The Vintage and the Gleaning (3 page)

He pulls his shovel out of the ground.

I think he said he was going fishing, says Roy.

Boss comes to spray lunchtime. I'm sitting with Roy in his ute and Wallace's got the boys in his. The windows are wound up and I am drinking sarsaparilla. Roy is smoking and the smoke
rises from his cigarette and fills the cabin.

Boss brings in the tractor, spluttering and heaving with the sprayer behind, bouncing over the uneven earth. It has five pipes at the end of its chassis and they are bent. Boss is wearing an old oilskin with the collar turned up and buttoned to his nose. His hat is pulled down over his forehead. He stops the tractor next to Wallace's ute and undoes the top of the oilskin and yells something to Wallace. Wallace winds down his window and yells back. They are yelling over the growl and the thud of the tractor engine. The diesel exhaust hazes upwards. Boss yells again. Wallace waves and winds the window back up.

Boss does up his oilskin again and pulls at his hat. He wheels the tractor into the front row and turns on the sprayer. The spray comes out of the pipes in a strong fine jet and the tractor kicks up dust, and a cloud of dust and spray blooms behind the tractor like a slow explosion. Roy is studying the form guide.

I watch the tractor through the dirty cloud as it ends the first row. The sprayer goes off and the pipes drip and the tractor makes a tight circle and comes down the next row towards us. It ends the row and the sprayer turns off. Boss takes the tractor round and the cloud billows behind and into us and when it hits it is all dust and spray through the windows and you can't see a thing outside. You can't see anything at all.

After knockoff, Roy drives us into town and parks outside Poachers. Men are standing on the footpath underneath the pub balcony, smoking and spitting in the shade. Kids ride up and down Main Street on bikes, dinking their friends and pulling wheelies. Some of them are still in their school uniforms and others wear jeans and T-shirts. They gather in groups outside the bank and the post office, sitting on the steps and sprawled across the footpath, eating chips out of butcher's paper. Dogs lie under parked cars, tongues hanging out.

Lucy jumps down onto the road and Roy grabs her and chains her to a pole. He gets her bowl from the back of the ute and sets it beside her. He fills it and she drinks.

I'm off, I say.

Still sulking are you? Roy says.

I'm not sulking, I say.

Yes you are, says Roy.

A cat prowls about under one of the cars, watching the dogs and sniffing the ground. It darts across the street and down a concrete lane mottled with the rainbow tint of oil stains. The cat is sleek and black, its bones jutting from under its coat, looking hard as a carved thing.

You been sulking ever since you been to the doctor's, says Roy.

I look for the cat, but it is gone.

I'm not sulking, I say. I'm just not drinking. Sulking's got nothing to do with it.

Roy takes Lucy's bowl and throws the rest of the water out onto the road. He flings it back into the tray and takes out his tobacco pouch and papers and rolls a cigarette, lighting it with a match. He shakes out the match and flicks it away.

It's not just about the drink, he says. It's about being sociable. I don't see why you can't come in while I have a drink. I'm your mate, aren't I?

He drags on the cigarette and lets the smoke float from the side of his mouth. One of the men on the footpath calls out to him and Roy points his thumb at the pub. The man nods.

Yeah, I say. Yeah, I spose so.

We go into Poachers.

The pub is cool and dark and hung with mounted Murray cods, fat and pink and silver on their undersides. Each board has an engraving saying when the fish was caught and who caught it. Liz is tending the bar.

Roy flicks his cigarette butt into the trough which runs the length of the bar. Embers scatter and fade. The trough is piled high with ash and cigarette butts and rubbish, all of it sodden with spilt beer. Roy takes off his hat, smoothing down his hair. He puts the hat on the counter and sits on a barstool, looking at his bare legs. He scratches his legs and winks at Liz.

How are you Roy? Liz asks, stacking pots. Keeping out of trouble?

I'm doing my very best, Liz, says Roy. Yourself?

Aw, yeah, she says. She sounds tired. The pots knock against each other as she stacks them. She picks up another crate. Liz is big and dressed in black.

