THE MAGICIAN
(from “North & West of Melrose Street”)
(Simon & Schuster 1993)
It was probably a combination of things that set him up for his big fall. It was the second of two bad seasons, with a backs-to-the-wall, us-against-them atmosphere in the district. The local bank manager had developed a neurotic preoccupation with everyone's overdraft, but especially Uncle Bob's, which was more overdrafted than most, and being picked at by some inflated bank clerk really bellowsed up the forge of defiance in the man. And that didn't need any help at the best of times. Worse still, his son with the bad leg had limped back into Molong Bay, but got a job on the Shire Council rather than come all the way home. That made him deep-down angry at something that gnawed at him, something inside himself that he couldn't hit out at.
It was the day that the offering price for off-shears sheep got down to two bob a head that he decided that enough was enough. Everyone was trying to off-load their mobs at the sales because there was nothing left but to hand-feed them on hay that was worth more than the stock. And then there was the transport costs and the agent's fees to be taken out of the two bob when you did sell them. It got down to a choice between ways of giving away your money. Most of the harder hit were just shooting them in the paddocks and burying them. It was cheaper.
Their quiet resignation to the hopelessness of it all got right under Uncle Bob's tough hide.
"I'll shoot me bloody self before I do that," he growled one morning. "Buggers don't know how to make a good fight out of it." The man had his axehead chin stuck right out. That was a sure sign that his own brand of creative action was the next item on the agenda. "Time to turn sheep into pigs." He gave me a rough throwaway wink. "Yep. Sheep into pigs ..." It was obvious he wasn't going to elaborate. All he added was "... didn't know I was a magician, did ya?!"
Well, the last of his own mob were by now down to some skinny wethers and a handful of the better ewes, so we shifted these out into the scrub to find what they could while he got ready to get on with whatever he had in mind, and then we fixed up the pig run.
At best you could only describe Uncle Bob's pigs as the `free range' type, which means that they tended to go wherever they damn-well pleased, lean and racy looking grunters with swaggie personalities. They left you alone as long as you left them alone. Up till then I'm not sure what their role was on the farm other than to add to the atmosphere. Which they surely did. Uncle Bob reckoned that as long as they didn't actually come in the house pigs were handy to have around. They looked after themselves and they ate bloody near anything.
"Only goats've got tougher guts, but they stink."
"And the pigs don't?"
"Nar, pigs only stink if you coop them up."
Next we dragged one of the pig troughs into the middle of the renovated run, poured in a couple of buckets of slops and half a bag of barley, and he started belting the two buckets together with a penetrating -- Heeeeere pig pig pig...Piiiiig pig pig pig -- and a wild assortment of ham and bacon tumbled out of everywhere but the trees, hell-bent for the trough with the single-mindedness of shoppers at a sale. We scampered for the fence and shut the gate behind them. In no time they were fighting over the last of the potato peelings.
"That's the only trouble with pigs," Uncle Bob admitted, "they're a bloody stomach on legs, you can only keep a few for pocket money unless ya got plenty to feed 'em."
Then he let the big old ballsy boar out of his enclosure into the yard. The sows' faces lit up. "That'll keep the ladies minds off food for a bit anyway", he said. And he was right. An hour later the boar was sleeping the sleep of the dissipated and about a dozen sows were back discussing their lost freedom at the gate. In the background the remnants of the last three generations of weaners were already sorting out a new pecking order for their suddenly shrunken territory.
Uncle Bob reckoned it was time to do some serious magic before they all tore the gate off.
Now at this point you could get a bit queazy unless you're from off the land, or work in an abattoirs, or listen to the news every night, and are not yet hardened to the natural fact that something has to pretty regularly stop being alive so that the rest of us can keep going -- even a carrot has to give its all in the end.
Anyway, I was pretty much a city kid so my rapid initiation into the first law of nature was a bit rough till I got used to it. Up until then I guess I always thought I was a fairly sensitive kind of soul, but it's surprising what you can learn to do if you feel enough loyalty to the cause. And somehow I felt I was part of some great fight against the Legions of the Papershufflers. Well, that's how Uncle Bob went on about it any time he thought I was starting to flag.
First we cut a few distillate drums in halves longways, then burnt them out with a BOOMPF! of petrol and a stand-back match. Hell, that man had a marvellously expressive way of going about things. Next we cut out about ten of the skinniest wethers and herded them into a pen by the pig-run. Then he showed me how to cut a sheep's throat quick and clean and mercifully. Skip the next paragraph if you're a vegetarian and only into killing cabbages, or if you like to believe that chops grow on trees like oranges.
