Fifty Bales of Hay (9 page)

‘Thanks for visiting my brother in hospital last week,’ the spotty St John volunteer said, her eyes illuminated with an obvious display of girlie crush.

‘My pleasure. He’s a cute kid. I hope he’s feelin’ better.’ Randy turned to look at Anne. ‘So, they tell me you’re the lass from the uni, come to grill me?’

‘I…?’ Anne began, embarrassed to be found in an ambulance by her interviewee. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, just as the St John man stepped forward with a rehydration drink for her.

‘Sit up slowly, young lady. We don’t want you cracking your scone if you faint again.’

Randy surveyed her from behind his clown make-up and shook his head. ‘No point you interviewing me in your present state. You’d better come back to my camp. Have a bit of a rest. Thank you, Darlene, thank you, Frank. I can take the little lady from here.’

A while later Anne found herself with a thumping headache at Randy’s ‘camp’, which was an extremely long horse trailer he called a Gooseneck. Inside were angled bays for the horses, where a big palomino stood munching on hay. Randy had sat her in a deck chair and showed her where he cooked, ate, slept and showered, which was basically in the back of the truck with the horses.

‘It’s charming,’ she said sarcastically. ‘And why isn’t this poor horse out in the yards with the others? Why is he shut in here?’ Anne turned to look at the strangely dressed man before her. It was hard to tell his age through the face paint. It was hard to tell his body shape. He had protective gear under his shirt and just looked boxy and square.

‘Mostly coz he likes it in here with me. We’re pretty good mates and because he’s a bull.’

‘A bull? But he’s a horse,’ Anne said.

Randy laughed. ‘I mean he’s a bull. He’s a stallion,’ he said. ‘You want to know about male aggression, little lady? He’ll kill another male that gets between him and his girls.’

Anne looked at the placid horse with the golden mane that looked as if it belonged in a Disney video. ‘Really?’

‘Ma’am, with all due respect, you don’t know much about animals and men, do ya?’

Anne felt herself stiffen. She was dux of her year last year at uni and had scored distinctions right the way through this semester. And she had a boyfriend.

She was about to answer when Randy, who was chewing on the end of a bit of hay, said, ‘Why do you think we castrate most of the male animals in our farming systems? It’s to keep order. That many males and all that testosterone would be too hard to handle. If you had seen them bulls out there today, you would’ve realised that running one thousand of those boys in one herd together would create all kinds of hell-raising. That’s kinda what’s happened to humans on planet Earth. There are a lot of males out there should never been bred, causing wars and pollution and a whole world of trouble. In farming, we leave the nuts in the best of them, the calm ones, the handsome ones, the most productive ones. You cut the nuts out of the rest, because that way you have order and a nice line of animals. I reckon there’d be plenty of women like to do the same to humanity. No use it being a “man’s
world” when the men ain’t payin’ attention to what the women want.’

Anne tried to take in what he was saying. Her head was still thumping.

‘Way you come across in the world, ma’am, I reckon you’d like to castrate the aggressive, useless males and select the ones you women want and need for breeding.’

‘Excuse me? No! I…’ Anne said, her cheeks flaming red with offence.

‘Of course, I can say that confidently, about the castration, because I know the women would keep me as a bull. Not many women wouldn’t want babies outta me.’

Anne’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. The arrogance of the man! ‘Why … you…!’

She was about to stand up, but Randy had already ducked out of the Gooseneck. When he returned, he handed her a packet of painkillers and a pannikin of what smelled like rum.

‘Wash it down with that and it’ll all seem better, darlin’. And you do know, I’m teasin’ ya. You look like you could do with a bellyachin’ laugh.’

‘Don’t you darlin’ me,’ Anne said. ‘It’s patronising.’

‘Patronising? Or flatterising?’ he said with his clownish grin. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a shower. I’m stiff, I’m sore, I’m busted and I’m dusted. This make-up is annoying the hollerin’ hell outta me.’ And with that, the rodeo clown began to take off his runners and proceeded to undress right there in front of Anne.

‘I … You … Um, excuse me?’ she stammered.

He stopped unbuttoning his shirt and looked at her. Anne could see vibrant blue pupils ringed with grey.