Down the end of the bar, old Ted Matthews is watching the television, a glass sitting on the bar towel next to him.

Any lady wrastlers today, Ted? Roy asks him.

Ted Matthews doesn't say anything. His eyes stay fixed on the television screen.

Liz is straining to hold a crate with one hand, pressing it against her ribs. It is full of trembling pots and the sound of glass on glass.

Ted missed out on the lady wrestlers today, she says. I had the greyhounds on.

That's a shame, says Roy. Greyhounds aren't lady wrastlers, are they, Ted?

Ted Matthews doesn't say a word. He just keeps staring up at the television. It's the harness racing now, afternoon races. On the screen a buggy overturns. Ted Matthews sits there, not moving one bit.

I pull up a barstool and sit next to Roy.

Come and work your charms on Smithy here, Liz, Roy says.

What's that, Roy? Liz says, giving him a funny look.

Cheer him up, says Roy. He's sulking. He's sulking because he's off the piss. Off the grog. Doctor's orders.

Liz finishes stacking the pots and takes the empty crates outside. She comes back brushing off her hands and holds up a pot, looking at Roy. Roy nods and she fills it from the tap.

Off the grog? she says. Why's that, Smithy?

Because, I say. Because I've buggered up me insides. Buggered them with the drink.

Liz puts Roy's beer down on the bar towel. Roy leans back, feeling in his pockets for coins. He piles them on the bar towel and raps the club soda sign on the tap, pointing at me. Liz pours me a glass of lemon squash and begins sorting through the coins.

He given you something for it? Liz asks me. The doctor?

Yeah, I say. Pills. Pills they make from pigs.

Roy skols his beer and hands the pot back to Liz.

How they make pills out of pigs? he asks me. What good's that going to do you?

Don't ask me, I say. That's just what he tells me. Because pigs got something I don't have. I don't have it no more on account I've buggered up me insides. With the drink. The grog.

Liz hands Roy his pot back full and keeps sorting through the money on the counter. Roy blows the froth off the top.

Well, can you drink after that then? he asks. Once you take these pills?

Roy's pot is beaded with liquid and the froth runs down the sides. He puts the beer down and wipes his hand on the bar towel.

Pills aren't for the drink, I say. They're for the digestion. For my stomach. Because I've stuffed that too. With the drink. I can't keep anything down.

Liz is counting coins.

You not eating, Smithy? she says. Off your tucker? She opens the cash register and slides the coins in, one at a time.

Roy leans back again and squirms to pull his tobacco out of his pocket. He slaps the pouch down on the counter.

I can't keep a thing down, I say. I take one bite and I feel sick. I can't even look at the stuff without feeling sick.

Liz closes the register and it rings.

That's no good, Smithy, she says. You should be taking better care of yourself.

Roy holds up his empty pot to her, dripping with suds. Liz puts it upside down on the pile of empties and gets him a clean one. Roy takes his papers and peels one off, putting it between his lips. He opens the pouch and takes out a pinch of tobacco.

Well I am looking after meself, I say. That's why I'm off the drink. I haven't touched the stuff. Not once.

Roy rolls the cigarette and puts it in his mouth. He gestures to Liz and she gets a lighter from under the counter. She lights the cigarette for him and hands him his beer, sorting through the coins on the counter again. Roy turns to me, holding his pot against his knee.

But one drink's not going to do you any harm, surely, he says. Just one glass.

I shake my head.

Doctor said if I started drinking again I'd end up in hospital, I say. I'm not going to hospital.

Roy blows smoke into the air. He takes a long drink from his pot and puts it back on the counter. He rests his arm on his leg, knocking ash between his knees.

Hospital wouldn't be so bad, says Roy.

He drags on his cigarette and sits sipping his beer, flicking ash into the trough, looking at me with his pale eyes, his baby-blue eyes.

Hospital, he says. It's just lying there, isn't it? Everything brought to you. Good-looking nurses caring for you.

He leans his elbow on the counter, turning back towards the bar.

Not as good-looking as you though Liz, he says.

Yeah, thanks Roy, says Liz.