There is something deeply primitive, even religious, about killing a sheep on a one-to-one basis. I imagine that in a meat factory it can be, and would have to be impersonal, but on the farm it's somehow always right there in front of you, an ever-present sense of being part of the ritual of the death and life cycle around which all civilisation revolves, on which it feeds, that gives it sustenance and renewal. The sheep gives no struggle, it plays out its part with a seemingly quiet dignity. You tie one front and one back leg together with a bit of twine, lay it on its side with its legs away from you and hold it down firm with a slight kneeling action. You pull back its head a little to expose its throat and, with the cutting edge out, quickly and cleanly insert a long and thin and very sharp knife straight down into the neck below the spine, and cut outwards with a split-second thrust. It's sudden and it's timeless and it's personal. Uncle Bob watched my face as I did the first one and he reassured me it was as painless as you could make it. In his own way he was a very feeling sort of man and he didn't dwell on it.
One by one we hauled them up on a special sheep-dressing pulley that hung from an old tree by the yards, and Uncle Bob gave me a quick lesson on how to skin them and dress out the offal, putting heart, liver and kidneys into a tub. The first couple were a bit revolting but we worked fast and hard and I quickly got the hang of it. Then the warm carcasses were butchered roughly into about six big lumps that would have looked good on any suburban meat tray. These went into the tub too, followed by a bucket of water, some chaffy old grain and a couple of buckets of slops. We got a good fire stoked up under the whole lot and in half an hour had enough soupy-looking stew to feed two platoons. This was heaved over the fence into the feed troughs and those pigs got into it like it was Christmas dinner. They got fat before our very eyes.
"See, sheep turned into pigs! Easy, mate."
Uncle Bob was pleased with his primitive bit of magic. It never occurred to me that pigs would eat meat. "Sure," he reckoned, "pigs'll eat anything if you serve it up right. They tend to regress a touch on raw meat but that's why we cook it all up."
The `regress a touch' sounded a bit ominous but I didn't think much more about it until afternoon tea time when we traditionally sat down with Auntie Rose for a few quiet minutes over a cuppa, before the girls thundered in off the school bus. She asked what we'd been up to and before Uncle Bob could shut me up with one of his `let me do the talking' looks I said we'd been making mutton stew for the pigs. She gave him one of her exasperated head shakes. "Good God, Bob -- you're not doing your bloody sheep into pigs trick again are you?"
He got all defensive. "Better'n shooting the bastards and burying them! Not going to have some snotty-nosed bank manager chucking us off!"
As innocent as ever I chipped in that I thought it was a good idea and I didn't understand why more of the local cockeys didn't do the same thing. Auntie Rose gave a bit of a hollow chuckle. "Because it's against the law that's why! There's a bloody big fine if they catch you -- and a spell in gaol if they get really crabby with you! The meat goes different ... (`ah, that's a load of bullshit', Uncle Bob chipped in) ... and the pigs turn back into wild animals again! Crazy things are bad enough as vegetarians without them getting a taste for meat!"
"Ah, bullshit, BULLshit woman!" And then they had a good slanging match for about ten minutes. Nothing more was said on the subject for a couple of weeks, except that night when Auntie Rose took me and the girls aside and warned us not to talk about it to anyone else.
Things plodded on for a few months. Sheep prices went even lower and fodder higher. We'd boiled up all of our own wethers and the pigs were looking fat. The market for baconers was good, and just before the sows were due to drop their next litters Uncle Bob placed all of the previous lot at a good price, but not at the local sales. We trucked them away ourselves to one of the bigger towns some way off. He was feeling mighty pleased with himself on the way back. And full of confidence. Which was a dangerous combination. The next day we started building a new pig run four times the size of the old one, back up behind the scrub.
Saturday afternoon after the footy we dropped into the pub before picking Auntie Rose and the girls up from basketball. Uncle Bob said it was time to organise some cheap pig feed and we fronted the bar and ordered two beers as if we did it every day. The publican looked at Uncle Bob as if to ask if he was in the right place -- he'd been on the wagon for a few years -- and at me like how old? Uncle Bob set his jaw a fraction and looked him in the eye and two beers appeared.
He drew himself into a small bale of farmers and steered the conversation to sheep prices, till someone made the inevitable shoot the buggers rather than let 'em starve to death comment and he said he'd take 'em off his hands. There was a bit of a surprised pause.
"How much are ya payin', Bob?"
"Payin'?! Nothin'! But it'll save you the ammo and the misery." The farmer thought about it, but he was past caring what we were going to feed them.
"OK Bob, you're on. When do you want 'em?"
"Bring 'em over Monday."
"Geez, Bob -- you're gettin' 'em for free -- I gotta deliver 'em as well!"
"Would you rather dig a hole and shoot 'em?" On Monday the sheep arrived.
