Preparations for the Bull Creek muster were nearly complete. One morning found me filling water troughs from the tanker, humming the Mission Impossible theme the whole while. With the troughs full, I pulled the water trailer to the creek and refilled it to the rim, as reserve. Just as I topped it off Charlie arrived in the King.
“Dave, I need you to roll that pipe up right quick and drop the trailer at the yard, then unhitch. I’ve sent the boys out in the flatbed to get a great load of firewood for the branding. I need you to get on the tractor, go to Dingo Creek, and wait for them there. It’s gotten right powdered and there’s a chance they may not make it across. I told them not to try unless they had at least half a load or they wouldn’t be heavy enough, but I’m concerned they might not even make it then. So you grab a chain and wait for them there in case they get bogged, got it?”
“Right – o!” I quickly finished the water task, then pointed the tractor up the main road for the several mile trip to Dingo Creek crossing.
I love driving a tractor. It just feels, I don’t know, ranch–y. Like most things at Bullo this particular John Deere was an older model, reconditioned and stout. Sitting in the open cockpit high above the soil, listening to the open-air diesel firing with a tubular rattle, watching the valve cap on the exhaust pipe wave softly up and down as staccato gusts of sooty gas belch irrelevantly into the clear outback skies—tractors are fun.
I was in great spirits when I arrived at Dingo Creek a half hour later. What I saw there took my mood down several notches. Sure enough, with Erik at the wheel the boys had gotten themselves well stuck. They were up to the axles in the soft bull dust of the dry swale. Unlike most vehicles which traverse the main road into Bullo, this flatbed had only two-wheel drive. Given its weight and inability to propel itself via all four corners, Charlie recognized it was a good candidate for bogging in the floury creek bed. With proper speed and enough weight on the rear axle a good driver could make it across, but Erik had neglected to heed Charlie’s advice and attempted the pass with a nearly empty bed.
“Looks like you boys stuffed up,” I said with gentle approbation as I climbed down from the tractor.
“What the hell you talking about, mate?!” said Erik with obvious agitation. “Where you been?! Charlie said he was sending you right behind us! We’ve been waiting a half hour for you!”
“What the hell are YOU talking about? I left as soon as Charlie spoke with me. I guess he didn’t figure you boys would ignore him and shoot Dingo Creek with an empty load!” I said, hair rising on my neck. Stupidly ignoring Charlie was one thing; blaming me for their predicament was quite another.
“I know what I’m doing. Charlie told us where to get the wood and I’m heading there, mate. You don’t tell me how to do my fucking job!”
“I’m not telling you a god damn thing except that you should listen to Charlie when he talks,” I said coldly, glowering at the irate country boy.
“Listen, you Yankee asshole, I know a hell of a lot more than you do! If you’ve got a problem with the way I do things we could just settle it right here!” Erik said, stepping my direction.
“Hold on, boys!” interjected Tazzy, moving between the two of us. “We’re wasting time here. Let’s pull his truck out and settle all this later!”
Truth is, I wasn’t disappointed at Tazzy’s intercession. I’ve never been a fighter. In middle school my gentle nature made me an easy target for bullies. A mean kid once chopped me in the jaw, his answer to my question of whether he was still studying karate. Even with that provocation I did not retaliate. I don’t think it was a fear of pain, fear of losing the fight, though that certainly is the likely outcome. Striking out was alien to my nature; it wasn’t a tool in my bag. Later that afternoon, and ever since, I’d wished that I’d defended my dignity with at least a moment of resistance but, alas, I did not on that day.
The residual pain of past abuses buoyed me in the face of Erik’s aggressive talk, no doubt, and I’d been involved in a few scuffles in my early adulthood. But Erik was a feral animal, one I knew would respect no rules of gentlemanly restraint or even basic decency in hand-to-hand combat. The threat of serious injury at the hands of the rough-hewn bumpkin was very real.
With equal measure relief and agitation I turned from the confrontation and pulled the chain from the gear box on the tractor. Erik headed back to the cab.
“Let’s just get this done,” I muttered sourly.
Tazzy hitched one end of the chain to the front of the truck and the other to the tow hitch on my tractor. Consumed by self-righteous pique at the belligerent yabbo’s unwillingness to acknowledge his mistake, I only dimly registered Tazzy’s presence on the road to my right. I noted his arm went up, then heard within the swirling fulminations of my mind an echo of him yelling “go!”.
I stomped on the tractor’s accelerator. After no more than a split second and a yard of travel I was confounded to find myself whiplashed to a halt. The front wheels of the tractor lifted off the ground slightly, then settled back down. Somewhere within my perimeter, Tazzy screamed incoherently about something which, in the moment, I didn’t bother to decipher, occupied as I was with my own puzzlement and anger.
