While I live

CHAPTER 8

I’ve never felt so young and inadequate as when I sat in the bank manager’s office the next day. It was lunchtime at school and I’d belted down to the bank for this appointment. I was meant to be meeting Mr Yannos but he hadn’t turned up. Much as I liked Homer’s dad I had to admit he wasn’t the most reliable person in the world. So suddenly I found myself in the manager’s office having to explain why she should lend me a little matter of another hundred grand or so. For the first few minutes I could hardly get my breath to ask for anything except a glass of water but somehow my desperation to keep the farm got my tongue working enough to stammer out a few words. And once I started the words flowed a bit better.

I already owed the bank a breathtaking gobsmacking heartburning $480 000. Nearly half a million. But as I said to her, that was safe for the bank, because of the mortgages over the farm and the cars and machinery. Plus I had the cattle, which were now up to ninety-six head with the new calves. Before they’d calved, Mr Sayle had valued them at $180 000, but if I kept the calves a couple of years they’d be worth another $100 000 or so at current rates, and provided the market held up. So far it had risen like a ruckman taking a speccie.

I hadn’t been game to go and see Mr Sayle or even to ring him, but I’d written him a quick letter to tell him what I was going to do. I hadn’t heard back yet. I think lawyers were so overworked as a result of the war that they paid most of their attention to the urgent stuff.

‘So what do you want to do with the extra money?’ the manager asked.

‘Buy more stock,’ I said promptly. ‘I need to build up the herd, in quality and quantity. These cows and steers were pretty poor when my father bought them, but they’re putting on some condition. When Dad got them there was nothing else available. But there’s some better stock coming onto the market now. I’d love to get one of these New Zealand bulls that they’re shipping over but I don’t know if I could afford them. They’ll be fetching top dollar. But even if I miss out on them, I think I could get a decent bull from one of the studs that wasn’t so badly affected by the war, and then another fifty or so cows.’

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t look impressed. She sat back in her chair and started ticking off points on her fingers. She even spoke in point form. I don’t think I’d ever met anyone who did that. She seemed to be talking to the wall, not to me. ‘One, you’re exceptionally young for such obligations. Underage to be signing contracts — guardian would have to guarantee it. Which reminds me, guardian also must guarantee existing loan. And he’s not here now. Not good.’

She got up and stood looking out of the window, hands behind her back.

‘Two, cattle market, unreliable at best of times. These are hardly the best of times. Three, cattle highly susceptible. Disease, bushfire, drought, all could take them out.’

She didn’t seem to notice that she’d just rhymed. I gave a little grin but I was getting worried about the fate of my loan.

‘Four, lack of experience in running operation like this. Five, no diversification. All cattle operation. Eggs in one basket. Hmm.’

Before I could start sticking up for myself she turned around, came back to the desk, sat down, took a pen from her pocket, and twirled it in her fingers. Now she looked at the ceiling.

‘On the other hand, as you say, loans quite well secured. Repayments uncertain at best. Don’t know how much more the bank wants to tie up in this property.’

I broke in, urgently. ‘You know what everyone says about farming. Get big or get out. Ninety-six head means I’ll always be on the borderline. You might as well close me down now as leave me on ninety-six head. We have good pasture, good paddocks. We’ve had good rainfall the last month. I could carry six hundred head through summer if I could afford them.’

She sat there staring. It was the first time she’d looked right at me. Finally she said, ‘You know, loans depend on the borrower more than anything. More than security, more than paper, more than forecasts, more than promises.’

At that moment her phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment. Then she said to me, ‘Your guardian is here.’

