I moved my eyes to the taciturn figure in the back seat. Like Tazzy, he was looking out the window, perhaps lost in a similar contemplation. I couldn’t read any particular mood on his face, an inscrutability he maintained throughout the balance of our drive home. When we arrived, I dropped the boys at the stock quarters and introduced them to Stumpie, who had a simple dinner waiting for them. As I went to hop in the truck Erik spoke up.
“Where ya going, mate?”
“Oh, my day’s done mate. I’m heading back up for a bit of dinner and a good sleep. Maybe upgrade my shirt, too.”
“What; you don’t stay down here with us?”
“Naw, my room’s up at the homestead.”
“Too good for the stockie quarters, eh?” He flashed the same joyless smile I’d seen earlier.
“No, that’s not it. That’s the room I was given when I arrived. That’s all.”
Truth be told, I’d become self-conscious about my plush accommodations, as compared to the other hands. When I first arrived, Peter was staying in the main house, with Bundy and Bill in the stock quarters. As the latter were both aboriginals, the arrangement did have about it the whiff of apartheid, but as a newcomer I certainly wasn’t going to play concierge. Then with Peter’s departure, I’d become the only nonfamily member staying in the bigger and more comfortable homestead. Were I a better man, I would have moved down to the stock quarters with the arrival of Eddie and Denny, but I’d become possessive of the few comforts this hard life offered. I counted my mattress foremost among these luxuries, so unlike the military cots in the quarters.
“I see,” said Erik sardonically. “So you are like the house slave and we’re the field slaves, I guess.”
I didn’t know what to make of this caustic statement, whether its intention was humor or editorial. I assumed the best and chuckled.
“Yeah, I guess if you gonna be a slave it’s better to be inside than out,” I said, stupidly.
Erik turned and looked at Tazzy, offered an incredulous snort, and strode towards the quarters with the Tasmanian. I drove in a disconcerted funk the twenty seconds to the homestead and went inside to wash up for dinner.
“How are the new boys?” Charlie asked at the dinner table.
“All right, I guess. One’s a bit more talkative than the other, and maybe a bit nicer too.”
“Well, Dave, we didn’t really bring them on for their manners or their storytelling,” said Marlee with a squawk. “You reckon they can work? How old are they? Have they spent time here in the Top End?”
“Oh, I guess I don’t know. They’re both in their mid-twenties, I would say. They look like workers, I guess. I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“They look like workers?” this was Danielle. “You mean, they had their union cards and lunch buckets?”
“Well, they weren’t in three-piece suits if that’s what you mean. How the heck should I know whether they can work or not?” I said this with a combination of frustration at myself for not exploring the men’s relevant qualifications in more detail, and annoyance at having my failure exposed.
“Well, typically, you would ask,” said Charlie, his customary good sense shining in opposition to my fumblings.
Sara stepped in to pull my backside out of the fire. “The folks at the employment service said both these fellas have agricultural experience. So there’s that.”
“What did you guys talk about on the way in?” queried Marlee, in a tone which suggested she couldn’t imagine what topic other than work we might have discussed.
“Well, the skinny one, Dave—who says we should call him Tazzy—told me all about the time he was apparently a bit buzzed, so he let his sixteen-year-old girlfriend drive him home in what he described as his ‘hoonmobile’—what kind of car is a hoonmobile, anyway?” I interrupted myself to ask.
Charlie and the girls had a good laugh at my expense before Charlie explained that hoons are what we back in the states might call rednecks, and hoonmobiles are the cars they drive.
“So you mean like souped up Barracudas, painted purple and with a Confederate flag flying from the aerial? The sort of thing which might have a ‘Gas, Grass, or Ass—Nobody Rides for Free’ bumper sticker on it?”
“Sounds right. Yaboos and their hoonmobiles.” Charlie confirmed.
“So Tazzy was in his hoonmobile with his girlfriend, who must’ve been a bit buzzed also, because he woke up just as they were driving straight through an intersection. He grabbed the wheel in time to avoid broadsiding another car. but they ended up going through the front door of the local church.”
“Oh dear,” said Sara. “I’m not sure we need to put him behind the wheel anytime soon.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry,” I realized with chagrin this story might not have been the kindest way to introduce Tazzy to his new employers. “That’s all well behind him. He counts himself nearly an old man now, a world away from his wild and crazy youth. In fact, I just remembered he told me his age. He’s twenty-two.”
“Still plenty of time to cause trouble,” said Charlie evenly. “What about the other bloke?”
