The Vintage and the Gleaning (12 page)

You bastards, says Mick-the-Pom, shaking his wet head. You right bloody bastards.

So there was about ten thousand head still to go and we sheared them, I say. And afterwards we all went off in the contractor's lorry, sitting around the plant, downtubes swinging all around us. And we go to the nearest grog shanty and there's another team there who were finished for the season and with all the men the grog shop smelt same as the sheds. And me team were buying me brandy and I remember looking in the bar mirror at meself, standing there with a brandy in me hand. Looking strong, all that. And the men were calling me gun shearer and speed merchant and they said I had a thing or two to learn yet. And they talked about gun shearers they had known and women they had known and the big cities and cockies and unions and their homes and they sent me outside with a boy from the other team and I knocked him down and I came back in and I looked at meself in the mirror again. And the publican calls last drinks and I remember one man drinking down a whole bottle of gin. Whole bottle, just like that. Pinching his nose while he did it. So we leave the pub and go back to the lorry. But there was this one old shearer, Percy Olsen was his name, and Percy Olsen sits down on the ground outside the grog shop and there's men standing around smoking and drinking from bottles, but the old fella's just sitting there. And the men are calling to him but he's just sitting there and he wouldn't come over, so they go and try to pull him up but he wouldn't get up and they had to drag him over to the lorry and I remember his boots coming off as they dragged him and him not saying a thing and one man hauls him up into the back of the lorry, up over his knee like a sheep, and they sit him opposite me and then they go and get his boots and throw them in after him and we drive off. And the other men are still talking and drinking and I remember Percy Olsen sitting there across from me, not looking at anything. He wasn't looking at anything at all.

I go to take a drink and remember again that I don't have one and I look at the boy and the boy leans over and vomits onto the carpet and he retches and spits and wipes his mouth and vomits again and he keeps vomiting until there is nothing left. I look over at Les, who is watching, and I grin.

Walking home along the railway tracks I remember that night.

It was a night not unlike this one. The air warm, the breeze in the long grass, its rustling movement regular and all around, swaying to and fro like the ebb and flow of the sea. And I was moving with its tide.

And the dry, dull fragrance of the grass and the far-off crops, the air fresh, the dark outlines of fences and houses and backyard trees above me, staining the glassy sky. The silhouettes of owls, still as fixtures on the branches, and then falling and soaring before me, their wings beating the air, throbbing with deep vibrations. Frogs chirping in the undergrowth, the nocturnal hum of insects, the twitter and rasp of possums and mosquitoes all around me. The rustle of leaves.

So it was, I remember. A night like this.

I was drunk that night, nicely drunk. Just nice enough so I didn't feel the stones under my boots or the gnawing in my guts. Just nice enough to be moving without effort and feeling without thought. Moving with the hot gusts pleasant on my back, driving me along, carrying me, and I felt as though I were drifting. Just drunk enough to forget who I was or what I was except a man walking, walking towards that great starclouded dome at the horizon, and in the darkness I felt that I myself was walking among the heavens. Just nice enough to forget everything.

And it was the sound I heard first, the wailing. And the drink had slowed my senses so there was the wailing coming from far off and then it was all around before I heard it for what it was, and it was the same for the misty shape down the track, that dun glowing blur coming closer and the strange high noise had pierced me before I understood, and it turned my guts to ice, the white naked woman emerging from the darkness and the blood flowing from her, from her eyes and from her head and it flowed black down her pale moonlit body and her mouth was open and her cry was loud and dreadful and she kept coming towards me and her arms reached out and grasped at me. And I thought my time had come.

Saturday I do some work in the garden and help my neighbour change a tyre. We talk about the locust plague and what the government's going to do about it.

Sounds like they're going to poison half the country, he says.

Saturdays I try to keep meself busy.

Sunday I go to church.

