The Vintage and the Gleaning (8 page)

We walk along the line, Charlotte tripping and swearing and apologising all the way.

You usually come into town along here? I ask her.

Always, she says. And I love going back this way. You can see the whole sky in front of you.

Yeah, well you ought to be careful, I say. There's some nasty characters in this town.

Charlotte laughs.

I know, she says. But they're all my husband's mates, aren't they?

I shake my head.

There's whole other generations, I say.

The Imperial has not started to fill yet. A few teenagers are playing pool and the usual ratbags are drinking at the bar. Les is sitting fat and puffing on his stool. Friday nights every working man goes down Imperial.

I look at Les as I pass him, waiting for a comment. Friday nights Les drinks too, heavily, with a pot and a brandy under the counter. I nod to some men I know.

Roy and the boys have a table with a half-empty jug of beer sitting on it. I sit down with them. Roy is rolling a cigarette.

Where's bloody Wallace? he asks me. Still having his tea? Playing happy families? He shakes his head and lights his cigarette, pouring beer into the boys' glasses.

Boys are matching me glasses for pots, he says.

What about Smithy? asks one of the boys.

Smithy's not drinking, says Roy, dragging on his cigarette.

How come? asks the boy.

Because I drunk enough, I say.

What, already?

No, I say. I mean I drunk enough for good.

Don't worry about Smithy, Roy says to the boys. And don't worry about Wallace neither.

Why not? asks the boy.

Because you can't match him, says Roy. Can't match Wallace.

I reckon I could, says the boy. Give it a go.

You reckon do you? says Roy.

Why not? says the boy.

Because no one can match Wallace.

Roy finishes his pot and looks over at the boys' glasses.

I thought you was here to drink tonight, he says to them.

The boys start gulping down their beers, Roy watching them.

I watch the slow traffic up and down the staircase above the bar, going to the residents' floor where seasonal workers rent rooms and old men live. The railing is worn smooth and shiny. There are balusters missing and broken, leaning outwards over the wainscotting, its whitewash dirty from the hands of men standing against it and cracked dents in the boards where heads and bodies have slammed and fists gone near through them in pub brawls and friendly drunken melees.

Wallace comes into the pub carrying his bicycle with one hand and Roys says speak of the devil. Wallace makes like he's going to throw the bike over the counter to Les, right over the two pool tables. Les doesn't move from his stool but he watches Wallace as he lifts the bike so that it's pointing upwards, the back tyre high in the air. Holding it in one hand, he hooks it over the pool table light. The long green shade rocks on its brass chain and the front tyre spins just above the felt. Wallace walks off.

The teenage boys playing pool have stopped their game and are looking over at Les. Wallace sits at the bar and Les doesn't say nothing. The ratbags are laughing at the teenagers. Les pours Wallace a pot and Wallace skols it and then goes and unhooks the bike and carries it to the end of the bar. He leans it against the back wall and comes over.

Boys matching me glasses for pots, Roy says to him.

Wallace tops up the boys' glasses and takes the empty jug to the bar. He comes back with a new one, fills his pot and skols it and fills it again.

They sit and drink and we watch as the pub fills up. Roy squashes the butt of his cigarette between his fingers to get the last puffs out. The butt is wet and tan, Roy's fingers gone the same colour a long time ago.

I get up and go to the counter. Les doesn't move, because Fridays Les's wife does all the work. Les just sits there on his creaking stool. He licks his thin toad lips and makes a crack about me. The men down the counter laugh.

His wife comes over and pours me a lemon squash.

Now don't you worry about those jokers, Smithy, she says. She puts the glass down on the counter and waves back the coins I offer her.

I hear you've given it up, she says.

I nod.

That's right, I say.

You given up for good? She asks.

That's right, I say. For good.

Well, good for you, Smithy, she says. And don't you worry about that lot.

They don't worry me, I say.

Les's wife is a thin woman with a hard face and short permed hair. She is wearing a patterned cardigan and is strong from heavy work.

And I seen you at church too, she says. I never seen you at church before. You raised a Catholic, were you? she asks.

