Beyond the Black Stump (6 page)

That was the last trip into the mountains that Stanton made before leaving for Australia. On his last day he drove the Lincoln down to the garage to turn it in; his father came out of his office to look it over. “If there’s a scratch on it I’ll bill you for it,” he threatened, laughing.

“Nary a scratch, Dad. That one was there when I got it.”

“I know it. Dirk Hronsky did that when he went off the road.” He turned to his son, more serious. “Got a minute to spare?”

“Sure, Dad.” They went into the office.

His father closed the door. “I wanted to talk without your mother hearing everything,” he said. “You all right in your job?”

The geologist opened his eyes. “Sure, Dad. I got a swell job. What makes you think it’s not?”

“I just got an idea that living in Arabia and Australia and all those sort of places—maybe you’d be getting tired of it by now.”

“I kind of like the work, Dad. The places aren’t much to live in, but I make good money.”

“I know it, son.” He paused. “You wouldn’t rather work here?”

“Here in Hazel?”

“Here in this office.”

There was a pause. “I never thought about it, Dad. I dunno that there’s much here I could do. I’d never make a salesman.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But I can hire good salesmen for five hundred a month ’n commission. What you could do is run the business and the engineering side.”

“What about you, Dad? That’s what you’re doing.”

“There’s a lot of other things I’d like to do, son, before I get too old. I’d like to expand this business in a lot of ways. Moving earth, for one. There’s not a real road contractor this side of Portland. We could use one here, with the equipment based on Hazel. I’d like to have a parking lot for the equipment up on 5th Street.”

Stanton realised that his father had got this all figured out. It was in keeping with his restless energy; as soon as he had got one business established and running profitably he itched to start another one. The urge to move earth lies deep in the heart of a number of Americans. To use great bulldozers, graders, and Euclids to drive a road through a hill or cut a grade along the shoulder of a mountain had been a secret ambition of his father for some time; little casual remarks passed in the home had warned the geologist of this enthusiasm since he had returned to Oregon. While his son worked in places like Arabia or Australia, Stanton Laird was tied to the automobiles, but if his son were to come in and help him, he would be free to adventure again before he grew too old.

“I’d like to think about it, Dad. I certainly would like to live in Hazel, but it’d take some thought.”

“Sure,” said his father. “It’ld be quite a change from being a geologist.”

“I’ll have to go to Australia now, Dad, anyway. I couldn’t walk out on Topex at a minute’s notice ’n leave them flat.”

“Sure you can’t,” his father said. “I wouldn’t want you in the business if you were liable to behave like that.” He paused. “How long do you reckon to be in Australia?”

“I wouldn’t know, Dad. I’ve got just the one hole to dig, so far as I know—take about a year, maybe. I could make a break then, if they want me to go on out there. But I guess I’ll have to go and dig that one.”

“I could wait a year,” his father said, “so long as I knew you were coming. I’d appreciate it if you could make your mind up one way or the other before Christmas. The business is big enough to carry both of us, right now.” He went on to discuss the salary and the percentage of the profits. “’Course, in the end it’ll all come to you, to you and Dwight between you. If you don’t want to leave the oil business and come into it, I’ll probably up-grade McKenzie from the shop.”

The geologist nodded slowly, thinking over that proposal. “He’d be the one. He’s a mighty fine boy, that …” He grinned at his father. “I guess I’d be sorry to see that happen, all the same.”

“Well, don’t jump at a decision,” said his father. “Take a bit of time, ’n think it over. Hazel’s a small town, and you’ve been travelling around the world, and going places. Maybe you’d find Hazel a bit small. You want to think it over.”

“I wouldn’t mind spending my life here,” Stanton said. “I don’t think it’s small.”

“It
is
small, ’n you can’t get away from it.”

“None of the West’s small, Dad,” said his son. “It’s still the Frontier here. Hazel’s not the same as a small town back East, say in Connecticut. It’s still pioneering here, opening things up ’n getting new things started. Why, lots of the roads around here aren’t paved yet, ’n you can go thirty miles and never pass a gas station. It’s pioneering here, Dad, still—and will be for a long time.”

His father’s heart glowed. “That’s the way I feel about this place myself,” he said. “I didn’t know you did.”