‘Well, you are in my shower room. You never seen a man’s body before? You can sit outside, but the mozzies’ll eat you this time of evening. I suggest you stay right there with your headache and look away, young lady. Or you’re welcome to jump right in and join me. It’s river water pumped from just outside. Makes your hair nice and soft. Might wash away your headache and your sins.’

‘Sins?’ She rolled her eyes again. This man was frustrating! Arrogant, aggressive and frustrating!

But Anne found she couldn’t help sneaking glances as he dropped the denim clown shorts, pulled off the skins and stood just in his shirt, which he had unbuttoned and was now dropping to the floor. The Velcro of his protective vest made loud ripping noises as he peeled it from his body and then slipped off his singlet. Unashamedly he dropped his underpants, turning to the shower bay that was right there in the back of the Gooseneck alongside the small stove and a pile of horse gear and Anne’s chair.

Anne’s mouth dropped when she saw his male perfection from behind. The broad shoulders were so brown and muscled that as he reached for the taps she could see the mechanics of his divine body beneath his skin. The way his waist tapered into narrow white buttocks that topped muscled thighs, sculpted as perfectly as the statue of David. Across his back and his side were red welts and bruising. Along his knee she saw a deep red scar that ran in an arc down his shin.

‘Why do you do it to your body? Why do rodeo?’

‘Why do people base jump?’ he said, scrubbing soap onto his chest. ‘Why do people race cars? Or surf giant waves?’

‘Males seeking mindless adrenaline, through egotistical risk-taking,’ she answered.

‘Not only males.
You
take risks.’

‘I do not.’

‘Why do you risk your life taking them dangerous party drugs? Why do you jeopardise that tiny little body of yours that’s no bigger than a widget and your busy brain that’s too noisy to think straight?’

She sat up, surprised at his question, insulted by his comments.

He ducked under the spray of the shower and began to soap his legs, turning his head to her. Waiting for an answer. She saw the colours of his clown face run in rivulets down his tanned body.

‘How do you know I take drugs?’

He began to scrub his face with a flannel, and she watched his shoulder blades move beneath his smooth skin.

‘Your eyes are dulled by something, and it isn’t the hardship of life. You’re as spoiled as Paris Hilton. Nope. You take them drugs. I can read it in your energy. You ain’t balanced.’

‘Oh, great. Judged by a clown. What would you know about my energy?’

‘It’s aggressive for one thing,’ he said in his southern drawl. ‘And your energy is all prickly like.’

‘Are you trying to talk metaphysics with me?’ she said, flabbergasted by this strange conversation she was having with a naked rodeo clown.

‘Would it surprise you if I was? How else does a rodeo protection athlete do his job? We have to know a bit of kinesiology, a bit of quantum physics, a bit of ethology so we can read the bull. How else do we keep ourselves and the bull rider alive unless by knowledge of energetics and our own intuition so we can keep two steps ahead of the bull? And on the ranch, how else does a cowboy gauge the movement of a herd of cattle or the inner ways, the emotions, of his horse? It’s all energetics. With some critters, the softer you are, the more powerful you are.’

‘Then why torment those poor bulls and horses?’

‘Torment! Those animals are bred for it, trained for it, fed and conditioned for it. They are athletes too. They have long lives, long careers and they love it. You can’t make a bull buck, same as you can’t make a horse buck. You’ve no doubt heard the expression that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. It’s the same with this game. If they don’t want to do it, they just don’t do it. But the animals that do want to do it, they’re chasin’ the same rush as us. We’re a team, them animals and us.’

‘I don’t need to hear your pro-rodeo spiel,’ she said, realising she’d been staring at his buttocks and back for a long time. She took another big slug of rum. ‘I’m just here to ask questions for my assignment.’

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Randy said, turning to face her as the water streamed over his toned body. ‘I thought I could’ve
changed your mind about aggression in men. Most of us cowboys are gentle types. Gentle with horses, gentle with women. Family men.’

When Anne saw his face for the first time clean of make-up, she almost fainted again. He was so good-looking, so beautiful, it felt to Anne as if she had looked into the eyes of a god. Cleaned of the face paint, Randy had looks that stole hearts. His skin was smooth and tanned, his jet-black hair framed a manly square-jawed face, his teeth were white and perfect and his sensuous mouth was now moving into a slowly evolving grin.

‘I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Boxright, but if you stay at university too long, you’ll forget about real life. And you may miss your calling as a mother.’