I nod.

So you coming to church now? she asks. A regular churchgoer? I'm planning on it, I say.

Well, good for you, Smithy, she says. Good for you.

At the table, the boys are already flushed with drink. Wallace skols.

It is the time of arrival and men arrive. It is the quiet time and men have few words for one another. A nod here and there, men stand together with glasses in hand and the silences are long and the talk is talk between closed lips. The men gather and wait. They are at the counter coming away with pots, glasses and jugs, the empties stacked high, carried in one hand. They drink in the pauses of quiet conversation and they still have the pride of the day and the work about them. Wrists tip and glasses empty and men go back to the bar and I know what they are waiting for. More men arrive.

Nah, this is slack work, easy work, Wallace is saying to one of the boys.

It's hard work though, says the boy.

Boy says it's hard work, Wallace says to me.

What's that? I say.

On the vines.

It's a holiday, I say. I'm retired from hard work. Vines is a holiday.

It's only the sun gets you, Wallace's telling the boy. The other day, day you dropped, that's the sun, the heat. We knock off if it gets too hot.

How often do you do that? asks the boy.

Wallace shrugs.

Not often, he says. Hardly ever.

More men, more voices, noise rising, low and dull, but growing loud all the same. They stand at the bar, sit on stools, flicking glowing cigarette butts into the trough at the bottom of the bar, the trough smouldering, resting their elbows against the brass pole that runs flush with the bar, the plating scratched and gouged through to the steel by the knives of men bored or angry or just drunk and the many silver cuts flash along the pole and the men lean against it, pots in their hands, pots on the bar towel, pots on cardboard coasters with the emblems of breweries going sodden from running suds and they take off their hats, weary from the day.

Roy, Wallace is saying. Oi, Roy.

Roy is smoking, holding his cigarette overhand, watching a group of girls at one of the pool tables. Wallace reaches over and pokes him in the shoulder.

Yeah, what's that? says Roy, watching the girls.

You remember that day? says Wallace.

How's that? asks Roy, still looking at the girls.

They are young girls, local girls in blue jeans and blue denim jackets. The jackets have studs and stars and gold sequins on them and patterns sewn in shiny coloured thread, fine and gleaming in the light. Some wear necklaces of cowrie shells and their faces are made up, heavy black lines around their eyes and their eyelids painted green, make-up thick and uneven over their faces, caked and cracking at the sides of their mouths and their foreheads, showing up their unpainted necks white and freckly. One girl has taken off her jacket and wrapped it around her waist with only a singlet underneath and that is the girl Roy is watching. She leans down to take a shot and Roy looks back at us, grinning.

Real scorcher, says Wallace. You and me went for a counter meal.

Oh yeah, says Roy.

So me and Roy are driving back to the cellar, to tell Boss we knocked off and there's Smithy still out on the vines. Out there on his own, still working. It was that hot wasn't it Roy.

Yeah, it was, says Roy.

Bloody hot, says Wallace.

It was hot all right, says Roy. He is watching the girls.

And Smithy didn't knock off at all, says Wallace. Worked the full day.

Vines is a holiday, I say. For me it's a holiday.

Older men wear their work clothes and the young ones come showered and changed and there is cream in their hair. The older men make fun of them. A lot of sheilas here tonight, they say. The men are fat in singlets and shorts, stained and dirty, bloody from the abattoir, gaunt in flannel shirts and workpants, all wearing elastic-sided boots, thick socks rolled over the tops, filthy and bristling with sawdust and burrs. And there are hats, all styles, most of them too old and worn to be any style at all, some with feathers in the hatband, cockatoo, galah, whole budgerigar's wings of all colours, others pinned with metal and enamel badges. The older men mess up the young men's hair and sniff them under the armpits.

Jesus Christ, they say.

Roy belches and picks up the jug. He empties it into the boys' glasses.

Drink up, he says. You're holding me back.

The boys drink.

