Separated by a fence line of horizon.
Two neighbouring towns, devoid of landmark and postcode, both rested upon the edge of a dirt road so uninteresting that even most of the potholes hadn’t bothered to show up.
Between these towns was a field of grass that had taken featurelessness to have been competitive; this field, unblemished by tree or incline, was only to be dotted by boulders that looked like sheep, and–if the farmer had misplaced his shears–sheep that looked like boulders.
The land was tough, it was covered by a clay that no backhoe could scar, and sprinkled by a grass that was a few hot days away from being cardboard.
Although, between the days of drought and dryness, there were fleeting deluges of rain that could swallow the landscape in river and pond, that would drench the soil returning clay into dirt, and, with sodden step, send those below in search of the nearest ark.
On this day rain clouds loomed overhead.
The farmland was quiet.
Sheep that were usually found grazing in the lower paddocks, of the incongruously named Dundelong river-valley, had all taken fright of the clouds that broiled upon the horizon and chose to pointedly adhere to their sheepish nature. Something deep inside the sheep had remembered clouds such as these. Drenched ancestors, still wet as a riverbed, sloshed into the puddle of the collective sheep’s limited comprehension.
Bundled together and quivering with fright under a sparse willow-fern, the sheep quietly bleated a worried prattle amongst their fellow flock, darting eyes fearfully to the dancing shadows caught by each flash of lightning above.
A lamb, innocent and filled with the old humour of a galah, smiled as two headlights wound their way past his family and bumped along the corrugated track, making its way to the outskirts of the station.
*
‘Is it gauche to be wearing both an Akubra and a Drizabone out here…err, out–back?’ asked Adam, nervous about his first time on his cousin’s farm and hoping to make a good impression.
Glancing to his estranged cousin and blinking the long blink of a farmer who had fixed far too many fences in his tired life, Noel let the moment hang and attempted to untangle the sentence that was just presented to him.
‘This may be a time, Ads, that if you had to ask the question, then you’ve probably got a fair enough idea, mate,’ clearing his throat Noel attempted to move on. ‘Ahem, anyway, best leave the hat in the ute, the rain’ll probably keep enough of sun off ya neck for the moment,’ droplets as big as squash balls began to clatter into the front of the ute as both men clambered out into the late afternoon deulge.
‘Were those your sheep we drove past on the way in?’ asked Adam, turning around and trying to convince himself that a small lamb wasn’t smiling at him from the undergrowth.
‘Yep, should have about 200 head somewhere in this paddock,’ said Nole as he kept walking and tugging at the fence wire. ‘Haven’t seen a mob look that panicked since June forgot it was her turn to bring the billy to the last cake swap–they mustn’t like the thunder.’
‘How did you know that this fence was down anyway? We drove like 20 minutes,’ said Adam jogging to catch back up to his laconic cousin.
‘Just knew really. Living bush you become a part of the land somewhat, you feel the earth grow and whither under your step, distance becomes nothing but time and the sunrise exists only by marker. All things are connected: the lines of a hand, a river that finds its way to the sea, you and I living in this harmonious coexistence.’
Adam stared at his Nole, lost momentarily in his sudden profundity
‘Nah, just taking that piss,’ Noel laughed. ‘There’s a circuit called a wheatstone bridge hooked up to the fence; no clue how the thing works but it’ll tell me when a line is broken or sagged enough to be touching another, even gives the rough distance. I’d imagine one of the cows was scratching itself on a fence post again…God I hate cows.’
‘That’s actually really interesting.’
‘Is it?’ said Noel wiping some of the dripping rain off his sprawling eyebrows. ‘I didn’t think anyone really liked cows.’
‘No, no,’ Adam waved away the diversion with a flick of his hand. ‘The wet-bridge, or whatever you called it. I didn’t know farms would have things so advanced.
‘Well yeah,’ Noel replied dryly. ‘I got a clamp that flips the sheep up so I can shear round their old fella; it’s not like we’re still in the eighteen-hundreds this far out bush.’ finding the break in the fence wire the old farmer began to attach a line tap. ‘Trev even once had a crack at hunting rabbits with a drone.’
Ratcheting the tension back into the metal line Noel watched as the first trickle of water began to flow its way down the hundred-year dry creek. A gentle wave thousands of kilometers from the coast line, stumbling over itself and running like a toddler in waddled sprint. Smiling, the old farmer gave his cousin a gentle push and nodded back to the ute. As they walked, boots galumphing across mud having its first go at being wet, they remembered a moment like this in their youth. Two pimpled children strolling through the rain soaked city streets and watching the dead winter’s storm carry fallen leaves down the gutter.
A span of years later, had they changed?
‘I swear that lamb was looking at me,’ said Adam as he hopped back into the ute.
‘Yeah, he’s a bit creepy that one, June thinks he’s got some of the devil in him but I rekon he’s just gotten to a bad mushroom.’
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 