to the city for some partying. I chatted with him as we walked to the hay sheds … he was a clubber. He asked if I smoked dope. He asked if I took speed. He told me his life's history. Heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy. That was Vince.

At the sheds his brother, Lou, was waiting. Crisp in his fleecy checked shirt, sturdy workboots, shearers' greasies. Hair short and neat, nothing out of place, nothing extra, not a touch of affectation. There was a family resemblance, sure. But they weren't two peas from the same pod. Lou shook hands and said it was good to be working together. That he was looking forward to it. And you could believe him. I liked him. But then I liked Vince as well. And Nonna. And Papa, though I hadn't really swapped more than a few gruff words with him. And then there was Mamma. I'd seen her out of the corner of my eye – I guess you'd say a stylish-looking woman in her late forties. Papa looked about fifty-five. The Family. By proxy, I already felt part of it.

The days rolled by, as they say. It was good hay-carting weather, though as anyone who has done the job will know, there's never a perfect day stacking and restacking bales of hay. Your skin is a hell zone and every muscle in your body aches. But the boys had style. After baling, Lou drove the truck while Vince and I took turns at taking bales off the loader as it scooped them from the ground, swinging them to each other, to stack on the truck bed. It took skill to build a pile of blocks at the rate Lou drove – he expected the work to be done steadily and efficiently – and Vince's joking and singing at the top of his voice made the time pass all the quicker. And then we had to stack the shed when the truck was fully loaded. All three of us at work. Two in the shed and one on the truck hurling bales down, then up, as the stack built. Though I'd done the job plenty of times before over the years, I still picked up some good hints from the boys about how best to roll the bales and stack them neat.

Throughout the day, Papa would come down from the house to watch our work. He was up well before daybreak with an assistant who lived in town – a dairyman – to bring in the cows and do the milking. When they weren't carting or doing some other work in the orchard, the boys would be in with the cows as well. Same in the evenings. But Papa still found time to make sure everything was going fine. He'd test our handiwork on the truck – poking at the bales to ensure they were secure, commenting if Vince had let them go a layer or two too high – you'll lose the lot, you'll lose the lot, he'd repeat. Actually, he seemed a bit hard on Vince. There was clearly stuff between them – issues – but I kept out of it. I once heard Papa screaming at him about being lazy. Vince wasn't lazy – he was just, well, ‘free'. I smoked the odd scoob in the evenings with Vince, but he said to keep it from his brother because he'd tell Papa who would throw us both out. Believe me, he added, if an Italian son can get thrown out, then it's bad news!

There was only two weeks' work, and at the end of it Lou gave me my pay and my marching orders. You've been a good worker, mate, he said. That was it. Vince was slightly emotional and we went into town and the pub that night and got pissed. Vince screwed the barmaid out the back of the pub somewhere, and I held the pool table for five games. One of Vince's old schoolmates gave us a lift back to the farm, since both of us were too out of it to drive. We walked down that white-posted drive with a full moon overhead, arm in arm, singing our lungs out. We didn't even know the words of the songs. Whatever came out would do. The dog barked and barked and pulled against its chain. Cows bellowed in the distance and the porch light came on. Lou and Papa came out and yelled, as one, for us to keep it down, we'd wake the women. But there was nothing more to it – hard work brings a little bit of slack, even in the Family. Vince said goodnight and lurched off to his father and brother, and I slunk into the old hut.

The next morning, I started to get my shit together and get ready to head off. I went up to the house to say thanks to Nonna for the fine food I'd been eating, and to thank Mamma, who had generally kept away from me. She didn't fraternise with the hired help, I'd say. But she was warm in her thanks and her goodbye, and Nonna gave me a hug. I stood at the back door the whole time – I'd never once been into the main house while I was there. I saw Christ on a crucifix on a corridor wall, but that was it.

By that time, the milking was over and the cows were being led back to the paddocks. I went to say goodbye to the blokes. Vince was in the shed, washing it out, looking worse for wear, and just gave me a sickly grin and a lacklustre wave. Papa was taking the cows down to the paddock, but I'd see him shortly, because he'd promised to drive me back into town when I finished work, and to introduce me to a friend who was looking for someone to help with some fencing. Papa said to me, You'd make a father proud … I will recommend you to my old friend Joseph. We came out on the same ship as boys. He will be a good boss for you.

I couldn't see Lou anywhere. I went to the hayshed. I walked around the tractors and truck. No sign. I went back to the hut. I opened the door and Lou jumped back from my pack. His rifle was leaning against the wall. It all looked really weird.

What? I said.

Sorry, Lou mumbled … I thought you might have some …

Some what? I asked, closing the door behind me.

He just repeated, Some, some, then changing his mind and demeanour, went across to his rifle. There's a sick cow. Papa wants me to shoot it. I hate shooting cows. It's down in the yard behind the dairy. I hate it. Papa knows I hate it and he makes me do it. He says it will toughen me. That I will be head of the family one day. That Vince isn't responsible enough. He never makes Vince shoot the sick cows.

I was speechless. I was looking for some grass, he said. Some marijuana. I know you smoke it with Vince. I always know. I know what Vince does. I thought it might make it easier. Easier to kill the cow, you know.

It won't make it easier, Lou – it will make it harder, if anything. I grew up on a farm, as I've told you. I killed lots of things and never liked it. Swore I'd never do it again.

