BORIS
James Walford Tippet is a successful businessman. Whether it was a suburban street or a country highway, at some time in the past week one of his national fleet of trucks would’ve gone past you.
But J. W. Tippet was truly self-made, wasn’t born with the easy road already at his doorstep.
As Jimmy Tippet, he fell to earth part dreamer and part pragmatist, which is never a really comfortable mix for a young head, but he’d soon enough learn to arbitrate between the right side and the left side of his brain, to find the sort of harmony his ambitions and his energies would need. Like most things in life, he had to learn this as he went along.
He will always believe that Boris was his first, and one of his best, lessons.
He lived on an uncle’s farm for a while during his early teens, as Jimmy’s mother had three even younger kids to raise on her own, their father having died of a heart attack at the wheel of his owner-driver semi in the middle of the Hay Plains when their youngest was barely one year old. Leaving little but sadness and debt.
Jimmy felt the burden most of all.
His uncle’s farm was a fairly basic wheat-and-sheep-and-dirt property out in the mallee country, one of those marginals with never enough rain and rarely at the right times. Farms like that breed either good people with resilient hides or quitters. Uncle John and Aunt Ellie were no quitters.
But his Uncle John and Aunt Ellie were childless and had no hope of dynasty, and even though it was never said in as many words, the implication was that Jimmy – if he laboured long and well – would one day get the farm. As her eldest son, he was Jimmy’s mother’s investment in the family’s future. But no-one ever spelt this out to Jimmy.
Like many fourteen year old city-raised boys, Jimmy Tippet arrived at the farm with his dreamer genes telling him he would surely need a HG Holden Monaro, with mag wheels, by driving-licence-time at seventeen. But his pragmatic genes soon calculated that the token ‘wages’ his uncle and aunt could find for him, and his slender school holiday earnings pressing wool bales for the annual shearing team, weren’t going to get him there until he was about a hundred-and-three.
It was his Year Nine mate George at the Area School who said he should go into business. The pork business. But George was a farmer’s son of a farmer’s son of a – and all that. Five generations of all that. George had every aspect of farming stitched into the lining of his genes and pig-business things were as nothing to him. Jimmy wasn’t so naturally blessed.
So he raised the subject with his Uncle John.
Uncle John was – well, dubious. Wanted to know why. Not why pigs, but why more income.
Jimmy just couldn’t bring himself to cite the Monaro. He wanted to, but he already suspected his uncle (and his mother) had assumed long-term plans for his future. On the farm. A dry-dirt farm that would have more need of a vehicle with a touch more pulling power – not to mention ground clearance – than a two-door muscle car.
So Jimmy lied. Sort of. Said he just wanted to save up for his own transport. Let his uncle assume a Holder ute. For his future. On the farm.
So, his uncle said okay. He didn’t keep pigs himself, but he was a farmer. He understood pig things in principle, and remembered the old Yorkshire saying of his grandfather, that “...dogs look up to ‘ee, cats look down on ‘ee, but pigs is equal.”
With this in mind, he laid down a few rules.
First, farms have to at least break even, preferably come up with a profit some seasons, or the bank manager would make alternate arrangements for all of their futures. So Jimmy’s pig-business had to support itself, hopefully make a profit. Second, Jimmy was to be totally responsible for his whole pig-business and everything that it did. Do we understand each other Jimmy? Yes Uncle John - with the blind enthusiasm and self confidence that only comes from being fourteen and having tried nothing, but already knowing everything.
Jimmy’s plan was to buy some pigs young and thin, fatten them up, sell them off, pocket the profit. A simple enough business plan. He sketched it out to his uncle. Who said nothing. Which bothered Jimmy because it was one of those nothings that suggest something. Something he was going to have to learn for himself. The hard way. One of those.
For a month or so Jimmy worked hard in every bit of spare time on the weekends, and some nights after milking the cows, and fixed up a fairly respectable set of yards and sties from limestone rocks and old breeze blocks and mallee rails, plus a collection of secondhand corrugated iron that cost him ten bucks. And a heap of feed barley that was more chaff than barley but it was cheap.
Then he did a verbal promissory note sort of a deal with his mate George to get two pigs out of George’s own flourishing pig-run. But he made the mistake – depending on how you look at it - of bouncing his game plan off him. Off George who was the son of a farmer who was the son of – and all that.
George laughed.
You just want two pigs?
Yeah...
Both sows a course.
Ahh – yeah – I s’pose...
What about a boar?
What?
You’ll need to organise a bloody boar!
Whaffor?
Well, who’s gunna do all the rootin’ – you?
What?!
The money’s in multiplication you dimwit! Everyone knows that!
Multiplication?
Yeah! Y’ put in a brood a young sows, y’ set a boar onto em as often as they can stand it, fatten up the weaners, and sell them off. Sit back and count your money. I made two grand last year. Before tax. A course y’ hafta...
Two bloody grand?!
Yep.
Geez, how many have ya got?
I got ten sows now, kept a bunch of my original batch of weaners for breedin’.
Ten!?
Yep, and my own boar. In fact, I can sell you four of my older sows if you want, t’get ya started. I got new ones coming on. And I’ve even gotta boar ya can have, cheap.