‘Excuse me!’ she said, red-faced, and angry yet again at this arrogant, yet incredibly delectable, man before her.

‘You use this too much,’ Randy said, tapping his temple with an index finger. ‘When you don’t get around animals much, lots of folk forget
they
are animals. You are an animal, and you gotta go with your instincts as the female of the species, not against them.’

‘My instinct is not to have children yet … I’ve got a whole…’

‘Would your instinct be to hop into this shower with me, as an animal, say, not as a woman, a student and a feminist? As an animal?’

‘No, it certainly would not!’ she said.

‘That’s a shame. You might only have fifty eggs to lay.’

‘Pardon? Fifty eggs to lay?’

‘That’s all you might have left inside there.’ He gestured to her stomach region. ‘So if I were you, I’d be gettin’ in touch with your animal instincts. Can you get me a beer, by the way? I wanna wash my hair. If you’re feelin’ fine to stand and all.’

As Anne got up and reached for a beer out of the tiny fridge, she felt anger simmering within her. She knew he was teasing her. She knew he was playing her. A cowboy as good-looking as him, and clearly as smart as him, could get any woman he wanted.

She thought of Simon, of his spindly legs and flaccid computer-geek arms. His glasses that had fogged when they first kissed. The way he liked to tie her up and hit her with his computer cords. He was weird with sex. She had thought it might grow to be fun, but as time went on, Anne had found herself withering within as a woman. As a lover. No amount of academic reading or study on the matter seemed to ease or help the situation.

‘I have a boyfriend, you know,’ she said defensively.

‘That’s just a social construct,’ Randy said. ‘You know back in the day when we all lived in caves, women mated with many men, at the same time. That’s why nowadays men are visually stimulated by watching copulation, because essentially, we are all still animals. It was the strongest sperm that the female was after, so to get a whole bunch of it from different males meant the strongest would fertilise her egg. Mother Nature helping human survival. And, I’m tipping, it’s the same today. If women were more like animals and forgot about the money and what life is supposed to be
according to the TV, they’d pick the kinder males for most of their love action.’

‘And where on the rodeo circuit did you come up with your ingenious anthropological insights, Mr Carter?’

‘You’re not the only one who is university educated, ma’am, with respect,’ he said with a quick tilt of his head and a lift of one eyebrow.

As she handed Randy the beer, their hands touched. She felt water splash onto the front of her top and she looked down to see that the lace bra beneath was clearly showing through.

‘You’re very pretty,’ Randy said, ‘and I’m going to embarrass myself in this here shower if you don’t turn that lovely face of yours away along with those two pretty lady thangs.’

She looked at him with her deep brown angry eyes. ‘Getting all male on me, are you? And what about my prickly energy … you happy to fuck that too?’

‘There’s no need to be coarse and hostile now, Anne,’ Randy said, sipping calmly on his beer. ‘I can see what’s within you. You’re like a scared filly that keeps laying her ears back at the world and threatening to kick. Once you find your place of love and lose the fear, you’ll learn to look at the world with your ears forward, gal. And you’ll learn the words “thank you”. You’re a rare creature. And a beautiful one at that. Worth educatin’, I’d say.’

Her present mind flashed insult and anger, but beneath the surface flashed disappointment in herself. In her disasters with men. Her anguished relationship with
Simon. His distant, cold ways once he was unplugged from the violence of his virtual reality games. She felt she had been lost in the world of drug-induced nights in clubs, along with other sweating unhinged souls, lost in the facades of materialism. But here before her was perhaps the toughest, rudest, yet most peaceful, gentle man she had ever met. She felt a tiny crack in her armour.

‘And how would you suggest I find my place of love? Through some southern-drawling Jesus church, like you clearly have?’

Anne felt Randy grasp her tiny wrist.

‘Our capacity to love is all we truly have,’ he said. He pulled her under the jets of the shower and began to kiss her. With a hunger like no other, Anne began to kiss him back. Desperately she helped him peel the sodden shirt from her, reefing off her skirt, dragging down her lace panties, unhooking her bra until she stood naked. The water caressed the skin of her hot, fearful body, washing away the stress of the day and softening her to this foreign world that was such a contrast to the rush and bustle of her life in the city. The
aggressive
rush and bustle of the city, she realised now, that man-made concrete world of commerce and consumerism. She was swamped by it.