Read Online Fresh Fields by Peter Kocan - Free Book Online Page B

again and stops. By then Miss Australia’s flung herself away and is face down in the mud and the cow dung. That’s the last we saw. We went below the crest o’ the hill then.”
    Clem took a long last drag of his butt and flicked it away.
    â€œGosh,” said the youth, deeply impressed.
    â€œYeah,” said Clem. “As I say to Gladys: No matter what happens now, we’ve got that to remember.”
    â€œHow long ago was it?”
    â€œâ€™Bout a year. Jimson hasn’t been up since. He’s lookin’ to sell the place. Even if it hadn’t been for the other things, the tussock would’ve given him second thoughts about bein’ a Pitt Street grazier.”
    â€œWhat’s the tussock?”
    â€œSerrated tussock. It’s a noxious weed. This place is startin’ to be riddled with it. See that line o’ yellowy-green at the edge o’ the paddock over there?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat’s it. It spreads across an area and takes it over. Sheep won’t eat it. Nothin’ will eat it. Nothin’ will kill it either, except bein’ dug right outa the ground clump by clump. That’s another grudge Jimson’s got against Coles. He reckons Coles should’ve warned him about the tussock at the start, before it got a grip on the place.”
    â€œWhy didn’t he?”
    â€œI don’t think Coles knew much about it. It only really started spreadin’ down from the north a few years ago. Nobody round here was too worried. Same around Burracoola where Coles comes from. Anyway, Jimson was led to believe that Coles knew everythin’ there was to know about runnin’ a property and would turn this one into a showpiece. I bet he wouldn’t mind stranglin’ whoever it was told him that.”
    They went back under the shed and worked hard for another hour or so, but managed to shift only a tiny amount of earth. Clem was getting fed up. He declared that this “digging out” was a ratbag idea, and typical of boss cockies who wouldn’t know whether their arse was punched or bored.
    â€œAnother one of Coles’s Caterpillars,” the youth said.
    Clem was struck by that and chuckled.
    Gladys came across from the house to see how it was going and Clem told her what the youth had said. Gladys liked it too.
    â€œI’ve just been tellin’ him about that day,” Clem said.
    â€œPoor girl,” said Gladys, picturing the scene. “I felt sorry for her. Must’ve
ruined
her clothes.”
    The youth was starting to feel at ease with the Curreys.
    Gladys made them a nice lunch. Afterwards they tried to dig a little more, although their arms and knees and backs were aching so much it was difficult even to wield the implements. Then Clem slapped his thigh and declared he was jacking up.
    â€œI’ll tell Coles we did what we could but the stuff is just too hard to shift. And how does he expect anyone to get a proper whack at it when they’re bent double? And what’s the benefit of it? To have a few bags of fertiliser for the homestead garden?”
    He said this firmly but calmly, like someone who has thought it through and is ready to stick by his decision. It seemed to the youth that the digging out offended Clem because it went against some basic rule of economy of effort, and that in turn was bound up with the issue of people’s dignity. Poor people’s dignity, at least.
    They spent the afternoon repairing some broken bits of railing in the sheepyard fence. Clem went about it in the same calm and precise way he had of getting on or off a horse, or rolling a smoke. He seemed to quietly coax the tools to do what he wanted and to caress rather than manhandle the new bits of railing into place. It was the opposite of Mr. Coles’s way of barging and blustering at things.
    Gladys was hanging tea-towels on a line at the back of the dwelling and they flapped in a fresh breeze, and