Shearers' Motel (17 page)

He left Wilga Station and drove his truck all day down to Gumbank, on the Darling south of Wilcannia, where there would be work in another fortnight. It was across the river from Merryford, the station he had never reached because of the bog jam. Harold went to the homestead to make arrangements about the forthcoming shearing.

Gumbank was a beautiful place. He wanted to camp there under the trees, never move again, with a fishtrap in the river and a cooking fire smoking on the bank. From the old shed, bales once slid down rails to the water, where they were stacked on barges and hauled to Victoria by paddle steamer. It was a picture from framed calendar art. River red gums hung over brown swirling water, debris floated down — tree limbs, leaves and sticks, clots of foam. It was paradise after Wilga. The cocky was friendly, welcoming him to stay till shearing, but an alternative was offering. Harold had an idea.

‘Leave your truck and come with us,' he said. ‘There won't be any work for you, most likely, but we've got this day planned you'll be interested in, before we start a shed down there with a cook we're committed to, worst luck
for you. But you can catch a bus back or get a ride with someone, or hitch or whatever,' he vaguely concluded. He was talking about a drive from northwestern New South Wales to the southernmost tip of coastal western Victoria. It was a long way.

 

The going was smooth once sandy station tracks and unsealed side roads gave way to bitumen. Dips and long crests interrupted a low horizon. There were no hills, just stretches of elevation relieved by slackenings in the landscape, with small, insect-like movements detectable in the vastness — wallabies among shattered red rocks, wild pigs in lignum, sheep in the saltbush.

‘If you want to beat the wildlife,' said Harold, ‘there's only one way: just drive a Toyota. You've got a big enough vehicle to carry a heavy enough roo-bar to hit them and just keep going.'

Four people rode in the twin cab of the Hi-Lux. All afternoon the shadow of the truck lengthened behind. Eventually the setting sun picked out the line of the Barrier Range, with plumes of dust streaming from mine tailings over the town.

Here they collected a fifth passenger. He was waiting at McDonald's, a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old in the company of a welfare counsellor. After a burger they went to Harold's house in Back Lane. The timing meant that Harold was home, between sheds, for only a few hours. His children were shy of him when they met him at the door, and Harold admitted he couldn't remember their exact ages because his mind was on work all the time. Once the youngest had forgotten who he was, and tried to pull him from Georgina's bed.

Harold's life was a contradiction. Its whole structure was built around the family, but because it was a shed life the family was excluded from most of it.

Georgina had a resigned, quizzical look when she greeted him — seeming to say,
All very well to see you, my husband, but for how long?
She emerged from the kitchen holding a tea-towel, putting an arm around Harold
briefly. The house was full of people coming and going, Kiwis mostly, all of them chewing on plates of sandwiches and carved cold meat, and laid-out leftovers from shearing supplies that Georgina readied for them — bottles of yellow pickles, tomato sauce, mint sauce, and jam.

Around the table the momentum of work-life continued. There was no stop to it here. It went right through into the walls. Harold recalled Oxley and his escaped sheep with a hoot of laughter. Georgina continued moving back and forth, fetching things from the workbench. With his moon-face and lustrous round eyes Harold was like a kid, her ever-absent fifth one. For whole minutes at a time he was out past Milparinka and Wanaaring with his other family, the one that absorbed him so much. He was back in the rough, simple, narrow-iron-bed, giggling-into-the-night life he lived as an almost single man. There was always something a sheep had done, something a grower had said, some little quirk or twist in the day, a side comment, a jape to amuse.

A stranger slid into the room, a quiet presence. It was Rocco, a champion shearer. Short black hair, dark round eyes, thin moustache and an unassuming manner that made him seem, at first glance, slightly built. Aged in his mid-thirties. Harold introduced him, gave some background. Rocco's name was legendary in the Kiwi sheds. Everyone talked about him and wanted to work with him. Non-smoker, non-drinker, Pentecostal Christian. Rocco found a seat at the table and sat with his fists clasped together on the Formica.