I've gotta, said Lou. There's no choice. I've gotta.

So I blew Lou out, and Lou got silly, then sick, and I knew there'd be trouble. I knew before I rolled the joint. I knew I'd be excommunicated, that I wouldn't be working for Joseph.

Papa will be back soon, I said to Lou. Come with me.

I picked up his rifle and led him swinging back and forth out of the hut down to the dairy. I could hear Vince still swishing away and we sidetracked around to the holding yards. The sick cow was actually a fair way from the dairy. It was a walk through manure and slush.

I'm not going to do it, Lou half cried and half laughed.

Neither am I, I insisted.

Lou snatched the rifle off me and buggered around with the bolt. Somehow he loaded it.

Don't swing it near me, I said.

He started to aim at the cow then lowered it again. Nope, I don't care what Papa thinks, I'm not going to do it. And it doesn't even make sense. It's not good business. That cow could be saved by a good vet. Just because the old methods haven't worked, doesn't mean modern medicine couldn't bring it around! It'd be good business to save it.

The gun swung about all over the place as Lou staggered around, raging. By this stage, Vince had abandoned the hose and was standing nearby, watching on, hands on hips, a wry, almost gloating smile on his face. I reached to grab the rifle, to eject the bullet from the chamber. Then we heard Papa yelling at us from across the paddock. I wasn't even sure what he was saying. Lou looked up, panicked, wrestled an imaginary figure with the gun, and it discharged.

That was twenty-five years ago. I could have been a rich man out of it. Papa offered me a huge bribe to keep my mouth shut. Mamma wept and threw herself on me. Nonna offered to nurse me forever. But I didn't want anything. My head was crowded with the vision of Lou clutching remorsefully at my bleeding hand, while Vince strolled over, lifted and reloaded the rifle, and shot the cow.

A SEASIDE BURIAL

Estranged though they'd been, the family – most of whom had hated the dead man, their father and grandfather, even more vehemently than they did their mother – turned up to see him buried. The ‘new' wife of thirty years mourned with real tears; the ex-wife who hated him turned up with her entourage, reinforcing them reinforcing her, still the Queen. And then there were the great grandchildren and their hangers-on, who stalked and lurked like a murder of crows.

At that time of year, the sea was choppy and grey. And that was on an azure blue coast when for most of the year it glowered. Yet with this grey it wasn't being mournful but more honest – heavy metals and other pollutants just swirling around in the mix, silt of dredgers emptying the river's mouth, the harbour, of its poison residues, out into the deep, to be swept back onto the shores. Gulls were raucous. They will be, right to the end.

One of the small children, innocent of the hell brought to the occasion by the embittered ‘family past', worried that the sea might come up over the sand, up this hill, and into the cemetery. It might wash great-grandfather away? Don't worry, said an aunt, dressed in trendy black with witchy lacework, the fish won't be interested. Nothing tasty there. The girl stared at her aunt, whose midriff showed, G-string eating into bare thighs, and wondered what would happened if she pinged the string. She was a distractible kid.

The widow didn't know where to stand, closed in by a semicircle of hostility, until an in-law went and stood by her: a tall, angry-looking man, husband of the ‘black sheep' daughter. Don't worry, he said, J (the ‘black sheep') will be here soon – she's just parking the car. And sure enough, a minute later, the ominous cliffs broke apart and J walked through. Her family, her
real
family, stared hard at her, trying to penetrate the foreignness. It's that terrible man she's with, they whispered. He's like Dad, Pop … They hung in the breeze, which was blowing steady from Antarctica now, cold with winter. They hung like seagulls. Or maybe birds of prey hanging over the hanging seagulls. Less likely, they were scavengers for souls and didn't believe the father's dead body was going to yield anything up. What had been left was taken by
that woman,
the widow. But they felt good knowing that, though they'd never visited before, they'd driven hundreds of kilometres inland to go through his possessions while she was delirious in the hospital. They were helping her.

J's man was an enigma. He didn't speak with them. Who does he think he is? they asked. All of them had heard whispers. He'd been a drug addict, once, and always had a runny nose (they were sure – they'd rarely ever seen him as J never appeared at family picnics, and even though she wasn't specifically invited, should have had the fortitude to ask when one might be on). He wrote pornography and called it literature. They shuddered as one, and drew their children close. The Queen, struggling with her gold lamé top, sniffed in the widow's direction and said loudly, These occasions are about
family!
She nestled into her brood, who knew J's man was a clear and present danger.

The service was brief. J and the widow had chosen some music, but it wasn't played. Old family favourites crackled over the PA and the Queen said loudly, Remember this, kids? He hated it so much! They looked solemn but smiled inside. It was good to feel warm on such an unpleasant day, weather-wise. Parents instinctively glanced down at the ocean, and at the great swathes of sandy beach, which, despite being blocked off in places by new Tuscan Splendours, looked inviting even in this weather. One thought: I'll still squeeze into that bikini this summer … Another thought: The tailor will be running soon, be nice to get down there with some of the boys from the office (how rare it is for an office of blokes to share the same interest) … I could wear my new overalls and parka. He thought fashion worked everywhere. That day he wore a tasteful off-the-rack suit that looked designer, with a muted blue tie. His father always overdressed – those bright suits were unbecoming – and spoke like an ocker. Women should dress brightly, not men. His mother had taste.