Well, we kept that routine going for the best part of a year. The new season was refusing to break and plenty of farmers were backed up against the wall as far as they could go. Tired, thin sheep kept rolling in and fat, mean, bad-tempered baconers kept rolling out. We had to change markets a few times. As soon as our pigs started to get a bit of a reputation for their surly manners among the agents, we'd just move on. There was enough in a hundred mile radius to keep us out of trouble.
The money was good but the risk of getting nabbed was increasing. Uncle Bob purposely stretched his credit out as far as he could at the local banks, like everyone else, but socked away the cash in a branch a long way away from home -- well, the bit that he didn't lend to mates, and buy another truck with, and a new two-tone green DeSoto. Not to mention Auntie Rose's all singing, all dancing, bells and whistles, fully automatic washer-drier of course. But I think the locals were starting to wake up to his game, although naturally no-one said anything. They'd just ask casually over a beer if he could use another hundred head or so and he'd say OK, drop 'em round.
But, I don't think either of us understood the real price that we were paying to keep the farm out of the hands of the bank. We were slaughtering about ten sheep a day each, and while that doesn't seem many, it was the relentless nature of it that slowly got to us without us noticing it. We had to detach ourselves, become more callous in our work, an abattoir attitude. We had pits of bones buried all over the farm, there was a smell of blood around the pig yards no matter how often we moved the blocks and dug fresh drain pits under them. Out of sheer necessity we gradually cooked the meat less and less and added in less and less grain. The pigs were developing a strange, wild, cunning strain through their blood line, and a disconcerting glint in their eye.
We seemed to have the whole stink of it all in our nostrils all the time and we needed to spend longer under the shower every night. But the worst part was the drinking. Uncle Bob was back onto it fairly heavy and I wasn't far behind. We spent Saturday arvos in the pub washing away the bad feelings that neither of us understood much less could talk about. Auntie Rose started giving him a bad time and there were some terrible rows over it all. Yet somehow he couldn't stop. He told himself he was winning, that he was beating the system.
The end had to come.
Early in June God decided that everyone had stopped taking Him for granted enough and sent down a real break to the season, big gobs of rain that soaked the broken land, till all the cockeys that had survived were smiling and the paddocks tinged up green and the pigs had real wallow to wallow in. The whole world seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Except we were stuck with over a hundred half-grown rampagious baconers whose chief source of nutrition had suddenly turned into very expensive mobs of replenishment sheep. Everybody was trying to put their stocks back together again. There was a whole new optimism in the air. But it hadn't quite got to us yet.
Uncle Bob now had to finish fattening the current lot up to absolutely top quality or he'd have a lot of trouble finding enough quick cash to get back into the sheep business. But the pigs had been raised mainly on meat, and pretty raw meat at that, and not even expensive barley stopped them looking longingly at the chooks, the dogs and us. He'd hung on about one rainy week too long. Now he was desperate. That's when he ran into the fella in the pub who offered him a couple of knackered horses.
Now normally he could smell a bureaucrat at twenty feet and a sneak at fifty. This bloke was both, but Uncle Bob never twigged till it was too late. He told him to bring them round the next day.
Uncle Bob woke up that fateful morning with a hangover as brittle as a spring frost. And then one of his mates rang to tell him that the rumour was that the joker with the horses was a Health Inspector out to get a big conviction. He went brooding quiet. I wasn't game to ask what the plan was. The truck and the bloke and the horses arrived just after breakfast and the 8.00am row with Auntie Rose. She wasn't sure what was going on but she had this awful feeling that it wasn't good.
The fella had a matey facade and helped us unload the two tired old nags, and kept trying to draw Uncle Bob into conversation, asking him in six different ways except straight out what he wanted with a couple of worn out horses. Uncle Bob finally looked him square in the eye.
"C'mon," he said, "I'll show ya what ya do with animals that aren't any bloody use to anyone." The way he ground out the word `animals' was really unsettling.
We herded the horses up the back and the bloke's jaw dropped an inch when he saw our pig stadium. Without saying a word Uncle Bob got the .303 and a fresh clip from the shed and cranked a round into the breech. Then he opened the pig yard gate and war-whooped the two horses in. They were pretty much past caring about anything but they shied a little and trembled all over. The pigs were milling and restless. I had this sinking feeling that I was about to see Bob Clutterbuck at his best, and his worst.
"THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO BLOODY USELESS ANIMALS!" he said, angry, and mean with it, and the .303 cut a sudden WHANG! through the tension, and even as me and the other bloke jumped in surprise it went WHANG! again and both horses were down clean and dead between the eyes. The pigs went strange. The noise startled them into a frenzy of squealing and they jumped around the carcasses as they twitched their last, then the pigs seemed to all pause -- and as if on some really weird cue they all attacked like a horde of wild hunting dogs, tearing and pulling at the animals.