I look at Ted Matthews sitting down the end of the bar. He still hasn't moved, not one inch, just sits there staring up at that television. He's got a face like stone, Ted Matthews does.

No, I say. I'm not going to hospital. You haven't got nothing left once you're in hospital. All you've got is just yourself and your own thoughts. No, I say, I'm not going to hospital. I'd rather be out on the vines.

I walk home along the disused railway track, past the abandoned wheat silos. It's all crows now on the silos. The tops are black with them. There must be hundreds of crows on those old silos.

You'd be surprised , the dreams I've been having. I've been dreaming of people I haven't seen in years, people I haven't even thought about since I last saw the back of them, people I hardly even knew. Men I worked with, one season, one station even. Girls I used to know, met in towns between jobs, girls I saw one year to the next and then never saw again. Girls I only ever been with once, met outside town hall dances, girls whose faces I only ever saw in the flame of a struck match, the light from a passing car. They're coming up, coming back, clear as day now, in my dreams, clear as though I saw them yesterday, as though they were still young as they were then, as
though I were still young, still the young man I was.

I've even been dreaming of the sisters and the orphanage kids, the mission school kids, little kids I can't remember the names of anymore, long faded in my memory to ragged short pants and shrill voices, dirty faces. The piccanins we called niggers and coons and left beat up and crying behind the wilgas and the desert oaks. I see them too, in my dreams.

But most of all I dream of Florrie. And I have this dream and I have the same dream every night, always the same, almost always the same. And I dream it is Main Street, night-time, but the street is all lit up, not just street lights, but lit everywhere, white like under fluorescent tubes, strong, savage, blinding light, and the streets and pubs lit the same, because in my dream the pubs have no front to them and no end and you don't know street from pub, the two flowing onto each other, into each other, and there is nothing but street and pub and light everywhere for as far as you go and you keep going through both. And there are no shadows cast by the light and all around in the streets and in the pubs there are men, the whole place teeming with men, men everywhere, more men than the town has ever seen, and they are massed together and you don't know where you are, only shoulder to shoulder with the men, pressed up against them, suffocated by the men. And the men are drinking and their noise is all around, a roar, all talking and yelling and arguing and shouting, smoking, spitting, laughing and fighting, whistling and cheering and pushing, their faces coming out of the brilliant night, red with drink, charged with drink, eyes glazed and bulging, wet-lipped, grimacing, gawping, faces warped and monstrous, deformed with the drink and strange, barely the faces of men anymore, dead drunk and hard, all of them hard, all of them the faces of working men, and they are everywhere and their noise is everywhere and there are no places of darkness or quiet or solitude, only the thundering, jostling crowd, and I can do nothing but keep on moving through it all, through the riot of men and the pubs big as open spaces and Main Street lit brighter than day and wide as a stockyard.

And Florrie is there.

Florrie is there and she is walking through the crowd of men with her back to me, walking away from me. And I am following her, calling to her through the men and their noise, through all the shoving drunkenness, but she keeps walking, never stopping, never turning around and she is always moving, always moving away, going further and further ahead of me until I lose her somewhere in that lit-up roaring night.

And in those dreams she is young. She is as young as when I first met her.

And once, one night, one dream, I dreamt I finally caught up to her, finally talked to her. And she looked back at me, smiling, but she was still walking, still walking away from me. And I was trying to keep up with her, speaking to her, speaking desperately as she went. I've got to talk to you, Florrie, I said. I've been dreaming about you, Florrie. I dream about you every night. I've got to talk to you. I've got something to say to you. But she just smiled, glancing back, the way women do. And she never said a thing.

And in that dream I lost her like I always lose her, among drinking men and bars that go on forever.

When I woke from that dream I still wanted to talk to her, still had something to say to her. Even when I was awake enough to remember that she wasn't there anymore, wasn't there to say anything to, even then I still had something to tell her. And I knew what it was as well. In the dream and in real life it was the same. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to say I was sorry for the life I gave her.

Tuesday, Spit doesn't show.

I hope it's nothing serious, says Boss.

Boss is standing looking at a muscatel vine. One of the boys has put his shovel through it. We are all standing looking at the vine.