I realized I hadn’t done the Hendersons the courtesy of asking whether they first wanted the good news or the bad news. I had a better feeling about Tazzy than I had about Erik, yet I had just smeared Tazzy’s reputation as an opening. My mind raced to figure out a way to frame what I feared to be his malevolent companion in a positive way.
“Oh, he seems… ah…great! I mean, maybe not ‘great’ great but, you know, cool.” Everyone had stopped eating and was looking at me with perplexed expressions. “I mean, he was kind of quiet, so I didn’t really get much of a feel for him.” I punted, fearing the threads of the lie I was wrapping myself with were becoming visible to everyone at the table. I returned to my meal with an exaggerated enthusiasm.
“Uh huh. Well, we’re at it hard tomorrow to get these yards finished and supplied, so I guess we’ll find out then,” said Charlie, putting the topic to bed.
As we unfolded ourselves into the blue dawn of the next morning’s workday our questions were quickly answered—both boys were the real deal. Tasks were assigned and tackled forthrightly. Tazzy, predictably, was chattier and more lighthearted than Erik as he went about his work. By lunch time we’d gotten a great deal accomplished. I sat on the back of the ute enjoying my coarse bullock sandwich when Erik walked over, and leaned against the wheel well.
“So you’re a Yank, eh?”
“Still at Relationship Level: Obvious,” I thought.
“I am, a proud American and Californian.” I wasn’t sure why I put icing on the point; it seemed right in the moment. I don’t like confrontation—never have—but I had by this point in my life become willing to stand up to bullies. That wasn’t a skill in which I excelled as a youth. As a gentle child I’d found myself too often on the receiving end of brutish unkindnesses. My reflexive attempts to laugh them off had never served me well, leaving as it did a residue of fecklessness and a diminished status in the Lord-of-the-Flies hierarchies of boyhood. Fight or flight was never a coin flip for me. Flight was my default, and with its consistent application any sense of myself as capable, strong, or brave had similarly flown out of reach.
Fortunately, adulthood provides avenues for proving oneself not available on the playgrounds of youth. By the time I arrived at Bullo, I’d reclaimed some sense of self-worth and respected standing among my peers at college, and at work. I’d come to admire men and women who found strength exercising those values I most treasure—integrity, generosity, kindness. I’d learned that living by one’s ethical code wasn’t easy, that Flight always remained a whispering presence on the shoulder, but standing up for what one honors is a calling worth heeding in important moments.
The sting from the previous night’s exchange remained fresh, where Erik called me a house negro and I’d done nothing other than endorse the sentiment. That conversational paradigm was going to have to change. So sure, I’m a Yank, tough guy, and proudly so.
“And you work on stations back there, do you?”
“No, not at all. I just spent the better part of seven years getting a degree at UCLA. I went to school part time and worked to provide for myself, mostly driving a limousine.” I usually found the chauffeur experience a good icebreaker. There are tales to tell when one drives a private coach in Beverly Hills. But Erik wasn’t the least bit intrigued.
“A schoolboy, eh? So this is your first time on an Aussie station, then?”
“It is.”
“Well, things are a good bit different out here,” the country boy needlessly pointed out, his thick eyebrows framing his dark, intense eyes.
“Yeah well, I’m getting the hang of it.” I said, turning away. I’d heard enough from this cheerless newcomer.
Fortunately, Tazzy’d heard my comment about driving the limousine.
“So, mate, did you drive a flash car?” He asked with the open expression of a man interested in others.
“Oh yes I did. Typically a stretch Lincoln Continental. I could put eight people in back, with the TV and a full bar.”
“Sounds flash all right! Me mate, Walters,”—the word came out ‘Wolders’ in his thick Tasmanian accident—“had a right flash Holden hisself. It was the nicest car of any of us, so we all used to jam into it, eh? I reckon Wolders was a bit of a chauffeur too, wadn’t he?!”
“It had a full bar too, did it?” The subject of cars and booze had distracted Erik from his focus on my shortcomings.
“Only when we brought the eskie, which was all the time!” exploded Tazzy with an enthusiasm that gave us all a laugh.
“Yep, that was a sweet car. He drove it into a wall at Lemontree just before I left,” the Tasmanian said matter-of-factly.
“What? Was he all right?” I asked with evident concern.
“Yeah, not too bad. Broke his leg pretty good, didn’t ‘e? But Pearson took it a lot worse. Killed him. The police found all the piss in the car. Walters spends his time in the pen these days. Three hots and a cot on Bob Hawke for old Walters now.”