The stranger went the most peculiar shade of grey I have ever seen. Uncle Bob fixed him with a grim reaper stare and said quietly "... an' they'll probably eat the bones too!" The poor bloke stumbled back a few steps, totally intimidated, and then bolted for his truck. We watched him tear down the track and go sideways out the front gate. Uncle Bob had suddenly gone pretty sombre as if he'd run out of anger.
"He didn't wait for his dough", he said quietly, and sauntered off to put the rifle away. In a minute he was back. His hands were trembling a bit and he looked really -- had it, totally knackered.
"I think we might be in a bit of bother", was his only comment. He went up to the house and without a word took the DeSoto out of the shed and headed for town.
Auntie Rose came out and rounded up what was left of me with a well placed bellow or two, and before I realised it I was blubbering in sheer mental exhaustion and filling her in as best I could between sniffs. Then she went pale and had to sit down. She wasn't a woman normally stuck for words but for three minutes she was speechless. Then for ten minutes she belted swear words out at random and stomped around the kitchen wringing her hands in her apron as if she couldn't get them dry. Then she flomped down and had a good cry too.
It must have been ten o'clock that night before Uncle Bob fell in the door. He was drunk. Really drunk. But not harmless, legless drunk. Wild, angry, fighting drunk. His shirt was torn and he had a blood nose all over his face.
Auntie Rose had been cleaning out the top of the fridge to keep busy while we waited, and as he stumbled in he crashed into the kitchen table and icy boxes and various staring fish and lumps of meat went thumping onto the floor and skidding across the lino. She let go of all of her own pent up fear and concern in a gusher of unconnected abuse, but Uncle Bob cut her short with an "... ah, ge' SHTUFFED..." and made a half-baked lunge at this new source of aggravation. Auntie Rose picked up a frozen leg of mutton, and with a well placed cover drive caught Uncle Bob right behind the ear as she stepped aside. Without another sound he went down like he was glad to be unconscious, just as two coppers arrived.
You know, life's pretty strange at times. I would've reckoned that Uncle Bob was going to need a hundred years to get to the other side of that lot and feel good about living again. He had a busted head, a marriage over the edge, a farm on the way to the wall, and a whole bunch of Really Important Regulations in tatters. And some sort of boozer's gout had attacked his crook knees. But, in his own rough way, he kind of turned all that into a really good second half for Auntie Rose and himself.
I went to see him in the hospital the day after he went in. He was a sore and sorry man. First thing he asked was "... how's the cook?" He was clearly relieved to hear that she was still at home. Next he asked did my mum ring to tell me to get home on the next bus and out of this madhouse. She had, but I told him she hadn't. He looked relieved to hear that too. I felt that he needed me around just then somehow, and anyway, I'd become pretty attached to the place. Besides, the city would've been really boring after that lot.
It was four or five days before Auntie Rose went to see him, and even then only when I told her I thought he was dying -- a little exaggeration that me and the patient cooked up. But it worked. I'm sure that Auntie Rose saw through it all, but I think that it was important to her that Uncle Bob open the way back. Once she got a few things off her ample chest, and he swore he'd never touch the booze again, which he didn't incidentally, she mothered him till he complained of the excess of attention and he, and them, were soon on the mend.
The Health bloke came out to the farm while he was in the hospital, armed with some official looking piece of paper, and I tell you, surrounded by five of the biggest helpers you've ever seen. That was one nervous bloke. The funniest bit was when someone slammed the truck door behind him and he nearly shit himself! Uncle Bob held his head and laughed like mad when I told him that. They took our pigs away and all we got back was a bill from the carrier.
We were prosecuted of course, and the fines were the last nail in the farm's coffin. Before the next season came round all they had left was their furniture and the DeSoto and the bank had the rest. They rented a big old house in the town and the son with the crook leg came home to stay till he got married a few years later. But him and his dad seemed to find a new understanding of each other in those years, which really made Auntie Rose happy. Bad limp and all he was a hard worker, and a good bloke, with a tough and simple dignity about him. I think Uncle Bob learnt to see a lot of himself in his son. Somehow the man had finally put something to rest, and one day he just quietly went out and took a job on the Shire road gang.
Some faceless corporation from the city bought the farm, but Uncle Bob didn't even seem to mind that much. I remember at the final clearing sale he grunted to me that he wasn't cut out to be a farmer anyway. Too many Bludgers and Bureaucrats and assorted Bags-of-bloody-Rats to get in your way -- anybody'd think they didn't want you to feed the rest of the country.
"But we gave 'em a bit of a run for their money, didn't we sport."
Geez, we sure did Uncle Bob.
© T. R. Edmonds 1993
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