“I thought you said go!” I screamed at the slender man as I, without waiting for a response, gunned the tractor harder than before. Again I traveled only slightly, but this time the front wheels of my vehicle rose three feet in the air. I was completely befuddled, enraged, frustrated. I turned to see Tazzy apoplectic, jumping up and down and screaming oaths. I rotated all the way around in my seat and saw Erik hanging halfway out the truck window, sneering and gesticulating wildly. In an instant, the intemperate fog which had encased me cleared.
I’d failed to draw the chain taut before attempting to tow the truck from its imbed.
By failing to take up the slack I’d welcomed several prospects considerably more dire than the mere failure to pull the truck up the slope. Had the chain snapped from my emotion-driven exertions it would’ve recoiled either through the truck’s grill, destroying the engine, or through the back of my skull, destroying my hopes for a bright future. By Grace neither happened. The chain had held, transferring the energy from my pull to the tractor. With nowhere to go that energy lifted the front end–and its massive diesel engine–well into the air. With just a bit more acceleration, or a bank with slightly more incline, the tractor would’ve done a backwards roll. That’s a gymnastic maneuver bodies, neither agricultural nor human, are designed to survive.
“Fuck it!” I said to myself, realizing bitterly that I’d lost the high ground in the situation.
“Get down off of there!” Tazzy, purple faced, was climbing onto the tractor.
“No; I got it. I got it!” With an aggravation that can only be described, however oxymoronic, as sheepish, I moved the tractor forward until the chain linking me to the truck was pulled taut.
“Now don’t fuck it up this time, mate! You’ll have us all killed!” Tazzy was shaking his head as he backed off the tractor, his usual reserve of good humor dry as the bull dust which sloughed from the truck tires as the vehicle began to move.
Once the truck was clear I unhitched the (mercifully) durable chain and grudgingly joined the boys in the cab. Erik greeted me with a piercing stare as I climbed aboard. I averted my eyes, being in the mood to neither confront nor apologize. Sure, I’d screwed up. But my screwup would’ve never happened if he hadn’t disobeyed Charlie’s explicit directions. We were, in my mind, at least equally culpable for the crappy situation. With little conversation, we scavenged a full load of firewood in the next hour and began the return drive to the yard site. When we came to Dingo Creek, Erik gunned the now fully-laden truck and easily made it through the swale. I hopped out and began a joyless ride home on the tractor.
If only that son of a bitch hadn’t disobeyed Charlie…
When I arrived at the yard site, several minutes behind the flatbed, Charlie was with the boys unloading the firewood. They’d been talking. As I stepped in to lend a hand the boys looked from me to Charlie and back, but the big man kept his attention focused on the wood pile. As evening settled in, we cleared the last of the load and the four of us returned to the homestead, the tense atmosphere punctuated by a smattering of perfunctory conversation.
After dropping the boys at the stockman’s quarters Charlie, looking straight ahead and with his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, addressed me.
“What happened back there?”
“They didn’t do what you told them to do, Charlie. They screwed up. They tried driving…”
Charlie was now looking directly at me. “I’m not asking THEM what THEY did. I’m asking YOU what YOU did.”
“Oh, you mean about the chain. Well, since they got themselves stuck…”
“I’m not talking about THEM. And I don’t want to hear you tell me about THEM. YOU tell me about YOU – “ here he slowed to a roll “ — or I’LL stop asking. And YOU’LL be gone.”
Charlie’s words chilled me. “Christ, Charlie; I screwed up. I didn’t get the chain tight. I guess – I don’t know – I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Well that’s for damn sure,” he said evenly. “I’ve known men killed for less. You put everything at risk because, what? You were mad? You don’t like somebody? Big deal. You keep your head on your work or you’ll be working here no more. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear, Charlie. Yes sir. It’s clear, and I apologize. But I tell you what – I need to talk to those boys. They owe me an apology, and –“
Charlie cut me off. “They don’t owe you anything. Asking for an apology is for children, and asking to talk in the bush is an invitation to fight. You don’t want to fight those guys.” He glanced back towards the stock quarters. “First off, there’s no rules out here, no referees, no gloves. They would hurt you. Second, fighting gets everyone involved fired. End of story.”
“I get it,” I said, my spirits slumping under the weight of his words. “I do, and I appreciate your being straight. I’ll let it go. But I have to ask; aren’t you upset with them for driving into Dingo Creek without the load you said they should have?”
“I’m upset any time someone doesn’t listen to what I ask. But what I am upset with them about, I talk with them about, just as this conversation doesn’t go beyond this truck.” Charlie doubtless recognized my hangdog expression. “Dave, you’re a good bloke. You work hard. I appreciate that. But you don’t know much. Those men know a hell of a lot more than you do. You’ll do well to give them a chance to show you some things.”