I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that he wasn’t officially technically my guardian quite just yet. But I was massively relieved to hear that Mr Yannos had finally arrived. I’ll never know whether the manager was about to give me my loan or not, but when Mr Yannos agreed that he would guarantee it she went ahead and got the papers and I had to sit there and watch Mr Yannos put his farm and his life on the line for me. I didn’t like seeing him do it, but God I was grateful. People talk so casually about friendship, as though it’s something you can pick up at the 7-Eleven like a Slush Puppy or a hot dog. But what Mr Yannos offered was the kind of friendship that you can only buy with invisible coins. I used to think that joining our farm with theirs would be a good idea, and maybe our parents would like Homer and me to get married just to create a super-farm. But despite Homer’s jokes, that wasn’t in Mr Yannos’ mind. He did it for my mum and dad and he did it for me and he did it because of the war and most of all he did it because he was a good human being.

In the bus on the way home I finished the book I’d borrowed from Homer, The Scarlet Pimpernel. I really liked it! For an old book it was pretty cool. It is about a group of Englishmen who rescue prisoners from the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the nickname their leader uses, so he can stay anonymous. Like Superman is really Clark Kent, although I’ve never quite figured out why Superman has to hold down a second job as a reporter anyway. Maybe he needed the money.

The Scarlet Pimpernel’s real name is Sir Percy Blakeney and no-one suspects him because he’s the stupidest guy in Britain. Even his wife doesn’t suspect him. But he’s really diabolically clever. He uses disguises and quick thinking to stay out of the clutches of the enemy.

I couldn’t help recognising similarities to Homer in the description of the Pimpernel. But I wasn’t sure how far I could take it. The day my parents died, the day Homer and Gavin and I had been hiking up the spur, I’d have been willing to bet the whole farm and the cattle that Homer wasn’t involved in any secret organisation or border raids. I just couldn’t credit that he’d be in something like that without telling me, without at least dropping a lot of hints.

Since then, yes, I could imagine that he might be getting involved in something, but not as the leader. He wouldn’t have been able to set up a whole network that quickly. It was very confusing.

I stopped thinking about it though when I got home and went to check the cattle. Oh God. The things that can go wrong on a farm. As soon as I saw the trampled fence near the south-west corner I knew there could be big problems. I raced down the hill, my heart drumming. Soon I was through the break, into the wetlands, and in among the first of the mob. They gazed at me in fascination, the way cattle do, and started crowding around. I ran on. A number of them were standing in the water and I couldn’t tell yet whether some were caught or not. But there were at least four that looked to be in trouble.

I made myself stop and try to think what to do for the best. Marmie was still too young and untrained to be much use. I could try on my own to move the unbogged cattle back into their paddock but the mob was so scattered I wasn’t sure I could do it. These guys were still pretty feral, and the mothers with calves wouldn’t like me messing with them. They formed the bulk of the mob. I might end up with them scattered between heaven and earth, and half of them stuck.

Twenty or more had followed me down the hill and were now a lot closer to the water. In the time it took me to go back to the house and get Gavin we could end up with a major disaster. But I had no choice. I did a bit of yelling and huzzaing to frighten away as many as I could, then ran up the slope and grabbed the bike.

They’re always talking about farm accidents and farm fatalities, and you read some of the stories about how people get hurt or killed on farms, and you think ‘How stupid of them’, but you forget how when there’s a crisis you go like stink and forget about safety. I just jumped on the Honda and took off. Halfway home I saw a ditch that had somehow dropped out of my consciousness. I hit the hand brake and the foot brake with everything I had but I must have been doing about eighty and the next thing I’m flying through the air and smacking the ground hard enough to rattle every bone in my body.

I’d hardly stopped rolling before I was up and running back to the bike. Between my chronically bad knee and the ache in my calf from a bullet wound during the war, plus all the new pains I’d now added, I wasn’t running too fast.

Despite that I picked up the bike and got it going and was away again inside thirty seconds. But in the next few minutes I started to really hurt. I felt jarred and bruised and shaken and I had dust all down my left-hand side. I pulled up outside the house and staggered in, with only my right-hand side working properly.

Gavin was watching TV but his radar was in good working order. One look at me and he was out of his seat and following me to the shed.

In the machinery shed, as we threw a winch and ropes and chains into the back of the ute, I told him the situation. ‘The cattle got out of the paddock and some of them are bogged in the lagoon.’