‘Pleased to meet you, Cookie. Harold tells me you run a
mean
kitchen.'

Simple differences made Rocco into a legend. He was careful with his diet. He went to bed at an early hour, and there was a rule of quiet in his sheds — no parties. He did stretching exercises on the board, and went jogging at the end of a day's work. People said that watching him put down his handpiece and move into the catching pen for his next sheep was the closest thing to watching a guy dance. There didn't seem to be any hurry about it all, but
each movement was so refined, so interconnected with the rest, that he smoothed through the process twice as fast as anyone else. Rocco the magician.

‘Rocco, you should have seen Oxley's face when the girls dumped a bucket of water on him. He just couldn't believe it!' Everyone who had been there at Wilga guffawed, except Georgina, who was out of it, and the welfare boy, Darryl, who sat staring at the floor, refusing to understand anything.

It was as if Rocco had been there too. His brown eyes flashed and his white teeth shone as he tossed his head back and smacked the table with the flat of his hand.

‘Hoo wee!'

 

Harold's older two children sometimes went and stayed in the sheds in the school holidays. They loved it. Slept in his room. Put mattresses on the floor. Folded the beds up, put them against the wall, said Georgina. If they knew the cook they'd spend time in the kitchen, and time over at the shed. The girl got into catching lizards. They looked forward to it — although the last time Harold wouldn't let them go, wouldn't say what the reason was, some reason why not, it was a disappointment. Georgina spent the fortnight finding things for the kids to do in the inland town, taking them to the swimming pool, the library, the video arcade.

Harold stating his reasons for anything would look in the air as if examining a passing cloud, where it seemed his motivations were stored. At times of crisis he sighed, rolling his eyes, looking put-upon, but didn't agonise too much over the penalties life exacted. He was a survivor. When he made his refusals he did so softly, delicately, as if he would rather have the cup pass. But really he was like an echidna, puffing himself out, clenching into the ground, disappearing from view in a flurry of dust.

That night Harold never once glanced at the clock. They had a thousand more kilometres to drive, but that was all right — it was as if Harold wasn't ever leaving, as if he hadn't been away. He watched ‘Sixty Minutes' for a
while. He tousled the hair of his children, asked them questions about sport and homework, and talked painstakingly to Georgina about car repairs, registration and insurance renewal — things she had to get done during the week. Their relationship had to be a business partnership, or else it would be nothing. Harold had learned. Georgina accepted that, he said. It made things better for both of them when they went through a difficult patch, and their relationship was really strong now, they were eye to eye, said Harold. They were working together with the same aim, which was to guarantee a life for their children different from the one they led themselves.

Downstairs, in his backyard office, Harold made telephone calls to four States. The kids brought him a plate of something else and he ate more. In the dark, cars pulled in to the cement driveway of the lane running off Back Lane, men and girls knocking on the screen door asking for work, mates looking in, acquaintances tooting when they saw the Hi-Lux parked out front.

To most who came looking for work Harold gave courtly consideration. There was no work, and he was sorry about that. But with one or two his lip curled faintly, and his eyes slid across them, telling another story:
Haven't I heard about you from somewhere? Ain't you the one that had that relationship and your work suffered? And you, I think I know you too. You're the one that badmouths me behind my back. You say I'm too tough. That doesn't worry me. I just happen to know that you are a bad worker
.

When the visitors were dealt with, there were the residents to address. With them Harold held family court. At weekends there were always Kiwis about the house somewhere, it seemed like eighteen or twenty at a time, men and women draped everywhere downstairs until Harold cracked the whip and Georgina sent them packing. Some lived at the caravan park when cabin fever struck Back Lane. Down there they could avoid the rule of no grog-ups, no parties of any description, especially since Calvin put his fist through a wall one night, shattering the gyprock.