“Sure it’s the way I feel about it,” his son said emphatically. “It’s pioneering here, Dad, still. It’s not so long since everything came here by ox cart. Grandpa used to drive one. He took me riding in it once.”

“You remember that, son? You were only about three years old.”

“Sure I remember it. This is a Frontier town, and that’s all part of it. Maybe it’s not so undeveloped now as it was
in Grandpa’s time and we don’t ride round in ox carts, but it’s mighty undeveloped still. It’s only two years since we got television, ’n we can only get two channels even now. There’s plenty of pioneering to be done here yet, Dad—here on the Frontier. Small town or not, that’s the kind of place I like to work in, not in the big cities.”

His father said, “Well, think it over, son, and let me know before Christmas.”

I
T
is doubtful if much pioneering in the State of West Australia ever was done by ox cart, for oxen need water, a commodity that has always been in short supply over most of the state. The diesel semi-trailer takes its place, and about a week later the semi-trailer driven by Spinifex Joe ground to a standstill in a swirl of red dust before the homestead of Laragh Station.

Spinifex Joe looked like a half-caste and may have been one, for he was vague himself about his father and not much more certain of his mother. He was a small, lean man about fifty years of age, good with diesel engines, a good bush mechanic capable of making quite a tolerable repair by welding when the need arose. He had use for these qualities, because he was the postman. Each week he started on Monday morning from the post office at Onslow on the coast of West Australia just inside the tropic and drove eastwards, loaded with two or three sacks of mail that had reached Onslow by air, an assortment of packing cases destined for the stations that he served, a number of drums of fuel and kerosene, and all the aboriginals who cared to climb on board.

His route took him eastwards through the stations for about two hundred miles to a property called Malvern Downs, the end of the so-called road. From there he took to the bush tracks, lurching and swaying over the bare red earth, hard baked in the sun; when one bit of his road became worn out he deviated and made another track. From Malvern he went to Mannahill, from Mannahill to Laragh, from Laragh on to Poonda, Mulga Downs, and Millstream, and so back to Onslow. The whole journey was about six hundred and fifty miles and it took him a week of blazing sun, red dust, and small mechanical repairs. He never travelled without a forty-gallon drum of water on the back and he frequently had need of it when tyre trouble or breakdowns delayed him. Normally he slept on the bare earth underneath the trailer, his head pillowed on a tarpaulin. That was his whole life; he had no other home.

On the flat tray of his semi-trailer when he stopped at Laragh were three bales of wool trimmings that stank in the hot sun, about thirty drums of various fuels with a few empties, eleven packing cases, two coloured stockmen with their wives, or gins, and their many children on their way to Poonda, and five assorted full-bloods probably just coming for the ride. In addition, he brought three small sacks of mail.

Mrs. Regan was waiting for him on the verandah of the homestead, a tall, commanding woman about fifty years of age, born in Edinburgh and brought to West Australia as a child. With her was her twenty-year-old daughter, Mollie, one of her eleven children, and David Cope. David was English, twenty-two years old, born and bred upon a farm near Newbury. His parents’ farm had been requisitioned for an aerodrome during the war, and covered with great concrete runways. For the first years of peace they had battled with the Ministry to get their land back, and had failed; they had then emigrated as a family to West Australia and had bought a farm at Armadale, near Perth. At the age of sixteen David had gone as a jackeroo upon a sheep station, to learn the business. He had stayed there for four years and had remained enthusiastic about sheep, with the result that now, only two years later, he was manager and part owner of Lucinda Station, white enthusiasts being something of a rarity in the far north of West Australia.

Lucinda was a property of about three hundred and twenty thousand acres that lay to the west of Laragh, a sizeable stretch of country somewhat hampered by a water supply that would have been deemed inadequate for a three-hundred-acre farm in England. The mail truck did not come to Lucinda, but David had a radio transreceiver for use with the Flying Doctor service, and so he kept himself informed of the progress of the mail truck as the housewives gossiped together on the natter session after the scheduled calls. That morning he had driven thirty miles in his jeep to collect his letters at Laragh, a cheerful, energetic young man in a torn khaki shirt, shorts, and sandals on his bare feet, all thickly covered with red dust.