Marmie was leaping around barking with excitement so I chucked her in the cab of the ute as well. Gavin got in from the other side and away we went.

This time I drove a bit more carefully, but not much. I was relieved to see when we got there that the cattle had spread out and were grazing peacefully again. But there were four bogged, two of them cows. Their calves were running backwards and forwards along the edge of the lagoon making that pitiful yearning noise that calves are so good at doing.

Trying not to stir up the other cattle we moved as many as we could back into the paddock. I did use Marmie for this. Once she was in the right place she did OK. In other words if I put her behind the mob and encouraged her to fetch them up and to let out a nice little bark once in a while she was quite effective. They say a good dog is worth three men. Ignoring how sexist that is, I’d say Marmie was worth as much as Gavin and me, this time anyway.

There were other times when she was as useful as a stuffed olive.

I left Gavin to put the fence back up as well as he could. I told him to tie Marmie to it when he was done; she would bark her little head off at any cattle who came within twenty-five metres. While he was doing that I ran down to the lagoon.

It was a cold afternoon and already the light wasn’t good. I dreaded going into the water but I didn’t have a choice. I screwed up my face and waded in with the rope. I thought I’d deal with the cows first, but I realised as I got closer that one of them was in deep mud and was stuck more firmly than the other three. So I thought I’d try to get the other cow, and the two steers, and then worry about the worst cow.

I ploughed my way through the mud and water, making nice encouraging noises as the first cow eyed me suspiciously. You say such ridiculous things in situations like that, because you know no-one’s listening. ‘Who’s a pretty girl then? Having a mudpack to make you look even lovelier? Hey, have I got a bull in the next paddock who’d be hot for you. Yeah, baby.’

I think it must have been the promise of the blind date with the bull that did it, because she stayed quiet and let me slip the rope around her. Then I reversed out, up the hill to the ute. I would have preferred the tractor but there hadn’t been time to get it. The ute was a four wheel drive with a limited slip diff so I figured it’d be up to a job like this.

I looped the rope round the towbar and took off at eighty k’s an hour. No, just kidding. But I was thinking of the ad on TV where the farmer pulls the cow’s head off. I eased the ute up the hill, checking the rear vision mirror and wishing Gavin was back already so he could give me a few signals. But everything went OK. The cow popped out and started dragging her weary body to the edge of the lagoon. Her calf came towards her at the gallop.

I got the rope off her and left them to it. I would have liked to put them back in the paddock but there wasn’t time. I had to hope she’d have the good sense not to bog herself again, although using ‘cow’ and ‘good sense’ in the same sentence is probably a bad idea.

I knew it’d be dark soon so I splashed in and roped up the first of the steers. As I sloshed back to the ute Gavin reappeared. I was extremely pleased to see him. Now all I had to do was watch his signals as I got the ute into gear and inched it forwards. Again we didn’t have any problems. Gavin gave me the thumbs-up, with a big grin, and I was able to leave the ute and go back to the lagoon.

On one side of me was the calf frantically guzzling at the mother we’d pulled out, on the other side was a muddy steer shaking himself and looking pissed. But already he was grabbing huge mouthfuls of grass, tearing it off as fast as he could chew. That was a good sight: food can work miracles for animals in poor condition, giving them new energy. And these beasts could have been in the swamp all day while I was at school. In the cold water, weakened by their struggles to get free, they would have used up energy fast.

The second steer was not so easy. I knew this guy: he was a bad-tempered evil-minded mongrel. I had names for some of the cattle, even though they say you should never give names to animals you’re going to sell for slaughter, because you bond with them too much. This one I’d called Major Harvey, after a man who’d tried to kill me during the war, so I was never going to bond with him.

As soon as I got close he started. Tossing his head and showing the whites of his eyes, snorting. If he could have he would have pawed the ground and taken a few steps towards me, in the charming friendly way that he had. Reminding myself that even if he was unpleasant and bad-mannered he was still worth at least a thousand dollars, I tried to get the rope on him. Soon though I was wishing he had less energy, were weaker, because I realised it was just too dangerous. I had to think of another strategy.