Kiwis plus a few Aussies were the special mates, the inner circle, the known quantities. They mocked Harold because he wore a Clean Team monogrammed shirt on occasion, and drove the contractor's vehicle to seminars and sheep shows. Some of the mates, according to Harold, were getting a bit stroppy, complaining, lazy.
Try another contractor if you think I'm too tough; that's your privilege
.

Harold looked immensely lonely at times, as if he knew there might come a day when he would have to put aside everything — wife, children, brothers, extended family, mates, country of origin — in order to make a point concerning work. His trajectory in that direction made him confused. His days were lived in a maelstrom of contradictory ideals. He admired the solutions Rocco found to the dilemmas of the life they lived — his long-term aim being to team up with Rocco — but he was different from Rocco. Nobody else had the edge of spirit Rocco had, the blade of Toledo steel.

It got later and later. Sitting under the fluorescent light at the kitchen table, drinking mugs of coffee, Harold and Rocco talked about New Zealand. Tonight from this inland place they were heading for the sea. They came from the sea. They talked about the sea. Georgina joined them. Their voices grew softer.

‘Oh, boy,' said Rocco. ‘I am thinking of what we might get down there in the way of seafood.'

‘I am thinking of a big drum of crays,' said Harold. He looked to the side. ‘What we should do at the sheds one day, Cookie, is lay down a hangi.'

‘Wouldn't that be great,' agreed Rocco, with his wide smile. Then he smacked the palm of his hand on the table, and pushed his chair back. ‘Okay, guys. Let's hit the road!'

Now that it was really late, really time to go, Harold acted surprised. He followed Rocco out to the loungeroom, snapped the lid of his briefcase shut, got his clean washing into a bag, looked in on the kids, gave Georgina a hug, and very quickly, as if a swift emergency was now on
his hands, jumped into the truck, making sure of a good seat. He sat there waiting, eyes hooded, emotions turned down low.

Once the door of the twin cab was shut, and they started moving, the lights of Back Lane drifted behind them and home was gone as if it had no existence. Next thing up was another shed.

Heading south was like travelling on the sea, a voyage down the ocean of land.

There was only darkness and motion. There were five of them: the big man, Harold, wedged in the back with Krystal, sixteen, and Darryl, fourteen, while Rocco had the front passenger seat and Cookie drove to justify his freeloading.

Harold eased and refitted himself into position constantly, asking the girl and the boy to move over a bit, to make room for an old guy, the boss. He taunted Krystal about boyfriends at the last shed, until she said in her gravelly voice, ‘
They
never gave me no trouble,' and Harold stopped getting at her.

Darryl took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and started to light one. Harold wagged a finger, saying he should ask if anyone minded.

Harold told Darryl he was being given a chance, a big chance, it was his to grab now. He should listen to other people for a change. ‘We all started at the bottom,' he said, adding that Darryl was lucky he wasn't at school, always mucking up, always being useless, instead of being with people who would keep an eye on him, teach him a skill,
one that would take him anywhere, all round the world, right up the shearing industry ladder if he wanted.

‘Ain't that right, Rocco?'

‘Very right indeed,' nodded Rocco. ‘This industry can be really something.'

‘You watch Krystal here. She's a top rousie,' said Harold, exercising his charm.

Rocco turned up the radio. Stations came in from all round the country. When the music was plaintive and romantic Rocco smiled, tapping time with his fingers on the knees of his tracksuit pants. Anything spiritual had him closing his eyes, ecstatically tipping back his head, humming. It was the same mix of stations the whole way across the dial — easy listening, golden oldies, hits and memories, country greats, midnight Bible readings and sermons from local priests and clergy, and then back to easy listening again.

Whenever Darryl heard something he recognised he muttered, ‘Aw, yeah,' or ‘That's Mum's favourite'. He was a lot younger than fourteen inside himself, and couldn't help feeling it. His mother would have been heartsore with pride to see him, her young man — he surely felt that.

