The Ellie Chronicles (10 page)

I stacked a twig on the web. It sagged but it held all that weight without snapping.

‘Well, what they started doing in some places before. Resettle as fast as they can and turn us into fringe dwellers. We’d live in the crap places and do all the crap jobs and anyone who gave trouble would be locked up or they’d mysteriously disappear.’ She paused, then added, ‘According to the rumours, that’s why they’re not returning some prisoners. It’s because they’ve identified certain people, certain prisoners, as troublemakers, the people who’d give them a hard time if they invaded again. They figure “Why create extra problems for ourselves? Let’s just announce that these guys are dead, or we don’t know where they are, and that way we’ll make it all the easier when we launch the next invasion”.’

‘Next invasion,’ I snarled back at her. ‘No way is there going to be a next invasion. Not if I have anything to do with it.’

But even as I said that I knew I couldn’t have anything to do with such a big issue. Nobody was going to come to me asking for permission to invade.

I karate-chopped the cobweb with my hand. It broke.

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.