I backed off and used a bit of mime and a bit of lip-reading to ask Gavin to get me some hay. In the meantime I headed over to the last cow.

She at least wasn’t interested in attacking me. She was rapidly losing interest in everything, even life. The trouble with her was that she was deep in mud, so deep I knew I could never get the rope under her and a rope around her head wouldn’t be enough. I had to be careful I didn’t get caught too. Fifty years ago an old lady on a farm in the Holloway Valley had died when she got bogged doing this.

The cow was shivering, with cold and distress. I was starting to shiver myself. As the sun sunk away and the shadows fell across the lagoon the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in a moment. I got out of the water again and waited for Gavin. I jumped around and did a bit of jogging and waved my arms and then had the bright idea of running the two beasts I’d got out, with the calf, up the hill to get them further out of the way and closer to their paddock. It helped warm me up a bit and achieved something as well.

I was almost sorry when Gavin came back because I knew it meant I had to go in the water again. The only consolation was that it meant Gavin had to go in too. He didn’t even blink though when I told him what I wanted, just marched down to the water’s edge and started on in. ‘By God,’ I thought, following him, ‘you’re not bad sometimes.’

Being so short he had a problem getting to Major Harvey and at the same time keeping the hay dry. He was virtually swimming when he was only halfway there. I could see that wasn’t going to work. I got him to come out again and went up to the ute and got the smaller tarp and we put the hay on that. Then with Gavin pulling it and me following and pushing, we set off again.

We had the steer’s interest now. It never fails to amaze me how cattle love hay. They’ll do anything for it. To them, hay is like Neapolitan ice-cream, mangoes, Cherry Ripes, all of the above.

Major Harvey eyed it greedily, at the same time as he eyed me suspiciously. ‘Meals on wheels,’ I said to him as we approached. ‘Hay to take away. What about a tip? Don’t fool in the pool? I can’t believe we have to go to all this trouble just to save your miserable life.’

He took a greedy grab at the hay as soon as Gavin got close enough to swing it around in front of him. I waited till he was on his second mouthful, then, just as he was finishing, got the rope onto him.

After that it was easy but we’d wasted another half an hour and it was getting seriously dark and seriously cold. I was shivering like crazy but there was nothing else for it but to go in again.

The blackness of the water made it look evil. I took half a biscuit of hay with me, to see if she was interested. Although her head wasn’t far out of the water she wrenched a good bunch of it from my hand and munched it down. That was encouraging. But I had the feeling she was there for the night. I couldn’t see any way to get her out. The hay should give her a bit of strength but I was worried she would get too tired to keep her head out of the water, and she’d drown.

I waded back to the bank. I started thinking almost longingly of the rifles in the ute. A swift flash in her brain, no time even to feel anything, and then the darkness. It would be kinder to finish her off, and most farmers would have been reaching for a gun by now. We’d done all we could. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours the mud was going to seep into her mouth as her head dropped, and her mouth would fill with water, and then her lungs, and she’d disappear forever. The rifle was the way to go.

Instead we made yet another trip to the house. Squelching into the ute we drove back and got the old table from the shearing shed kitchen. At the same time I filled a few five-gallon buckets with hot water.

When Gavin realised I was going into the lagoon again he suddenly starting bossing me around. I’d seen him do it with other people before, but never with me. It’s true I was shivering uncontrollably. He told me to go in and dry off and change clothes. ‘It’s a waste of time,’ I said. ‘More laundry, and for no good reason.’

‘You do it,’ he said, using both his arms to push me away from the ute.

‘But we’ve got to get back.’

‘The cow can wait.’

Honestly, it was like having a mother again. But I did feel a bit better when I came back out dry and warmer.