I stared at the slight man for a long moment at this revelation, then said quietly, “Damn, that’s rough news. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens, dodn’t it? It’s bloody lucky Walters was right pissed. He bounced around pretty good and probably would’ve died too, if he hadn’t been so loose. But with that, and then some bird scrapping with my girl, beating her head on the mag wheels of me own car, it made it pretty easy for us to leave town, didn’t it? Hadn’t looked back yet either, mate.”
“So where’s your sheila now?” Erik asked with a grubby undertone.
“Oh, I had to leave that too, didn’t I? She up and did something that scared the bloody hell out of me.” Tazzy shuddered.
“And what was that?” I asked, curiosity overcoming my trepidation at hearing another grim tale.
“Bloody hell mate — she told me she loved me!”
Preparations for the next muster proceeded along familiar lines. Erik kept his distance, a smoldering if hard-working presence who invited and initiated interaction with me as little as possible. Tazzy, meanwhile, was a font of conversation. One morning he was telling us about the famous Demon Bushranger Michael Howe, the most illustrious figure among his ancestors, all of whom had been transported from England for “highway robbery and stuff like that”. In my youth, Rangers — such as the famous Texas Rangers — wore white hats in tales of lore, but bushrangers in Australia wore the black hats, playing the Jesse James role in Australia’s Wild Wild East.
Tazzy’s great-great-whatever Michael Howe is a case in point. Despite his evident depravity—he killed and occasionally decapitated his own men as easily as he killed the objects of his predations—he, like that most famous of bushrangers Ned Kelly, remains a warm figure in the Australian popular imagination. During colonial times many poor souls were dumped by the British Empire upon Australia’s fatal shores as punishment for crimes barely reaching misdemeanor status. A Darwinian attitude prevailed in the days of The Transportation which held that criminals were not criminals on account of their specific actions, per se, but rather due to an inferior genetic makeup. DNA itself relegated them to an irredeemable moral poverty arising from their biologically unsound state.
So otherwise good folks who found themselves torn from the life of their community and jettisoned upon an alien land for what today might earn a slap on the wrist often, perhaps understandably, held a grudge against the imperial travel agents who arranged their mandatory seven-year vacation. Among the resentful sort, those bushies who rose up against the oppressing landlords of their impressed outposts were seen as heroes.
It wasn’t unusual for unscrupulous British freemen to utilize bushranger talents in advancing their own selfish aims, casting a pall over the moral probity of the entire Australian enterprise. Tazzy’s forebearer Mike Howe is thought by historians to have had a devil’s deal with one Edward Lord, the richest (if least upstanding) member of the upper crust of society in Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was known until 1855. Given the moral morass of Australian history, it’s not surprising that a young man in 1988 would be proud to acknowledge his association with bushranger Howe, the scalawag warrior for the common man and agent qui révèle of chimerical upper-class pretensions.
Tazzy shared the story of his sketchy legacy with the same delight as he told of the time he and Walters mooned the Australian premier when that national potentate rode through town. Tazzy figured this salute satisfied his obligation as inheritor of the mantle of the great Michael Howe. The episode was capped off when Tazzy and Walters got themselves good and drunk on the gratuity left by the august group, who’d dined where the boys worked. The over-bubbling delight with which Tazzy shared his story made it clear catching a buzz on the government dollar was as sweet a moment as Vole Creek had to offer; perhaps that explains why it’s a primary preoccupation in the mountain hamlet.
I wish—I truly do—that time spent with Erik was equally pleasant. For all his brooding disquiet, it was obvious that he was a capable and knowledgeable farmhand. But I’d set him against me from the very start. Our exchanges were only ever curt, perfunctory, direct. Any amusements I offered his direction fell on deaf ears.
Honesty demands I acknowledge I’d imbibed a deep sense of responsibility for Bullo at this point in my tenure. I, at least occasionally, acted as though I was more vested with responsibility than the simple stockie I was. Donning a cowboy hat and sweating continuously for several months had me feeling a legitimate cowboy. The activities I’d done regularly—milking cows or straining fences—had become familiar enough for me to feel as though I had them mastered. I still knew very little of mechanics or animal husbandry, true enough, but those duties I knew I knew well, and that confidence spilled over into arrogance, I fear.
The indisputable truth, invisible to me at the time, was that I did not yet grasp the bigger picture of station life. This blindness of mine, a fateful combination of ignorance and arrogance, exploded into controversy one afternoon during the second week Erik and I spent working together.
Barking in Nutwood 