So Jimmy did a deal. Promised steady repayments at five percent and shook on it. But didn’t stop long enough to ask why the boar was cheap. Took delivery the next week.
His Uncle John still didn’t say anything.
Just reminded him of the rules.
And that pigs have personalities.
Jimmy had absolutely no idea what that meant.
At the start Jimmy saw his pigs as money-in-the-making. Walking banks. Could feel the Monaro’s steering wheel in his hands. Could hear the sweet burble of the exhaust.
And, in no time at all, he got quite – sort of – attached. To his pigs. Because he spent a lot of time with them, and looked after them as best he could, kept their straw as clean as is possible with pigs, rubbed oil into their backs to hold the scale at bay. Even got a very expensive vet into them any time one got The Miseries. He called every pig ailment The Miseries because it was the extent of his veterinary knowledge but the Vet came anyway. Jimmy suspected his uncle always rang him back on the quiet and told him what he thought was actually wrong. But otherwise didn’t interfere.
But then there was Boris.
Boris was the boar. The cheap boar.
Boris behaved himself for the first couple of weeks. More than behaved, just about ingratiated himself. Jimmy and him became mates. They’d talk often. In fact Boris was the only one on the farm that got to hear about the muscle car. And the mag wheels. Because Boris had to bonk it into existence. As Jimmy saw it.
But once he felt comfortable, and had Jimmy’s measure, Boris’s natural personality emerged.
Boris was an closet anarchist.
Boris was privy to Jimmy’s dreams and his strategic plan, but seemed to not care. Like he had his own agenda. But, to his credit, he was capable. More than capable. Not of fitting in, but of boar-ing, as he could put a smile on a sow’s face if he was in the mood. But mostly he believed he was there to lord it over the sty, to be fed, to get his back oiled regularly, and to have his way with his women as and when. Other than that his time and his inclinations were his own.
One day he found a weak spot in the pig-yard rails, got out, swaggered over, pushed through the house garden fence, and ate one of Aunt Ellie’s cabbages. Just one. Then he ambled back to the sty. It was like he was testing. Cunning enough to realise that to have eaten more, or do any real damage, would put his personal bacon at some risk.
Jimmy got the news as he came in off the school bus. Aunt Ellie rounding up on him, said Jimmy had to mend the fence and fix the pig yard rail. And pay for the cabbage on principle. Uncle John didn’t say much at all when he came in from the paddocks and caught up with the news of the day. It was like he’d been waiting.
Boris behaved himself for about a week, sucked up to Jimmy, listened to the strategic plan all over again, took the talking-to on the chin. Grunted and nodded in all the right places like a true penitent.
But it was as if Boris just couldn’t grasp the concept that pig-yard rails should apply to him.
That pig got out again today, Uncle John announced, matter-of-factly, and ate another of your aunt’s cabbages. So, Jimmy paid for the cabbage, mended the fence, bolstered up the pig-yard rails some more, tried to read the look in his uncle’s eye. Then found himself defended Boris. Said he was just bored. Said he’d extend the yards and put in a bigger wallow. Still there was that look on his uncle’s face.
Boris always knew how long to wait. Till the memory of the last one had faded enough so that it didn’t feel accumulative. Then did it all over again. Three more times in the next few months, Jimmy still taking the work and the worry and the add-on cost on the chin.
It came to a head on end of term half day. Jimmy fell off the school bus about twelve-thirty and caught Boris in the act, pig-yard rails askew, sauntering his way to the cabbage patch with his big boar balls bulging out the back and mincing in tempo.
Jimmy snapped.
He’d had a bad morning that contained a mediocre report card delivered personally by the Head who said he knew Jimmy could do better. Needed to get his act together. Stop wasting his potential. Jimmy was stung. Stung by the truth.
He took one look and ran over and kicked Boris clean up the arse. Grabbed a stick and whacked him all the way around the farmyard till he headed back to the sty, greeted there by four sows with smug looks and seventeen weaners who openly laughed.
Boris’s relationship with the world was never the same after that. He sulked, he ignored the sows, he’d saunter off to a far corner any time Jimmy came near. Jimmy coaxed and cajoled and apologised, but Boris just bogged down. Literally. Ate and laid in the mud. Crapped in the drinking trough.
The standoff lasted about a fortnight.
One hot Saturday afternoon Uncle John came over to Jimmy at the pig-yard rail, leaned on it, asked quietly – “What’s it going to be? – Boris or the common good?”
Jimmy knew. Knew that his uncle knew. About hard decisions. About being a man. About respect.
The next Saturday morning Jimmy got the stock agent in and loaded Boris on a truck. And Boris looked at Jimmy with such eyes! Like he knew. Knew what was waiting for him at the abattoirs. And yes, Jimmy felt like a total bastard. For about a week. But, he found a better boar soon after, and saved himself a lot of aggro, and went on to make some half decent profits.
The episode served him well, in business and in life, but the sadly ironic thing was, the next time he had to use the lesson, was not long after he turned twenty-three, when he decided his life with his uncle and aunt had run its race, and he needed to get on with what was right, for him. His aunt cried that day, but Uncle John had that look on his face again. Respect. Knowing.
© T. R. Edmonds 2016