I made a quick stop by the withered desert lime, watered it with my own secret ingredient and then headed back inside. My feet followed a familiar path to the kitchen; too thirsty to fumble around for a cup, I drank straight from the tap. It shuddered, shook violently, started spitting out water. As usual, the water was lukewarm and cloudy.
I tried not to think about how low the tanks must be.
My thirst temporarily sated, I wandered off to the bathroom. I stripped, filled a rough tin bucket a few inches deep, sacrificed enough water to wash my beard and my crotch, my armpits and my feet. I caught the grey scum in another bucket. The reflection in the cracked mirror looked older than my forty-something years should, all faded bushranger beard and greasy grey hair, deep-set wrinkles, and sunburn that wouldn’t fade. Naked, still a little wet, I returned to the kitchen and raided the cupboards. I breakfasted, standing up, on a few slices of dried roo, a couple of shrivelled desert limes, a handful of sun-scorched berries. When I had emptied my plate, I tried to ignore the fact that I was still a bit hungry.
We were all a little bit hungry all the time. We just got used to it.
I rolled up some bush tobacco. I found my tinderbox, struck a tiny fire, lit up. The smoke was harsh. I drip-dried in the sunlight pouring through the kitchen window, my eyes shut; I couldn’t tell the difference between the dirty water from my bucket-bath and the fresh sweat that had started running. The heat weighed on me, made it hard to breathe. I gave up on my smoke, took myself back inside, changed into some work clothes—heavy boots and coveralls. My hat was in its usual place—hanging on a rusty nail that had been hammered into the wall long before I had been born.
Everything I wore was a hand-me-down or had been cobbled together.
I stomped outside and got to it, clearing scrub from around the house, checking on the nearest traps. They were empty, as usual. I topped up my canteen, rolled up some more bush tobacco, took a break, had a smoke under the veranda out the front of the house. In front of me was an empty paddock of stunted and bleached-yellow grass; it sloped down gently, after a while meeting the road into town. I knew that down there, standing by the driveway gate, the house was almost hidden by the dying grass, the dense scrub and a straggly thicket of yellowbox that somehow still hung on.
The only things that broke the emptiness of the paddocks were a few reefs of rock reaching out of the parched earth and a barren watercourse cutting a dirt scar across the monotony. The whole place looked derelict; you would think that no one but a fool could call it home. I whispered thanks to my parents and grandparents, to their parents and grandparents, to everyone who helped make it happen. Out the back of the house—its rambling bulk concealing them from prying eyes—the hill rolled down into a shallow valley, ending at my shrivelled fruit trees and my ragged veggie patch.
Beyond them, nestled in the shade of a towering gum, grew a single rose that got watered every day no matter what.
I set off across the paddock, checked the traps strung out on the land, poked in the few rabbit holes left, rapped on the roughly hewn possum boxes clinging to the dead and dying trees, checked for felled roos caught in bear traps wrought from broken pieces of farm machinery. Nothing. I made the hike to the nearest dam, heaved on an oversized roller knocked together from the axle of a broken-down tractor, wound back the dam’s reflective cover. It was one of Tobe’s ideas: an enormous sheet of some kind of plastic that must have been worth a fortune to someone, stopping any water from evaporating during the long, hot days.
If it did rain you had to be out there like shit off a shovel, dragging it back.
Barely staining the dam bed was a brackish puddle. I scooped out a bucket of dreck, wound the cover back, carried the dreck back to the house, sat it under the veranda. I once again set off across the paddock. This time, I stopped at each solar still—deep holes sealed off with ratty tarpaulins—and climbed down to retrieve any dew that had settled during the night. I carted each load back to the house and left it under the veranda before setting off for the next. By the time I was done, the sun had moved across the house, no longer threatening the veggie patch and the fruit trees. They were begging for a drink, and I decided to dig more stills another day. I carefully rolled back the tattered shade-cloth that protected them. I emptied all the water I had collected. It didn’t even settle the dust. I doled out grey-water from the house; it was next to useless. I hurried inside, filled a bucket with water from the tank, hurried back out, gave everything another splash. I made sure the rose got a good soaking; a flower had bloomed, brilliant and tiny against the dark bush.
I picked the flower and walked to the graveyard and lay it where I had buried her.
I got back into it, weeded the patch, plucked a few undiscovered pieces of shrivelled fruit, checked on some figs that were drying in the sun, picked a few shrivelled berries I had overlooked, picked a prickly-pear, cut a few paddles off a top-heavy cactus that wobbled and tottered and threatened to fall. Done, I looked over the land, thinking the same thing I always did when standing in that spot: it almost looked beautiful.
I set off for the house, found a brown snake sleeping on a rock, cut its head off with a shovel, left the shovel standing in the ground as a marker of sorts.
Never pass up a free lunch.
The spluttering engine of Sheldon’s charcoal-powered truck took an age to reach me. Sacked out under the veranda, skinning the cactus paddles I had picked, being ever-so-careful not to prick myself on the spines, I dismissed the noise as merely the buzzing of a particularly loud fly. I didn’t see the truck until I set aside the oozing cactus flesh and glanced at the dirt road for no other reason than because it was there.
‘You what?’
The truck edged through the gates. I shook my head, confused. The truck turned onto the driveway, struggled to climb the modest hill. I reluctantly hurried away to the barn that housed the water tanks, hating that shadowy room of bad memories. The truck drew closer. The bark of the engine stalling carried on the wind. Sheldon swore, loud enough for me to hear. There was a moment of silence before the engine started back up with a throaty cough—the truck veered off the driveway, cutting a path across the paddock, heavy tyres crushing the dying grass.
‘Morning, Sheldon,’ I yelled as the truck crunched over the gravel apron of the barn.
He nodded at me over the noise of the engine. A solar-powered fan bolted onto the rear-view mirror stirred the air in the cabin, tugging at Sheldon’s wispy hair. A homemade fly-strip hung next to it. Junk cluttered the dashboard: pairs of broken sunglasses, faded maps, a beaten metal hipflask, animal bones, bits of dead wood.
‘How’s your hangover?’ I yelled.
‘Not bad, I didn’t drink that much. I’m too old to keep up with you young folk. How about you?’
‘I’m feeling it today.’
The idling engine droned on. Sheldon said nothing more. I looked up at him.
‘Mate, um, sorry to ask, but what are you doing here?’
His weather-beaten face was expressionless. ‘You don’t remember?’
I didn’t answer, didn’t need to.
‘Last night, you said you were running low and that you could do with a hand. So here I am.’
And so I discovered another hole in my memory. I smiled pathetically, trying to hide my embarrassment. ‘Did I mention how I was going to fix you up?’
Sheldon laughed. ‘Yeah. I’ve got some work that needs doing back home, including a new bore to dig. You said you’d help out.’
He laughed again. Shit. The sun was already dipping, a shimmer on the horizon. The day had been hard enough; I didn’t fancy working through the night as well.