After service the congregation gathers outside. There are farmers and shopkeepers and their wives. Italian widows in black. Working men stand uneasy while women talk. The priest moves from group to group with his soft, smiling face, his high-pitched laugh sounding over the general hubbub. Kids are playing noisy games on the lawn, running about and chasing each other. Teenagers flirt among the cypress trees.

I am standing by the wall of the church in the shade of a buttress. A boy hurtles past me, nearly knocking himself against the bricks. I catch him.

Careful there, I say.

The boy looks up at me, stepping back, looking at me like I'm something strange, something he is trying to figure out but can't. Then he turns and runs off again, piping even louder than before.

I am not wearing my hat and my hands keep going to my hair, smoothing it down. I slouch and squint in the sun. I am waiting for the priest.

The congregation does not move and after a time I go back into the church. It is cool and empty, shafts of sunlight falling from the high windows, catching the play of dust motes, printing light and shadow in stark angles across the pews and the hardwood floor. The floor is rough and nude in the light.

I sit but I do not kneel. I look for the words but the words do not come.

It is late and I am standing at the sink drinking a glass of water, about to turn in for the night. The doorbell rings and Charlotte Clayton is standing there, her eyes like a child's.

I'm sorry Smithy, she says. I've been walking and walking. And I saw your house.

She looks away.

It's tomorrow, isn't it? I say.

She nods and looks at me.

I don't think I can do this, she says. I don't think I can face him.

Charlotte goes home to get some things and I start fixing up Spit's old room. It hasn't been much touched since the day me and Spit had our blue. Roy's slept there often enough, times he was too pissed to go home. But I never bothered to make any effort for Roy. I look around the room.

Over the bed there is a large poster of a naked woman lying on the bonnet of a sports car. I take that down first and then all the other naked women tacked to the walls and doors, pages torn from magazines.

There is a girl coming out of water, her beaded wet breasts showing, another in a pleated white skirt, bent over, nothing under the skirt, a woman sitting naked with her legs spread, holding a red rose between them. It is all tits and arses and cars and motorcycles and the women looking right at you and every one with the same expression. I take them all down and throw them in a pile on the floor.

The mirror on the old rosewood dresser is covered in pictures as well. There's the naked girls again and underneath them long strips of photos, taken in a booth. Spit and his mates, making faces, flexing their arms, showing their bare arses. Spit and Belle kissing, hugging, touching their tongues together, row after row of them. There is Spit with other girls too, Spit at different ages with his long hair and earring, tight T-shirts showing off his tatts, a cigarette packet tucked under the sleeve, holding one lit while he kisses the girls, girls I don't remember. I take the photos down and put them on the dresser.

Underneath there are more things on the mirror. A swimming certificate with Spit's name printed on it and a bronze stamp. A green ribbon with Third Place written in faded gold letters. I try to think but I can't remember Spit being in any sort of competition and I can't remember him learning how to swim neither. A photo falls to the floor and I pick it up and look at it and then I sit on Spit's bed and look at it some more.

It is a family photo, a proper portrait, one we had done in a studio just before Florrie went into hospital. And I remember now about those photos, remember getting them in the mail during my bender and opening the envelope and chucking them in the bin soon as I saw the first one. And it wasn't because I was angry or grieving or anything like that, but because I wasn't feeling anything, because I didn't care about nothing no more. And I didn't know that Spit had got hold of one of them. And I didn't know he had kept it all those years.

We all three of us had driven into the city, decided to make a day of it, and I had asked Florrie beforehand if she wanted to do something special while we were there. And I had meant whether she wanted to go to a restaurant or do some shopping in a department store, something like that. And Florrie said that what she'd really like would be to get a family photo taken, a proper one, because we'd never had one done before. And she must have rung up a photographer and booked it and she set out clothes for us that morning.

So we got the photos taken in the studio and we wandered around town for a bit and I bought Spit an ice-cream from a van and then we took Florrie to the hospital. I didn't know she wouldn't be coming out.