With that, Charlie exited the truck and with his purposeful stride disappeared into the house. I sat for a bit, the King’s passenger door open to the night, my head swimming. The boys had screwed up, surely, but so had I, and just as surely. Charlie’s dressing down stung like hell and there was nothing I could muster to counter his conclusion. I was a rookie, green as a mountain meadow in the springtime, in truth.
And though I was exercising every virtue I could conjure of conscientiousness and diligence those qualities are, at the end of the day, intentions. Doing a bad thing for the best of reasons makes for a world scarcely less benighted than doing bad things for the worst of reasons – either way, bad things happen. And which is more impactful in this world – what actually happens, or what people intend to happen? The question answers itself.
What had very nearly happened here — due to my self-righteous pique — was dead men, wrecked machinery, a muster season in crisis. I was going to need to work this out with Erik.
The tempest swirling in my noggin was of secondary importance to the life of Bullo that evening; the film crew was slated to arrive. As I lingered outside the back door, contemplating my next step, Charlie poked his head out with a request.
“Dave, I need you to walk down and let Dick know to leave the generator on a bit longer tonight. Sara is making a meal for the film blokes, who’ll be arriving any minute.”
Given that the generator house was next to the stock quarters, it was inevitable I would see Erik and Tazzy. I braced myself for the confrontation as I strode through the fading light towards my reckoning. As expected, the boys were sitting in the simple, sturdy chairs arrayed around the weathered outdoor table where Stumpie served his utilitarian fare. Erik was the first to acknowledge my approach.
“Well, here comes Bushie Dave. Ready to go a round or two are ya, mate?”
Now, I have never been accused of excessive cynicism. In fact, credulity – that quality of assuming as a default that others are wholesome and upstanding folk – could well be my nickname. “Well, my friends call me Credulous Dave.” That peaceable if occasionally regrettable characteristic asserted itself at that particular moment: I thought Erik was inviting me to a round of beers.
The human mind in its complexity outshines even Churchill’s Kremlin – a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. How it seemingly on its own and in moments of stress decides which drawers of cognition to access creates some fascinating interchanges, as demonstrated by my response.
“Would you go an Export, mate?” I heard myself inquire of the peeved country boy.
This was the question Peter had asked the first time he and I sat together over a pair of cold Emu Export Lagers. “Would you go an Export, mate?!” served as the long-time ad slogan pitching this particular pale ale. I, alien to Australian ad slogans, had been struck dumb by the question. My retrieval of the marketing query in this moment had the same effect on Erik as it had on me, except this time I was dumbfounded that I’d been on the ‘ask’ end of the question. Erik’s expression shifted in an instant from pissed to flummoxed.
“You’re offering me a Bush Chook?” He asked, his dark brows an arch of McDonaldsian proportions.
Now, I had no idea what in hell a Bush Chook was, but I didn’t like the sound of it. Had I put together the Australian word for chickens, chook, with the large feathered foul featured on every can of the eponymous Emu Export Lager I suppose I might have had a lifeline. I might’ve been able to figure out that “Bush Chook” is the beer’s nickname among its aficionados. By not making that connection I was adrift at sea.
“What? No; I’m not. I’m not gonna get booted off of Bullo.”
You see, somehow I decided that Bush Chook was a euphemism for fighting, and had I not only just recently heard from Charlie that fighting would be the end of my Bullo adventure?
“Well, mate, I don’t think a beer will get you tossed…” Erik’s voice trailed off, his face an expression of genuinely intrigued perplexion.
“Wait – what? Your offering me a beer?” My face almost certainly mirrored Erik’s.
“No, mate, I’m not offering you a beer. You’re the one who brought up beer.” His spine stiffened.
“Hang on. I didn’t offer you a beer. You offered me one, and I accepted.” I cocked my head forward, inviting consensus.
“Well I bloody well didn’t offer any such thing. And if you think I did you’re a shade crazier than I thought you were!” I had the sense here that at least I’d moved from enemy to irritant.
By now, Tazzy and Stumpie, who’d been watching the exchange from close range, were bent double in laughter. With the two men wobbling helplessly and Erik’s angry front rapidly disintegrating, I couldn’t help but to begin to chuckle myself.
“Well, my friend, I may be crazy but I didn’t offer you a beer. But since I have absolutely no fucking idea what’s going on here I’m kinda liking the sound of one. Anyone else?”
“So NOW you’re offering a beer?” asked Erik as laughter overtook him as well.
“Well, I guess I bloody well am! Say; would you go an Export, mate?!”
When there is trouble among men no elixir has properties more magical than yeasted malt and barley. Erik’s final response told me that the prescription was exactly correct; the cheery tone with which he delivered it belied its barbed content, and sent all four of us into unteathered guffaws.
“I sure as hell would!” he said with a snuffle. “I reckon it’s the only way I’ll be able to put up with any more of your bloody Yankee nonsense!”
Barking in Nutwood 