Cookie could tell, as he drove, what Darryl was thinking: wishing the youth counsellor hadn't driven him down to McDonald's, there in the Hill, and waited with him so publicly, like a parent or a teacher, until Harold tromped in, giving him the smile and saying, ‘So this is the young pup? Hand im over.' Wishing everything about him didn't say young pup. Knowing he was beginning work-life at the bottom of a pit. Knowing he wasn't going to be paid. (That was arranged with the youth people.) He didn't feel like any young pup, though — he was tall, and was always told he looked older than he was. Mum always said so.

Harold wagged a finger again: ‘One rule I have with you young fellas is no drinking, either. I see you with a stubby in your hand I'll whip you, no questions asked.'

Darryl knew that people like Harold, no matter how softly they talked, spoke the truth. They had a way of treating pups. They used a piece of four-by-two on them,
taking them behind the sheds when they weren't any use any more.

 

Way down the road they stopped for a piss. One Hundred and One Strings whined through the open doors of the Hi-Lux as they separated out in the dark. Floodwaters lapped an embankment. The moon coming up over the Darling Anabranch dredged deeper, heavier thoughts from sticky mud and grey straggly coolabahs than any easy listening could ever muster — the moon like a Beethoven symphony rising through streaky, fair weather clouds, pounding through space like a stone, scouring a path on the water.

‘Ain't that something,' enthused Rocco. ‘Whee!'

‘Australian moon. Beautiful moon,' said Krystal.

‘We've got a better one in New Zealand,' said Harold.

Harold removed his thongs, hitched up his shorts, and waded out into the water, swivelling from side to side in a hypnotic, trudging fashion, splashing the surface with the flat of his hand.

After this stop there was no more radio, no more talk. Harold snored like a grampus. Bodies slumped in the twin cab.

He drove using elbow and wrist in an almost fixed position, holding the wheel in a trancelike state. It was like steering a star-course. Harold and Rocco's ancestors had moved from island to island through the centuries, living on the sea, becoming part of the sea. At the Anabranch, Rocco had whistled Harold back before he disappeared into the dark, his head swarming with mosquitoes. Maybe he'd been out there reclaiming some missing part of himself, the dreaming, drifting quantity that was always buried in the worker. ‘Cookie,' he stirred briefly from his slumbers, ‘when we get there, let's go down to Port MacDonnell and see if we can't get some of them crayfish for our tea.'

At the start of this drive, the sun had set over dusty plains, where sheep-tracks led like wheel spokes to water tanks. Through the night the sun passed under saltbush
plains, muddy lakes, orange groves, vineyards, under the River Murray, under thickets of mallee. It rose, still in sheep country, deep to the south, west of the Grampians somewhere, splintering through red gums. The air was scented with moisture. The grass was juicy, thick and green. Thistles luxuriated along the roadsides, broad leaves striated like slugs. There was no such thing as grass where they had come from: no plenty. The distance involved was the same as from Brisbane to Townsville, or the full length of the North Island of New Zealand. It was like driving from John O'Groats to Land's End, or from New York to Florida. All night there had been hardly any other traffic — just occasional headlights descending from the far horizon.

At this time of year, every year, Harold did almost the whole stretch of this route every weekend. From wherever he shore he regularly drove home, trying to keep his family together, taking his children to the Mormon church on Sunday mornings, before heading down to Victoria again. A truckdriver recommended pills, which Harold took to keep himself awake. When he was told they were drugs and he might become addicted he said, ‘Well, I won't be taking them again' — then maybe shouldering the opinion aside because he had to, blinking away exhaustion, scrabbling his big fist into the glove box next time round, taking what was needed.

At long intervals in the night those other headlights materialised in the far sky and interminably sank down. When they bore past eventually they did so blindingly, with a whomp of air, as if something had leapt flashing from the dark, from the deep, from the waters of where they were going.