He had been sitting with the women on the verandah drinking tea and waiting for the truck. As it ground to a standstill he got up and went out into the sun to meet the driver. Mrs. Regan followed him.

“Morning, Joe,” he said. “How are you today?”

“Good,” said the driver. “Country drying up again.” He selected one of the three mail sacks that rode with him in the cab, and pulled it out on to the ground.

Mrs. Regan cast an eye over the loaded tray. None of the blacks meant anything to her, but the drums did. “You brought my kerosene, Joe?” she enquired.

“Two kero,” he said laconically. “Six diesel and four petrol. That right?”

“Aye,” she replied, “that’s right. Will ye have a cup of tea? Pat’ll be down with the boys in a minute to unload.”

He followed her to the verandah, carrying the mail sack, and sat down on the edge of it while he sorted through the letters; she did not ask him to sit in a chair with them. Mollie poured out a large cup of very strong tea with a great spoonful of sugar in it, and took it to him on the edge of the verandah. At the truck the aboriginals got down on to the ground and squatted underneath the trailer in the shade.

Beside the homestead stood the station store, a large, dimly lit building full of every kind of hardware ranged on shelves, where the blacks and half-castes could buy blankets, shirts, trousers, dresses, stockwhips, red and yellow scarves, stockmen’s hats, and riding boots, together with a small variety of sweets and chocolate, and soft drinks. Beside that was a smaller building that served as a station office and the school. The door opened now and a flood of children burst out into the sun, children of all colours from the deepest black to pure tanned white, all ages from four to twelve. There were about thirty of them; the two white ones came over to the homestead. These were Mrs. Regan’s youngest children, Maggie and Shamus. The station bookkeeper, who also served as the schoolmaster, followed them.

He was a shambling, grey-haired, scholarly-looking man, well into his sixties. Spinifex Joe handed a bundle of letters and parcels to Mrs. Regan, who took them on her lap and began to sort them through. She looked up as the schoolmaster approached. “Here’s one for you, Judge,” she called. “And here’s your newspaper from England.”

He approached, and took them from her. “Thank you indeed,” he said. “My sister is a very regular correspondent, is she not?”

“Aye,” said Mrs. Regan. “Never forgets to write.”

A Land Rover appeared from the direction of the station stockyard half a mile away. Mrs. Regan said to the postman, “Here’s Pat and the boys, Joe. They’ll get the drums off.” To her daughter she said, “Get the bottle, Mollie, and the cold water and the glasses.”

The girl went off and turned the corner of the verandah towards the kitchen; the eyes of the young Englishman from Lucinda followed her. The little truck drew up beside the semi-trailer and two young half-caste men got out. From the driver’s seat a huge, powerful old man emerged. He was over seventy years of age, but he still boasted a shock of bright red hair. He was dressed in soiled trousers of jungle green and a khaki shirt, with elastic-sided riding boots. He had come from breaking horses with his sons down at the yard, and he carried a stockwhip in his hand. On his shoulder perched a kangaroo mouse.

David Cope got to his feet as the old man came to the verandah. “Morning, Mr. Regan,” he said. He eyed the long-legged mouse. “What’s that you’ve got there—a hopper?”

“What else would it be?” asked Mr. Regan. “The kindest hopper this side of the black stump.” He paid no more attention to the young man but took the bunch of letters from his wife and shuffled them through. Spinifex Joe crossed to his truck and began to lay the skids down from the trailer to the ground to get the drums off, helped by the young men. David Cope sat down again upon the edge of the verandah.

Pat Regan picked out a letter in a long official envelope and peered at it suspiciously. The mouse peered with him from his shoulder. There was an official imprint on the envelope; he would not admit that he now needed glasses, but he had never read well anyway. “In the Name of God!” he exclaimed, “what would this one be?”

His wife took it from him and screwed up her eyes. “It says, Bureau of Mineral Resources,” she told him. “That will be those people that were here before, fossicking about after the oil.”

“God mend them! They’ll not be after coming back again?”

“It may say in the letter.”

“Well, open it and read it, woman,” said the old man testily. “Open it and read it, and see what it says.”