I sit down on the bed and look at the photo. There's Florrie sitting on a chair in her Sunday best, her hat with plastic flowers on it. Spit in front of her, just a boy in his school uniform, cross-legged on the floor, his legs brown and gangly, smiling for the camera. Both of them smiling for the camera. And there's me standing behind them, standing dead straight in a short-sleeved shirt and a tie, my hair in tight steely waves and my hard shearer's face and my jaw clenched because I am not smiling for the camera, I am the only one not smiling.

I look at the photo for a long while and I feel my heart go tight and I throw the photo onto the dresser with Spit's other stuff.

I change the sheets that have not been changed for a long time and open the window to air the room. Then I gather up the poster and all the other naked pictures and throw them into the outside bin. I put the photos and the other things from the dresser into a plastic bag which I leave on the hall table and I suppose I will give it to Spit when I see him.

There is still a bottle of brandy in the kitchen cupboard and I pour myself a full glass and sit down at the table. The brandy burns the ulcers in my mouth and throat and all the way down to my stomach and guts. I double over in pain. Drinking again I taste blood and bile. I tip the rest of the glass down the sink and drink some cold lemonade, but my insides still burn. The pain comes in waves and I go and sit hunched over on the toilet until I pass blood and mucus and start to feel all right.

Charlotte hasn't come back yet and it's getting so late I wonder if she will come back at all. I go into Spit's room again. The musty smell is leaving with the warm night air. I check that Spit's things are all out and notice the dust on the dresser and the bedhead. I wipe it off with my sleeve. I open the wardrobe doors and more dust billows out with fluttering dead moths, powder spilling from their wings. The cupboard is empty except for wire hangers and a studded khaki jacket. I take the jacket and turn it inside out, using it to wipe out the cupboard and the drawers, the floor runners and the windowsill.

I pass the hall table and stand looking at the plastic bag. Sitting back down on the bed I watch the clock for a while and then go back into the hall and take out the photo. I place it on the mantelpiece in the living room, standing it up against Florrie's crystal cake-stand. I look at it until the doorbell rings.

Charlotte has been crying. I take her suitcase into Spit's room.

It's not much, I say.

Charlotte grasps my arm and puts her head against my chest.

Try to get some sleep, I say.

She looks around the room, sniffing.

I can't, she says.

Try anyway, I say.

She nods, turning away from me.

Monday, Spit doesn't show. Charlotte is still in bed when I leave.

Wallace is giving the boys a hard time.

Call that drinking? he says. Sniff of the barmaid's apron, the both of you.

Yeah, but I didn't spew, says the talker.

At least he was trying, says Wallace.

After knockoff Wallace drives me home and we see Roy's ute parked outside Imperial.

Roy's drinking down Imperial now, I tell Wallace. Afternoons and all.

Wallace grins and pulls over to the kerb.

Roy isn't in the bar. Les thumbs in the direction of the lounge.

Wallace grins at me again.

Here we go, he says.

Wallace goes to the door and tries to look through the lettering on the frosted glass. His glasses knock against the pane and he swears, pushing them up. He squints and closes one eye, looking with the other, then turning away. He pushes his foot against the door, carefully, opening it a fraction and wincing when the hinges squeak. He looks in through the open crack and lets it close carefully.

He comes back shaking his head and goes over to the bar.

Nora Alister been here? he asks Les.

Les shakes his head.

She usually come down? Wallace asks. Afternoons? Mondays?

Les slides off his stool, hitches up his shorts and goes to the tap.

What are you having Wallace? he asks.

Wallace pulls some coins out of his pocket and chucks them on the bar towel. Les pours him a glass and Wallace points over at me. I come over and Les gives me a lemon squash and a dirty look.

Have a look at this, will you, says Wallace.

We take our drinks and go and look through the door of the lounge.

Roy is sitting drinking from a glass. He is alone at his table and alone in the lounge. His hat is hanging from the back of a chair and his hair is slicked back with Brylcreem. The cream shines on the skin underneath his thinning hair and over his bald patch. Wallace nudges me and points and I see that Roy has his pub shorts on. He sits looking out the window.