I floated the table out to the cow and jammed it in the mud and got it under her head while Gavin shone a spotlight from the bank. It looked like it might work but I still didn’t know if she’d die of hypothermia during the night. Poor thing. I gave her a hug then went and got the first bucket and poured that around her, to give her a few minutes warmth. Then backwards and forwards with the other two buckets.

I did the same routine with the buckets three more times during the night, without waking Gavin. Pulling on wet clothes is absolutely and totally my worst favourite thing in the world, but I knew if I wore dry stuff every time, I’d break all records for laundry.

I took her down a biscuit of hay each time, but I still didn’t see a way to get her out. I tried to think laterally. Get a bulldozer and dig a trench to her? Get a front-end loader and lift her up in it? Wiggle my nose and say a magic spell?

The last time I went out, at three in the morning, under a clear cold sky, she was sinking, and not just literally. They say that three in the morning is when a lot of creatures, including humans, are at their lowest ebb. It’s when hospitals have the most deaths. But there wasn’t anything else I could do for her.

Or was there? I had set the alarm for six o’clock, because I thought our best chance would be at first light. Gavin, yawning and grumbling and about a quarter awake, came with me. I had a plan but it wasn’t much of one. I chucked another biscuit of hay into the back of the ute, got in, started it up and drove forward, towards the first gate that would take us to the lagoon.

And suddenly, to Gavin’s shock, I turned hard left. Because now I did have an idea. I don’t know where it came from and even as we reached the road I was trying to figure out how it might work, but, totally stupid though it was, I sensed it might give us a chance.

Only ten minutes down the road were the Anlezarks. Jamie went to Wirrawee High School. Each morning he caught the same bus as Gavin and me. He was older than me. He was one of the best cricketers in the district. He had a girlfriend called Natalie. He had the personality of a cane toad out of mating season. And he had more drugs than the rest of Wirrawee put together.

Mr Anlezark just about swallowed his toothbrush when he opened the door and found it was me.

‘Ellie, what’s wrong?’ he asked, but it was hard to understand him with his mouth full of Colgate.

‘Is Jamie home?’

‘Well, yes, but it’s so… I think he’s still in bed.’

‘Do you mind if I see him? It’s only for a second. Project for school. It’s important, otherwise I wouldn’t bother you at such an early time.’

I was already going up the stairs, hopeful that if I kept talking I wouldn’t give him a chance to stop me.

Jamie’s room smelt like he’d drenched it in cologne that he’d picked up for $1.99 a litre. I hadn’t met Natalie but I don’t think she had a lot of class.

If he hadn’t been awake before I burst in he was wide awake a moment later.

‘Ellie? What the hell is this?’

The shock sent his voice so high that it was like puberty had never happened.

I got down close to his ear, though it wasn’t pleasant. I still hadn’t had breakfast. I could feel my stomach going murky.

‘Jamie, I want a truckload of those little pills you’ve been telling me about for so long.’

‘Are you crazy?’ His voice had gone hoarse and husky now. ‘You come here at six thirty… my parents are right downstairs. What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing to what I’ll tell them if you don’t give me a couple of dozen tabbies.’

‘You are crazy. I don’t even have anything. You are just plain crazy. Get the hell out of here.’

‘Not without something very stimulating. Something wild.’

There was a knocking on the door. I heard Mrs Anlezark’s nervous voice. ‘Ellie! Are you OK? Can I help you?’

‘I’ll only be a couple of mo’s, Mrs Anlezark. I just need a bit of help with something.’

Jamie got out of bed, kicking the doona aside, muttering and cursing and glaring, then stumbling over his cricket bag. He threw open his wardrobe and groped around at the back of the top shelf. He chucked a small plastic bag at me, but because it was so light I had to go halfway towards him to pick it up. There seemed to be about twenty green pills in it.

‘Here. You owe me a thousand bucks. Now get out.’

I got out, feeling a laugh rising inside me. At six o’clock this morning, if anyone had told me I’d be inside Jamie Anlezark’s bedroom…

I still don’t know what Jamie’s parents thought. I jumped down the stairs three at a time, yelled ‘Thanks’ to both of them as they stood in the kitchen door and was away before they could recover.

