It was three-thirty in the morning by the time Charlie crept up the big wide wooden stairs of the old homestead at Waters Meeting. In the bedroom, Rebecca had already passed out after devouring a large bottle of Baileys at Yazzie’s. His socked feet trod on the worn carpet that ran the length of the stairs. No matter how gently he trod, he still couldn’t avoid the creaks from the old steps. Even the solid oak door would not comply with the secrets he was trying to keep from his wife and it moaned loudly as he gently opened it. He quickly shed his clothes onto a pile on the floor and ducked into the bathroom.
Since Tom’s death, Bec had been a light sleeper so he made sure the door was shut before he switched on the light. In the bathroom, he cleaned his teeth roughly and swiped his body over with a sodden face washer and soap, hoping to erase the smell of Janine. He caught his image in the mirror. The beer belly, the brown hair receding at the sides. Lines around his once iridescent green eyes and dark circles he knew were from a stressed-out liver. He looked a mess. He felt a mess. As he gingerly opened the bathroom door, a shaft of light speared into the darkness of the bedroom.
There he was met with the sight of his wife lying spread-eagled on the bed. She was wearing a little white G-string and a floaty kind of see-through dress with white fur trim. But what was most unusual was that she was as golden brown as a potato wedge. All over. He crept closer and peered at her skin. In patches, it looked like she was splattered with water from a muddy puddle.
What on earth had she been doing? Something was not quite right. Andrew Travis came to his mind.
As he slid softly into bed beside her, he could smell the booze on her breath.
Phew, he thought. She was drunk and wouldn’t wake.
But next thing he knew Rebecca was reaching for him, rubbing her body against his and making sleepy noises of desire. He shut his eyes and sighed, knowing he’d have to oblige. How long had it been since she’d asked for it? Slowly, with a blank, shut-down feeling within him, Charlie began to caress his wife.
Only a few hours later that morning, as Rebecca dragged the bent and rusted gate open, she cursed her lack of sleep and the fact that none of the gates on Waters Meeting swung easily. She stooped and dragged a bleached limb that had fallen from the nearby stone-dead gum onto the track to the shearing shed. How many times had she said to Charlie they should fell the tree? It was dangerous. As she got back into the vehicle, she cursed her hangover and the chorus of whingeing from a very disgruntled Ben and Archie in the back seat. They were still sleepy and still crapped-off about being dropped at Mrs Newton’s last night.
Rebecca gunned the Toyota four-wheel drive wagon towards the corrugated-iron and timber shearing shed that sat on a flat-top knoll above the river. Knowing she was already pushed for time, she hastily grabbed the smoko basket from the front passenger seat, almost tripping over Charlie’s feathery sheepdog, Stripes. The tri-colour collie had been lured from the yards by the enticing scent of hot sausage rolls and party pies and was now wagging his tail frantically, delighted to see both Rebecca and the food. But Rebecca was in no mood for Stripes’s enthusiastic welcome.
‘Git out of it, Stripes!’ she said, just as she stepped in a fresh pile of sheep manure in her good town cowgirl boots.
She glanced up and saw Charlie’s broken-down Hilux, still with the tow rope attached to one of the crutching plant crew’s cars like a tethered horse. Phew, she thought. Charlie must’ve called the boys to pick it up on the way. That was one less job on her lengthy to-do list. The sight of the vehicle prompted memories of her bizarre night. Sol and Yazzie Stanton flashed into her mind. What a weird night. What a weird couple.
She looked down at her splotchy tan and grimaced.
‘Mum!’ called Ben from his booster seat. ‘Can I get out? Pleeease!’
Rebecca shut her eyes and clenched her teeth. ‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ll never get you back in and we have to get to the health clinic! We’re late as it is.’
‘Oh, but Muuum! I want to see the sheep machine! Daddy said I could.’
Ben’s little brother, Archie, joined in. ‘Mummy! Get out? Pleeeease!’
‘No! Enough of the begging! I don’t care what Daddy says. He never has to get you anywhere on time! Plus Daddy insists on using nasty chemicals on the sheep. I don’t want you near the sprays,’ she said as she slammed the door, barged past Stripes and jogged with the basket over to the shearing-shed yards.
As she rounded the side of the galvanised-iron shed, Rebecca baulked at the intensity of the work that met her seedy senses. The contractor and his crew’s team of barking dogs were noisily pushing Merino ewes up and into a mobile shearing plant. A diesel generator was adding to the din. Each sheep was unceremoniously tipped upside down on her back into a metal crate for the men to treat. Kelvin the contractor and his workmen stood on the trailer platform, wielding their handpieces through the wool around the startled faces of the ewes, then jabbing through the dags on their rear ends.
When she saw the pile of dirty wool crutchings accumulating in the bins, Rebecca felt another wave of disappointment and frustration. She’d asked Charlie not to put the ewes on the rich monoculture diet of oats, which messed with their digestion and led to shitty dags around their bums. She’d reminded him the animals needed mostly dry feed to fill their gut, with just a bit of green pick.
It would soon be joining time, on Anzac Day, later than most places due to the altitude of Waters Meeting, though Charlie never seemed to manage to meet even that deadline, putting the rams in too late, thereby pushing lambing out too late and missing the feed burst in spring.
‘If you don’t crutch them before joining,’ Rebecca had yelled at him one recent Sunday afternoon, ‘the bloody rams won’t be able to get their dicks past the shit!’
Charlie had simply looked up at her with annoyance from his football viewing, feet propped up on a stool, a row of empty stubbies beside the chair. He had waited until a goal was kicked and the TV flicked to an ad break, then he’d turned to her. ‘Not only are you a screaming banshee in front of the kids, but you’ve got a filthy mouth,’ he’d said to her mildly. He swigged his beer, then turned up the volume some more. Rebecca had quietly taken herself off into the bedroom to cry and fold washing.
She looked down to the river flats now. They seemed exhausted to her. Bare soil that she knew would sprout weeds in between what was left of the oats. She thought of the luscious vibrant feel of the farms she’d visited with Andrew. There, the farmers had waited for the perennial plants to become dormant as they did at certain times of the year. Then when they had grazed the plants down, they had sown the oats directly into the soil, without the need for a single pass of a chemical spray unit or a plough. The farms looked untidy with the long dry grasses and vast variety of plant species, yet as Andrew explained, the grass was simply hay left standing for the animals. The array of plant species offered the animals a banquet of healthy options. She had seen first hand on those farms how the stock thrived. When she suggested to Charlie that they try the same so the animals could self-medicate on herbs, forbs, annuals and perennials, he’d looked at her as though she’d dropped her guts in front of the Queen.
Couldn’t he see today that the ewes looked terrible, weighted down with dags from the too rich, too lush oat crop?
Rebecca noted the shorn strips of dull green wool that ran up the backs of many of the ewes. They had been flystruck and maggots had taken hold, eating their flesh away. Charlie’s jetting looked to be way too late.
Despite that, he seemed happy with himself, keeping the flow of the wigged and crutched ewes moving through the jet that sprayed anti-fly mix over their bodies. The sheep packed tightly onto the trailer as the frantic commotion of men, dogs, metal yard gates clanging and machinery buzzing rolled