Roy gets up and stretches his legs. He is wearing his pub shorts which are white, tight and obscene. Roy wears those shorts to attract the women though he's never said it straight out and everybody jokes about Roy's pub shorts behind his back. He takes the jug and goes into the crowd and the noise.

You'll get used to it, says Wallace. Few years.

Not me, says the other boy. Not once I got enough for a car.

Roy has gone over to the pool table where the girls are playing. He is trying to talk to them, leaning against the table with his beer in his hand and the empty jug in the other. The girls keep playing around him as though he is not there and Roy keeps on talking.

Wallace turns around to look.

Christ, he says.

I am looking at the back of one of the girls' jackets where a butterfly has been sewn in electric colours. I watch as the butterfly disappears when the girl turns from the hanging lamp and then the dazzle of the thread as she bends to take a shot, the light flowing and settling as she walks around the table, the brightest points following the swirl of the pattern until the girl turns away again and the butterfly is gone. I wonder whether she sewed it herself.

Once I get a car I'm going to Sydney, says the boy. Bondi beach. Go on the dole. Learn how to surf. Get a girlfriend. Surfer chick.

He grins.

Surfer chick, he says grinning. No tan lines.

Wallace is looking hard at the boy over his tilted pot. He drains the suds. He looks over at Roy, who has moved in close to one of the girls, talking to her while she smokes a cigarette, watching another girl take her shot. Wallace looks back at the boy.

Where's your self-respect? Wallace says.

Better than working, says the boy. Making the rich man richer.

Wallace swears and looks back at Roy. The girl is bent over the felt, her cigarette smouldering in the ashtray at the edge of the table. Our empty jug is sitting next to it and Roy is trying to show the girl how to work the cue, pressing himself against her. He has his hand on her arm. She shrugs him off and moves away around the table.

Well, you're not going to hold on to a woman bludging, Wallace says to the boy. Not once you're hitched. Soon as you're hitched your old lady's going to be sending you out to work. That's a lesson in life, boy. Once a man gets married it's the woman calls the shots. That's true as I'm sitting here.

Why buy the book when you can borrow from the library? says the boy, grinning.

The other boy guffaws. He's got the smile of an idiot.

That's easy enough said at your age, says Wallace. But you want to end up like Roy Thompson over there?

He points his thumb behind him where Roy is following the girl around the table, leaning against her every time she tries to line up the cue, talking, pretending he's trying to teach her how to play pool. He is holding his beer in one hand and has a cigarette in his mouth. The girl keeps pushing him away.

You know what Roy Thompson is? says Wallace. He's a small-town Casanova.

He says it again.

A small-town Casanova.

He's said it before, plenty of times.

He's a grown man, says Wallace. But he never growed up.

Wallace holds out a scarred and callused hand, dirt tracing the deep creases and round the nails. He counts off fingers.

Still lives with his parents, grown man. Still chasing women. Still scared of the dark.

Bull, says the boy.

No bull, says Wallace. Grown man, still afraid of the dark. Scared of spiders too.

He looks over at Roy and the girl. He thumbs behind him again.

Look at him will you, he says. Still running around like a bloody teenager. Nearly sixty years old, thinks he's sixteen. Bloody Roy.

Roy's all right, says the boy.

Wallace drops his hands onto the table.

Roy's my mate, he says to the boy. And I'd never say a word against him. But he never growed up and that's a fact. That's truth.

Wallace leans back into the vinyl cushioning. The cushioning wheezes from holes burnt through by cigarettes, showing grubby tar-stained foam inside. It squeaks with the movement of Wallace's sweating back. He puts his elbows on the table and his arms are brown and hairy. Muscles tighten and disappear.

Now you look at me, says Wallace. I got my own house, a wife, kids. I got responsibilities. I got a family to take care of. But that's leaving a legacy, right? Because my family's going to keep on going long after I'm dead. Makes me a part of history. A part of human civilisation.

He leans back against the wheezing, squeaking vinyl and tilts his pot, draining the last trickle. He puts it down on the table.

Yeah, but Roy's got a better car than you, says the boy.

Wallace sits there with his hand wrapped around the empty pot and swears.