Gavin, still sitting in the ute, and getting cold, made a face at me. ‘What?’

‘You’ll see.’

I tore back to the lagoon, hoping desperately that the cow wasn’t under the water and blowing bubbles. Or worse, not blowing bubbles. It seemed to take an age for Gavin to get out of the ute and open each gate. At one point I blasted the horn to make him hurry, and of course he heard it in the clear morning air, and scowled at me. He recognised the sound all right.

There she was, tired eyes barely open, head half off the kitchen table. She only had minutes left to go. I waded into the lagoon, giving a yell as the cold water bit into me again. I struggled out there to her. ‘This is bloody crazy,’ I thought, opening the little plastic bag. I tipped the tablets into my hand. There were only twelve. I got her mouth open and pushed them down her throat. She offered no resistance. ‘Wish I’d asked him how long these take to work,’ I thought. I offered her the biscuit of hay as well but she’d given up on food now. There was nothing more I could do in the lagoon itself. I backed away, watching with fascination and hope. Would anything happen?

My original plan had been to use the calf to motivate the cow, and I thought I should still do that. We got a lasso on him and dragged him around till he was as close as possible to his mum. I was still watching her to see if there was any reaction. I felt that something had to happen, sooner or later. Surely she couldn’t swallow all that stuff and not be affected? Were cows so different to humans?

I turned away from her to get the other rope, to help drag her out. Gavin suddenly pulled at my arm. He pointed. There was the cow, shaking her head, then a moment later tossing her head backwards and forwards. She was certainly coming to life but she didn’t look too happy. Maybe she was hallucinating little green men or little green bulls.

Now was our chance. I whacked the calf hard on the nose a couple of times. I’m not sure if any of the agriculture manuals would have advised this, but it was all I could think of. They probably wouldn’t have advised using Ecstasy either.

Well, the calf played his part. He set up a wailing and a hollering that would have put a baby with a burnt bum to shame. I looked around anxiously at the cow, just in time to see her rise up in a wild eruption out of the mud. She came floundering towards us, her white eyes looking murderous. Smelly bucket-loads of mud slid from her flanks, the water splashed around her, she mooed fit to burst, and I had the feeling she’d forgotten all the favours I’d done her during the night. Drugs or no drugs, she still wanted to look after her kid.

I grinned at Gavin. He was wide awake now. We had about two and a half seconds to get the lasso off the calf before we were butted into a weekend in late September. It was a close thing too, as the more desperately I tried to get it off the more I fumbled it. In the end I dragged it clear when she was two steps away. Gavin and I ran like hell, laughing hysterically. We slipped on the frosty grass, and rolled down the hill together, still laughing.

For the first time since the shootings I felt good. I had no idea what the long-term effects on the cow would be. Maybe I’d poisoned her so badly that she’d be dead by lunchtime. Maybe her calf would get a dose of Ecstasy for himself by feeding at her udder. Maybe when she eventually went to the Great Slaughterhouse in Stratton a hundred people would take a wild trip by eating steak and sausages carved from her side. But for the time being, a cow that should have been dead was alive. Alive and out of the swamp.

The shivers were getting worse, so we didn’t spend much time on the cold ground. The cow was bucking around and looking nervous and more than half crazy. She was spooking her calf too. But she was eating from time to time, and the calf had managed to get one good long suck.

There was nothing more we could do for either of them at the moment. I wouldn’t dare tell a vet what I’d done as we’d have the inspectors on the doorstep in five minutes and be struck off for a hundred years. So we pushed the cow and calf back into the paddock, put the fence up again, and drove home in a hurry. The bus wasn’t going to wait for us.

I didn’t learn much in school that day. I reckon I fell asleep in half a dozen different lessons. And I only had half a dozen classes. Jess elbowed me awake a few times, then she gave up. At least Bronte lent me her History notes, and warned me about the Legal Studies test. That’s what I call friendship.